Posted by Klaus on January 10, 2004 at 20:50:26:
My nation-level morning paper told, that Herbert Møller died at the age of 71.
Herbert was the main figure in introducing the British brass band in Denmark. For a couple of decades after 1958 he lead the Concord band of Copenhagen.
His younger years were spent as an employee of our then major musical editor, Wilhelm Hansen.
Since then he was the headmaster of a very progressive music school in our north-western outback and brought yet another brass band to the level of the national championship.
Herbert was a generous and giving person. Anything but a sexist he did, what he could for the then rare female band members.
Herbert had an enormous network, which he pulled on to boost Danish amateur music. One of his friends, Geoffrey Brand (BBC, Black Dykes, etc.) also became a guru of mine.
As I played in one of the bands competing with Concord, I only have played very briefly under Herbert's baton at diverse camps and band-get-togethers. Actually my closest person-to-person encounter with him was during the summer of 1972, when I as a very young college teacher took part in a course, where Herbert represented his employer with a wide range of books and teaching materials. One of my eternal bibles, Die Geschichte der Musik in Beispielen, was bought at that occasion. I remember being shocked, when he told, that he was 40 years old back then. I thought of him as being much younger.
The last time Herbert and I were in the same room, was in November of 1993 when he adjudicated my then band to be national champions in the top concert band division (I played 4th horn).
Why do I commemorate Herbert in this forum? Because he started out as a tubist.
We have a tradition of quite small military brass bands. For some decades the bandmasters were allowed to recruit among the most qualified of the enlisted men to augment their bands' size.
Herbert was chosen as an auxiliary tubist in the regimental band of Holbæk, a town where I later lived and enjoyed numerous street concerts by that band.
One rule still applying for Danish military bands is, that in cold weather the music stops as soon as the first musician has a frozen valve.
Herbert once told about one of the regular tubists of that band, that he mastered a karate chop, which would "freeze" his rotary valves on demand. As soon as the temperatures approached suspicious, but not real, lows, that chop was applied to convince the bandmaster, that the band should take up more social activities in the nearest bar.
Herbert will be missed for his energy and his ability to inspire amateurs to perform on the highest possible levels.
I am not familiar with the English honour formulas, so I will use one of my own tongue:
Æret være hans minde! (Honour to the memory of him!)
Klaus