Henry Schoenfeld

Henry Schoenfeld (4 October 1857 – 4 August 1936) was an American composer and music educator. He was born in Milwaukee into a German family.

He began studying music with his father, a cellist. At the age of 18 he went to Germany and entered the Leipzig Conservatory, where he studied composition with Carl Reinecke and Leo Grill, piano with Benjamin Papperitz, and ensemble with Henry Schradieck. He then continued composition studies for a year in Weimar with Eduard Lassen.

Returning to the United States in 1879, Schoenfeld settled in Chicago, taught at a local music school, and conducted various choral ensembles. In 1904 he became head of a women’s symphony orchestra in Los Angeles, and later taught for many years at the University of California; among his students was Roy Harris.

His works include the opera Atala, or The Love of Two Savages (after Chateaubriand’s novella), the ballet Wachicanta, the Rural Symphony (1892), and orchestral overtures In the Sunny South and The American Flag. He also wrote numerous piano pieces, choral music, and vocal works.

Schoenfeld composed orchestral music drawing on Native American, African American, and Romani musical folklore, and his attention to the musical and cultural heritage of Native Americans is often cited as his most notable achievement. His sonata for violin and piano won a prize in 1899 in a sonata competition announced by Henri Marteau.

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