Ernst Hermann Meyer

Ernst Hermann Ludimar Meyer (8 December 1905 – 8 October 1988) was a German composer and musicologist, noted for his expertise on seventeenth-century English chamber music. Life Meyer was born in Berlin. He received his first piano lessons at the age of six and started composing at eleven. After finishing school, he worked as an apprentice at a bank, and in 1926 he started the advanced study of music at Heidelberg University, where in 1930 he completed his Ph.D. on the 17th-century chamber music of North German composers. He became a pupil of Hanns Eisler and under his influence, joined the Communist Party. Being a Jew and the composer of militant protest songs, he emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1933 to avoid detention by the Nazi Party. There he eventually became a close friend of leftist composer Alan Bush, who was also in contact with exiled composers Eisler and Kurt Weill. In the UK, Meyer researched English chamber music of the 17th century, lectured for the Workers Educational Association and conducted the Labour Choral Union. In 1939 he began lecturing at Bedford College, London; in 1945 he was given a guest professorship at King’s College, Cambridge. But unlike some of