Frank Martin (composer)

Frank Théodore Martin (15 September 1890 – 21 November 1974) was a Swiss composer who spent much of his life in the Netherlands. Childhood and youth Born into a Huguenot family in the Eaux-Vives quarter of Geneva, the youngest of the ten children of a Calvinist pastor named Charles Martin, Frank Martin started to improvise on the piano prior to his formal schooling. At the age of nine he had already written a few songs, without external musical instruction. At age 12, he attended a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion and was deeply affected by it. Respecting his parents’ wishes, he studied mathematics and physics for two years at Geneva University, but at the same time was also studying piano, composition and harmony with his first music teacher (1864–1953), a Geneva composer and by that time a leading figure of the city’s musical scene. In the 1920s, Martin worked closely with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze from whom he learned much about rhythm and musical theory. Between 1918 and 1926 Martin lived in Zürich, Rome and Paris. Compositions of this time show him searching for an authentic musical voice of his own. In 1926 he established the Chamber Music Society of Geneva, which for the