Bernard Zweers

Bernard Zweers (born Bernardus Josephus Wilhelmus Zweers) (18 May 1854 – 9 December 1924) was a Dutch composer and music teacher. Life Bernard Zweers was born in 1854 as the son of an Amsterdam book- and music shopkeeper and piano tuner. Although his father was an amateur singer, he strongly disapproved of his son’s musical interests, expecting him to follow him in the family business. Being fundamentally self-taught, he had some minor musical successes before his parents finally approved and sent him to study with Salomon Jadassohn in Leipzig in 1881–1883. Of crucial importance to Zweers’ musical education was his first exposure to the work of Richard Wagner when he was present at the Berlin premiere of the Ring des Nibelungen, in 1881: I, who never ventured farther than Nijmegen and who had never heard even a normal opera before, I was in Berlin, listening to Wagner’s Ring! … and I returned a full-blooded Wagnerian. After his return, he became active in Dutch musical life and took on various appointments, including the conductorship of various choirs. However, due to deterioration of his hearing abilities and his own wish to concentrate on teaching, he relinquished most of thes