Helen Buchholtz

Born in 1877 in Esch/Alzette, Charlotte Helena, called Helen, was the fifth and last child of a middle-class family. With her father Daniel Buchholtz – owner of a hardware store and founder of the Buchholtz brewery –, her mother Thérèse and her siblings, young Helen lived in a house in the Avenue de la Gare (today 22 Boulevard John F. Kennedy). Little is known about the Buchholtz sisters’ childhood and youth, but it can be assumed that they received a solid basic education, which included piano, violin and solfeggio lessons. Since the Conservatory in Esch did not exist at that time, Helen very likely had private tuition.

After her time at the girls’ boarding school in Longwy, which Helen attended for some time in the early 1890s, she returned to her parental home. As her nephew François Ettinger later reported, Helen devoted almost her entire time to playing the piano and composing. An Ave Maria (1913) is her earliest datable work.

In 1914, at the age of 36 and thus quite late for the time, Helen Buchholtz married the German physician Bernhard Geiger and moved to Wiesbaden. Here the Städtisches Kurorchester Wiesbaden performed some of her works. With settings of the Luxembourgish poet Siggy vu Letzeburg, Buchholtz published her first songs in 1916 with the publisher Felix Krein in Esch. These were followed by three more songs published in Wiesbaden. After the sudden death of her husband in 1921, Buchholtz continued to live in Wiesbaden for a few years before purchasing a villa in Luxembourg City in the mid-1920s and moving back to her homeland. The childless widow was financially secure throughout her life and never had to work to gain a living.

In the 1920s and 1930s, especially the march Aus frohen Tagen and the I^stValse for harmony orchestra were quite popular and regularly performed by the Luxembourgish Military Band and the Municipal brass band of Esch. Furthermore, Buchholtz published settings of the poet Willy Goergen in 1924 and 1936, as well as three male choruses in 1927.

With Do’deg Dierfer by Albert Elsen, Buchholtz set to music one of the most impressive poems in Luxembourg’s post-war literature. The song was published in 1949 and received exceptionally wide coverage and positive reviews in the contemporary press; it represents the composer’s last musical testimony.

In total, Helen Buchholtz left behind an extensive œuvre of around 140 compositions, with a focus on songs for voice and piano in German and Luxembourgish, works for solo piano and orchestral works. However, only a fraction of her work was performed during her lifetime – primarily her songs in Luxembourgish and her works for brass orchestra, which was music that corresponded to the contemporary taste of the broad Luxembourg society. On the other hand, her piano works, including numerous sonatas and character pieces as well as the many settings of German poets (especially Anna Ritter) were kept under lock and key throughout her life. These were only recorded after the composer’s rediscovery in 1998 and are regularly performed in concert.