Eichheim, Henry

Henry Eichheim – Oriental Impressions

(b. Chicago, 3 January 1870 – d. Santa Barbara, 22. August 1942)

Korean Sketch p.3
Japanese Sketch p.9
Japanese Nocturne p.14
Entenraku p.19
Siamese Sketch p.23
Nocturnal Impressions of Peking p.40
Chinese Sketch p.51

Preface
Henry Eichheim was an American composer who took on many roles in the music world throughout his life including as a composer, conductor, violinist, organologist, and ethnomusicologist. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he began his musical training early from his father, Meinhard Eichheim, who was a cellist in the Theodore Thomas Orchestra. He went on to pursue higher education in violin performance at the Chicago Musical College and played in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Eichheim stopped performing after 1912 and instead became invested more in composition and conducting endeavors for the rest of his career. He was a big promoter of contemporary French music by composers such as Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Gabriel Fauré, and this is the music from which he took inspiration in his own compositions.

Eichheim visited destinations such as Korea, Japan, and China and began studying the cultural music in these regions of Asia and in Indonesia. As a result of these extensive travels, Eichheim combines traditional Eastern instruments with the Western orchestral sound. His compositions feature instruments from both Asia and Europe and often comprise elements of indigenous Asian music, such as unique scoring of instrument types, experimental rhythmic motives, and detailed markings in the score on how to play notes and passages within each movement. Some of the markings that Eichheim has specified his score for Oriental Impressions read “near sounding board,” in reference to the harp, and “free rhythm, avoid definite time division” in a chime part. In 1922, Eichheim relocated from Chicago to Santa Barbara, California where he continued to travel around the world. His travels took him to Bali and India, where he was joined on one trip by well-known composer Leopold Stokowski. …

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