Jean Berger (b. 1909, Hamm, Germany; d. 2002, Aurora, Colorado)

Jean Berger studied musicology at the Universities of Heidelberg and Vienna. From 1933 to 1939, he lived in Paris and toured Europe and the Near East as a pianist and accompanist. From 1939 to 1941, he was assistant conductor at the Municipal Theater in Rio de Janeiro and was on the faculty of the Brazilian Conservatory.

In 1941, Berger moved to the United States. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942. He worked in the Office of War Information, producing foreign-language broadcasts and USO Camp Shows. From 1946 to 1948, he arranged music for CBS and NBC and toured as a concert pianist. Berger was appointed to the faculty of Middlebury College in 1948. Thereafter, he taught at the University of Illinois, Urbana; the University of Colorado, Boulder; and the Colorado Women’s College. After 1970, he held several appointments as a visiting professor, presenting lectures and seminars on American music. Berger spoke seven languages, not including Latin, which he considered “any civilized person’s necessary equipment.”

Berger’s choral works include powerful social commentary as well as tender spirituality and simplicity. His Vision of Peace is an eloquent antiwar statement by a young Jew who barely escaped the Nazi horrors of the late 1930s. The Skelton Poems, written in 1957, were inspired by the poems of the Tudor English poet John Skelton (1460–1529) and include some of Skelton’s most scathing social commentary. By contrast, the Six Madrigals evoke contrasting images of innocence and simplicity, the texts consisting largely of pastoral Elizabethan love poetry. Berger believed his works for “staged chorus,” such as Yiptah and His Daughter, were his most important contribution to the choral literature.

Throughout his life, Berger was an avid concert- and theater-goer. The last public concert he attended, several weeks before his death, was a St. Martin’s Chamber Choir concert, at which his Skelton Poems was performed. In fact, he had coached St. Martin’s recording of that work the previous year. St. Martin’s Chamber Choir was honored to be the only choral group invited to sing at a memorial concert at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, held in Berger’s honor several months after his death.