 About
Ludwig Diehn
Friedrich Ludwig Diehn was born of German parents on September 27, 1910,
in Singapore. His father was general manager of the potash firm Behn, Meyer, & Co., and his mother was a concert pianist of international reputation.
As a boy, Diehn lived in Dutch-governed Java where he was privately tutored.
In 1920, he went to Holland, and then to Germany, where he attended a Gymnasium
(high school and junior college) in Mecklenburg. As early as age 13, Ludwig
was composing marches and later, intrigued by Wagner, wrote an "opera fragment" based on a Nordic saga which is not extant. In Germany, Ludwig studied
music with private teachers such as Arthur Meissner, Otto Ruedinger, and
Arno Rentsch. At age 22, he heard his first symphony played by the Dresden
Philharmonic, in which his mother played the piano part. Later, Ludwig
attended the Universities of Frankfurt, Munich, and Rostock. From the latter
he received the degree of Doctor of Jurisprudence.
In 1937, Diehn left Germany because of the political climate and came
to America where he worked in the international potash industry. During
his early years in this country he worked in San Francisco, then moved
to Washington, D.C., and settled finally in Norfolk. He became an American
citizen in 1947. Diehn saw himself as a modern composer influenced by traditional
classicism. "I use modern trends but stick basically to the principals
of traditional classic technique," the composer has said. "I am not an
arch-conservative. I don't believe you must write only major and minor
chords. I use many 12-tone chords."
Although during the first years of his adult life Diehn's composing
was secondary to a career in the potash industry, the collapse of the industry
after World War II changed Ludwig's primary focus to the thing he loved
best— the composition of music. The music of F. Ludwig Diehn has been heard
around the world— Vienna, Munich, Jamaica, Washington, D.C., Jacksonville,
Florida, Middleton, Ohio, and of course Norfolk, Virginia. Friedrich Ludwig
Diehn died on April 16, 1995 at the age of 84.
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