Hendrik Hofmeyr, multi-award-winning Southern African composer for Pringle Proms

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Prolific and multi-award-winning Southern African composer, Hendrik Hofmeyr for Pringle Proms in May.

Emeritus Professor, composer Hendrik Hofmeyr joins the Pringle Proms on Saturday, May 31 for an illustrated Compelling Conversation about his life in music.

Described in The Musical Times as “perhaps South Africa’s most prolific composer,” he was born in Cape Town in 1957. He achieved his first major success as a composer in 1988 with the performance at the State Theatre of The Fall of the House of Usher, which won the South African Opera Competition and the Nederburg Opera Prize. In the same year, Hofmeyr, who was furthering his studies in Italy during ten years of self-imposed political exile, obtained first prize in an international competition in Trent with music for a short film by Wim Wenders. In 1992 he was appointed lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch, and in 1997 won two further international competitions, the Queen Elisabeth Competition of Belgium (with Raptus for violin and orchestra) and the Dimitri Mitropoulos Competition in Athens (with Byzantium for high voice and orchestra). 

Until his retirement at the end of 2022, Hofmeyr was professor and Head of Composition and Music Theory at the University of Cape Town, where he obtained his Doctorate in 1999. His Incantesimo was chosen to represent South Africa at the Congress of the International Society of Contemporary Music in Croatia in 2005, and in 2008 he was honoured with a Kanna Award by the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival for his settings of poetry. He received the UCT Creative Arts Award for his Second Symphony – The Elements in 2018. Hofmeyr’s oeuvre comprises operas, ballets, symphonies, concerti and numerous vocal and instrumental works, and includes some 150 commissioned works. More than 100 recordings of his music have been issued on CD; in 2021, the CD Partita africana, comprising six of his works, was chosen as Discovery of the Month by the French magazine Classica, and in 2022, another CD featuring some of his vocal and piano works was selected as the Contemporary CD of the Week on Radio France. 

Pringle Proms’ Brian Berkman will serve a buffet lunch, with vegan options and inclusive of wine, before chatting to the composer about his life, including the three people who had the greatest influence on his musical development: his mom, who loved classical music and had a vast collection of recordings, Sarie Jacobs, life-long friend and muse, who taught him music at school and encouraged him to become a composer, and Laura Searle, a wonderful pianist, teacher and mentor, with whom he studied piano at UCT. His sojourn in Florence was a real culture shock, and included many weird and wonderful experiences, some of which he will share. He will also talk about what music means to him and what he tries to communicate through it. He will play a few recordings and explain, in layman's terms, how the music relates to the poetry.

Hendrik Hofmeyr will be the guest at Pringle Proms on Saturday, May 31 between 12 noon and 3.30pm at 1332 Edward Road, Pringle Bay in the Western Cape.

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