Schirmer, Rudolph Edward (12083458): Difference between revisions

'''Rudolph Edward Schirmer Jr.''' (18 June 1919 – 19 November 2000) was an American composer, lyricist, poet, and chairman of the board of the music publisher G. Schirmer, Inc., who trained at [[Camp Ritchie]] with [[:Category:Class 14|Class 14]] and served in military intelligence during World War II.

Rudolph Edward Schirmer Jr. was born on 18 June 1919, the son of the singer Ann Swinburne Munroe and Rudolph Edward Schirmer Sr., publisher and president of G. Schirmer, the music publishing company founded by his grandfather Gustav Schirmer. He entered Princeton University but left in his sophomore year for the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied composition with Rosario Scalero; Princeton still counts him in the class of 1941.

During World War II Schirmer served in the Military Intelligence Service. He trained at Camp Ritchie, graduating as a private with [[:Category:Class 14|Class 14]] (section 5A, certificate 5247), and served overseas.

From 1949 Schirmer was a prolific songwriter for more than twenty years, often setting texts by notable poets and authors. In 1949 he wrote the songs "Remember Thee!" and "So We'll Go No More A-Roving" to words by Lord Byron and "Love's Secret" to words by William Blake, and he co-wrote the German book ''3 Briefe an Kurt Leimer'', letters to the German pianist and composer who had been a prisoner of war in Italy in 1944; whether the two met during the war is unknown. That year he married Countess Ena (Marnegu Eugenia) Wenckheim at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome; they divorced in 1953. In 1955 he arranged "A Child's Prayer", a setting of Rachel Field's ''Prayer for a Child'' for three-part women's chorus and piano. On 8 February 1958 he married the former film actress and inventor Iris Flores, granddaughter of the Costa Rican president Rafael Yglesias Castro, in New York City; they divorced in November 1970.

In 1960 he copyrighted the songs for his musical ''Forty Ways to Sunday'', and between 1961 and 1963 he wrote words and music for songs including "Bluebird", the cycle ''Seven Songs'', "Don't Mention Love Again", "The Gift of Christmas", "Nobody Wants My Heart", and "You". He published a collection of poems, ''A Friend in Fantasy'', in 1964. His ''Hymn to the Americas'' (''Himno a las Américas''), for mixed chorus, soprano, and piano to a Spanish text by his brother-in-law Fernando Flores, a former Costa Rican vice consul, was performed by the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington at the Fourth Inter-American Music Festival in 1968. He married for a third time in 1972 and remained married until his death. He later served as chairman of the board of G. Schirmer, and in 1998 he recorded a reading of Aldous Huxley's ''The Doors of Perception'', whose title, like his early song "Love's Secret", came from William Blake. He died on 19 November 2000.