Henk Badings
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Henk Badings (January 17, 1907 - June 26, 1987) was a Dutch composer.
Born in Bandung, Java, Badings worked as a mining engineer and Palaeontologist at Delft University until 1937, after which he dedicated his life entirely to music. Though largely self-taught, he did receive some advice from Willem Pijper, the doyen of Dutch composers at the time, but their musical views differed widely.
In 1930 Badings had his initial big musical success when his first cello concerto (he eventually wrote a second) was performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Champions of his work included such eminent conductors as Eduard van Beinum and Willem Mengelberg. He held numerous teaching positions; e.g., at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart and the University of Utrecht. Accused after the war of collaboration with the Nazi occupation forces, he was briefly banned from professional musical activity, but by 1947 he had been reinstated.
Badings used unusual musical scales and harmonies (e.g., the octatonic scale); he also used the harmonic series scale from the eighth to the fifteenth overtone. A prolific artist, he had produced over 1000 pieces at the time of his death, which occurred in Maarheeze.
