Heller Sheet Music and Biography
15 May 1815-14 Jan 1888
Stephen Heller was born in Pest, Hungary in 1815.
He demonstrated musical talent from a very early age and had been destined for a legal career but chose music.
We have just one piece of his for you to download on our site, Avalanche.
Life and Career
By the age of nine, his father sent him to Vienna to study with Czerny. However, this proved too expensive and Heller was instead taught by Anton Halm. Halm then introduced him to Franz Schubert and Ludvig van Beethoven in 1818.
In 1828 when Heller was still just fourteen he undertook an extended tour of Hungary, Poland, and Germany. This proved financially rewarding but impacted badly on his health and led to him experiencing a nervous breakdown.
On his return, a member of the Augsburg aristocracy employed him as her children’s musical tutor enabling Heller to recover and study composition. He became acquainted with Robert Schumann who encouraged and assisted him in obtaining a publisher and allocated him a pseudonym used for his critiques in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik.
Aged twenty-five Heller went to Paris where he earned a living composing, arranging, and writing a book (L’art de phraser). He rarely played in public and it wasn’t until 1862 that he performed a series of concerts in England with Hallé on two pianos.
Heller stayed in Paris for the remaining twenty-five years of his life. However, his eyesight began to deteriorate in 1883. His close friends Charles Hallé, Robert Browning, and Lord Leighton arranged an English charitable annuity for Heller to enjoy for the rest of his life.
Heller Sheet Music Downloads and Further Reading
On music-scores.com we have just one piece of Heller sheet music in PDF format for you to download.
For more information about this composer take a look at Wikipedia and Naxos.
