Maria Herz, née Bing, was born in Cologne in 1878. By the 1920s, she had become recognised as a dynamic element of the contemporary music scene. New music’s ‘chief theoretician’, Theodor W. Adorno, became interested in her works and their style, which was rooted in late Romanticism and aimed at Modernism by way of Expressionism, New Objectivity and Neo-Baroque, all the while retaining its playful, charming air.

She was close to a veritable Who’s Who of contemporary musicians, including the Budapest String Quartet, Gregor Piatigorsky, Emanuel Feuermann, Hermann Abendroth, Otto Klemperer and Hans Rosbaud.

During her lifetime only five songs (1910) and a transcription of Bach’s Chaconne for string quartet (1927) were published, but the manuscripts of her 30 orchestral works, solo concertos, chamber music works and art songs have survived. The Nazis seized her family’s assets and forced Maria Herz to emigrate, first to England and then, after the war, to the United States, where she lived with her children. She died in New York in 1950.