{"id":2479,"date":"2024-03-13T10:53:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-13T09:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mugi.lu\/composer\/erna-hennicot-schoepges\/"},"modified":"2025-04-14T11:53:25","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T09:53:25","slug":"erna-hennicot-schoepges","status":"publish","type":"composer","link":"https:\/\/mugi.lu\/en\/subject\/erna-hennicot-schoepges\/","title":{"rendered":"Erna Hennicot-Schoepges"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Erna Hennicot-Schoepges<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Erna Schoepges was born in Dudelange (Luxembourg) on 24 July 1941. She received her first piano lesson from Jean Eiffes, a local music teacher. The organist and music teacher Norbert Thill took her under his wing shortly afterwards and registered her for the piano exam at the Jury Sup\u00e9rieur de Belgique<\/em> in Brussels, which she passed in 1951 with “la plus grande distinction”. The Luxembourg press also reported on Erna’s participation in concerts in the 1950s organized by the Dudelange music school and the Girls\u2019 High School of Esch\/Alzette (see: Concerts). At the age of 14, she received special permission from her school to study every Monday at the Conservatoire Royal<\/em> in Brussels, where she was awarded the “Premier prix de solf\u00e8ge” in 1957.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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She continued to go to Brussels during her professional life and was awarded the “Premier prix de piano” in 1965 and the “Dipl\u00f4me sup\u00e9rieur de piano” in 1971. In Paris, she spent a week at the Luxembourg student residence to learn a new piano technique from Madga Tagliaferro (1893-1986) working not only with her fingers, but with her whole body; at the Mozarteum<\/em> in Salzburg, she took summer courses with Walter Klien. She received further important impulses from the Viennese music teacher Robert Schollum, who regularly came at her invitation for several years in November to offer a small group of musicians further training in lied accompaniment at the Hennicot family home in Walferdange.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Erna Schoepges gained her first professional experience at the National Library in Luxembourg and as a substitute teacher at the convent school in Dudelange. In 1963, she was hired as a radio presenter at Radio Luxembourg<\/em> under the name Colette Schoepges. Her program Wonschconcert<\/em> (Make-a-Wish Concert<\/em>) was particularly popular. She also hosted a weekly women’s show, a consultation hour with Dr. Duhr and the music show Bekannt – Bel\u00e9ift<\/em> (Well known \u2013 Well loved<\/em>) and worked as an announcer on other shows. Contrary to what was customary in Luxembourg at the time (and had already been announced in the press), her marriage in 1966 did not mean the end of her employment. She hosted the program Musique de chambre<\/em> (Chamber Music<\/em>) until 1979, providing a platform and recording opportunities for Luxembourg musicians. In addition, the Conservatoire<\/em> in the capital offered Erna Schoepges a full-time position as a professor of piano from 1966 to 1979 and employed her to accompany instrumental classes, such as the trumpet class of Gast Waltzing. Students who went on to pursue musical careers include conductors Adrian Adlam and Robert Reimer, composer Georges Lentz as well as professors Nancy Back-Kelsen, Monique Thiry and Carine Weinand at the Conservatoire de musique<\/em> in the capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Even though her dream of becoming a professional concert pianist did not come true, Erna Hennicot-Schoepges traveled extensively in the 1970s, giving concerts in Luxembourg, Paris, Brussels and on tour in Touraine (France). The three children (born in 1967, 1968 and 1970) she raised with Lucien Hennicot did not represent a career break, but rather – as she emphasized in a TV interview (see: Television) – an enrichment. Her concerts with sopranos Hilda Van Heel Van Mulders, Yvette Sunnen, Carmen Welter-Jander and contralto Marie-Jeanne Klein were particularly well received in the press. In 1979 Erna Hennicot-Schoepges performed works by Mendelssohn, C\u00e9sar Franck and Dvo\u0159\u00e1k with the RTL Symphony Orchestraunder the direction of Pierre Cao in Schifflange. She also recorded many pieces of music at the RTL studios in the Villa Louvigny, e.g. with the singers Eug\u00e8ne Bley, Venant Arend, Fernand Koenig, Danielle Koenig, B\u00e9by Kohl-Thommes and Marie-Jeanne Klein as well as the clarinettist Auber Stradaroli. Erna Hennicot-Schoepges used the studios until the 1990s: her repertoire (listed in the Luxemburger Musiklexikon<\/em>) is very broad and includes many pieces by Luxembourg composers – but only one woman: Lou Koster. Concert recordings with the RTL Orchestra and the RTB Chamber Orchestra, among others, were released in 2014 on the CD …J’ai souvent plus \u00e9cout\u00e9 mon coeur….