Person details

Anthony Philip Heinrich

Heinrich, Anthony Philip (1781-1861). Czech composer, emigrating to America in 1810 and commencing a career as a conductor and composer. He made several trips back to Europe to conduct and perform his music. His works, ranging from orchestral compositions to songs and piano works were highly idiosyncratic, deriving from his provincial and often socially detatched life. He particularly attracted the attention of the Prague press in 1857 when he visited the city and some of his music was championed by the director the local Conservatory and performed by that institution. The Prague German-language newspaper Tagesbote aus Böhmen 17/1/1857 reported: ‘Today we have made a very interesting acquaintance... whom we would like to recommend warmly to his local colleagues and music-enthusiasts. He is called Anton Philipp Heinrich and has come [back to his native country] from North America, so that some of his greatest musical works can be heard before his body is lowered into his native earth. The greater part of his music he wrote in the solitude of the great forests in Kentucky, when it was still sparsely populated, over the 40 years that he has lived in America. Mr Heinrich taught himself music and only during his adult years. We have heard nothing by him. We have seen only one or other programme of his works. These are by themselves evidence of great feeling and poetic depth. The unusual old man himself is a mixture of humorous aplomb and aspiring humility.’ Two weeks later Heinrich had evidently departed Prague, Tagesbote aus Böhmen 3/2/1857 reporting that he had left for Weimar in order to produce his Symphony there before Liszt. He returned shortly after, the Czech arts periodical Lumír 26/3/1857 related that ‘American composer Mr Heinrich, of a Czech family, many years residing in Kentucky, now visiting Prague.’ After noting that some local well-wishers were seeking to perform some of his largest works, the correspondent remarked that this is ‘The same Mr Heinrich who composed and performed in a America a great Symphony „To Jungmann“ to celebrate the memory „of this quiet genius“. The culmination of Heirich’s 1857 visits to Prague culminated in a ‘Monster Concert’ of his works in the Žofín Island Hall on 3/5/1857

Tagesbote aus Böhmen 3/9/1857 published a report dated ‘Schönlinde [Krásná Lípa], 29. August.’ that ‘Father Heinrich, the veteran composer from the jungles of North America [urwäldern –  lit. ‘virgin forests’], has arrived today in his home town of Krásná Lípa from Prague, after having paid his respects at the grave in neighbouring Niedergrund [Dolní Podluží] of his teacher Chladek, the stepfather of his daughter Antonia born 40 years ago and abandoned there, and who is currently living in New York.’ Further news of Heinrich appeared in Tagesbote aus Böhmen 27/9/1857, which reported: ‘The collections of the Bohemian National Museum have recently [in diesen Tagen] multiplied due to [the acquisition of] an interesting artefact. Specifically, the composer Father Heinrich has given to this Institute the manuscripts of his compositions [die Manuskripte seiner Kompositionen.]’ Exactly which compositions, or how many of his works, was unspecified.