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Dying days:

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Major works

Music for Orchestra

• First Symphony (1928)
• Second Symphony (1930, revised 1945)
• Third Symphony (1939)
• Catharsis, a symphonic ballet (1945)
• Concert (1950)
• Symphonia (1954)
• Divertimento facile (1957)
• Intrada reale e sinfonia festiva (1964)
• Suite (1966)

Selected other Compositions

• Sonate pour une poupée (1925)
• Deux poésies de Ronsard Cependant que ce beau mois dure, Ephitaphe (1931)
• Small Suite (1935)
• The Dike, choir music on a text by Van Engelman (1937)
• A tfile fun a ghettojid (Yiddish: Prayer of a ghetto Jew), text by Kwiattkowska (1948)
• Ik sla de trom... (Dutch: I Hit the Drum...), text by J. Greshoff (1948)
• Theater music for “Aias and Antigone” by Sofokles, translated by Van Lier (1952)
• Cantata for Christmis, text by J. Thomson (1955)
• 5 May: She, text by K de Josselin de Jong (1962)

Born 1906 in Utrecht, Bertus van Lier studied cello with Ferrée and Orobio de Castro and composition with Willem Pijper at the Amsterdam Academy of Music. He continued his studies with the German composer Hermann Scherchen in Strassbourg.

Van Lier taught at the Music Academies of Utrecht, Rotterdam and Amsterdam and reviewed concerts for the Dutch daily “Het Parool” (selected reviews were later published in a book). After completing his doctorate with the highest honors in 1964 at the Groningen University, he was appointed as lecturer at this university 1966. He died in 1972, at the age of 65, in Roden near Groningen.

(contribution by Gidon J. Berman <gjbermanusa.net>)

Hans van Lier <hvanlierxs4all.nl> comments: In Gidon Berman’s “Life” of my father, Bertus van Lier, I find the following text: “After completing his doctorate with the highest honors in 1964 at the Groningen University, he was appointed as lecturer at this university 1966.” This assertion is not correct. Simply: Bertus van Lier was awarded a honorary doctorate (Dr. h.c. or Doctor honoris causa) by the Groningen University in 1964.