<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As a Lied accompanist, Erna Hennicot-Schoepges emphasized the close collaboration between piano playing and singing. In a radio interview with Raymond Tholl in 1996, she explained that the piano plays the role of a paintbrush that creates the colors of a song. The collaboration with soloist Marie-Jeanne Klein culminated in a joint CD with songs by Peter Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Edvard Grieg, Enrique Granados and Fernando J. Obradors (R\u00e9cital<\/em>, 1995). The following year also saw the release of the CD Der Wanderer <\/em>with songs by Franz Schubert, sung by bass-baritone Ionel Pantea. Erna Hennicot-Schoepges had met the Romanian singer in 1980 when she stood in for his piano accompanist. This led to years of collaboration with concerts in Clerf, Bourglinster, Daun (Germany) and – after the fall of the dictatorship – also in Romania: in 1992 at the Conservatory<\/em> in T\u00e2rgu Mure\u015f and the salina of Praid; in 1993 at the Athenaeum <\/em>in Bucharest. Both with Ionel Pantea and Georges Mallach, the first cellist of the RTL Orchestra – with whom she performed chamber music after his retirement – the pianist performed at the Saarland Embassy in Berlin in the mid-1990s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alongside her musical career, her political career became increasingly important. In a newspaper interview in 1974, she declared that her aim was to ensure that no political decisions were made over the heads of women or even against them. In the 1975 municipal elections, she was elected to the Walferdange municipal council and appointed mayor in 1988. In her private life, she could count on the help of a housekeeper, her sister and her husband. The double and triple burden of women was also a political concern for her. One of her first initiatives was the founding of the Mammen h\u00ebllefe Mammen <\/em>association to support women, particularly with childcare, and to enable them to do paid work. Erna Hennicot-Schoepges also campaigned internationally for greater appreciation of women’s work and equal opportunities, for example at the Women\u2019s Congress of the European People\u2019s Party<\/em> in 1992.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In 1979, Erna Hennicot-Schoepges was elected to the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies and was also active in the Culture and Education Commission of the Council of Europe. In 1985, she signed the report Son et vie priv\u00e9e<\/em>, which emphasized the importance of music for individual development and drew attention to the dangers of media overstimulation. In 1989, Erna Hennicot-Schoepges became the first woman to chair the Luxembourg parliament. She was a government minister between 1995 and 2004, leading the ministries of Education, Culture, and Religious Affairs; then Culture, Higher Education and Research, and Public Works. The combination of the latter made possible a series of prestigious buildings that have had a lasting impact on cultural life in Luxembourg: the Philharmonie<\/em>, the Rockhal<\/em>, the Centre national de l’audiovisuel<\/em>, etc. The founding of the University of Luxembourg<\/em> is also largely due to her initiative. Despite her political career, which took up a lot of her time, Erna Hennicot Schoepges felt it was important to consciously make time for music. In Luxembourg, she worked with many musicians from the Conservatoire<\/em>. With Pierre Lentz, a bass singer, she organized annual concerts in the Walferdange cultural center. She played chamber music with the cellist Georges Mallach. In the 1990s, she recorded the above-mentioned CDs with Marie-Jeanne Klein and Ionel Pantea and also performed in concerts with them (see: Programs). Since 2013, Erna Hennicot-Schoepges has played together with Tomoko Wirrbach-Kiba (violin) and Dietrich Wirrbach (cello) in Le Trio<\/em>, e.g. at the Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain <\/em>in 2018. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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During her time as a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009 and beyond, Erna Hennicot-Schoepges wrote more than 200 political columns in the weekly magazine Le Jeudi <\/em>and published her observations online under the title Le Parlement Europ\u00e9en vu \u00e0 distance<\/em><\/a>. From 2005 to 2019, she also wrote more than 540 opinion pieces on her online blog “Wenn ich das Wort ergreifen d\u00fcrfte”<\/a> – perhaps a reference to the book entitled “Wenn nun wir Frauen das Wort auch das Wort ergreifen”. (Women in Luxembourg 1880-1950)<\/em>, a publication she supported as Minister of Culture in 1997. Her close connection to Romania – which can be traced back musically to her encounter with Ionel Pantea – is evident in Leseproben einer Seelenverwandtschaft<\/em><\/a>, three volumes published jointly with Beatrice Ungar, editor-in-chief of the Hermannst\u00e4dter Zeitung<\/em>, by Honterus Verlag (2011, 2016 and 2020).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Text (translated with the help of DeepL.com) and curation of the webpage: Sonja Kmec<\/em> (Upload 09.03.2024)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creation of the Erna Hennicot-Schoepges (EHS) digital archive: Cathy Collard, Sonja Kmec, Danielle Roster and Cristina Sobral<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to cite:<\/strong> Kmec, Sonja: Erna Hennicot-Schoepges, in: Music and Gender in Luxembourg, ed. by Sonja Kmec, Danielle Roster and Anne Schiltz. URL: https:\/\/mugi.lu\/en\/subject\/erna-hennicot-schoepges\/<\/a> (published online 1.3.2024, last accessed \u2026)<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t