THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, April 18, 1995 TAG: 9504180279
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Norfolk potash magnate, educational benefactor and composer F. Ludwig Diehn died Sunday, leaving a substantial bequest to Old Dominion University's music department. He was 85.
Friedrich Ludwig Diehn was born in Singapore to German parents in 1910. His father was the CEO of a fertilizer business, and his mother was an accomplished pianist who eventually performed her son's music with the Dresden Philharmonic.
Diehn attended Rostock University in Mecklenberg, Germany, earning degrees in law and chemistry. He joined the family business, moving to San Francisco in 1937 to manage a branch office. A decade later, he became a U.S. citizen and settled in Norfolk.
Diehn eventually retired from business and devoted his time to composing. He produced symphonies, a violin concerto and other large orchestral works. His music was performed by the Virginia Symphony, German orchestras and chamber groups in the United States, Europe and Jamaica.
His style was an amalgam of late German Romanticism, with strong echoes of Bruckner, Brahms and Hindemith. Sternness was leavened with humor - the academic ``Variations for Orchestra,'' performed by the Virginia Symphony in 1990, includes a quotation of ``Ach, du lieber Augustin.''
``I write according to what the heart dictates,'' Diehn told The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star in 1983, before the premiere of his Symphony No. 3. ``I write what I want to write, not what the critics, the conductors or the public necessarily want.''
In 1993, Diehn made a multimillion-dollar gift to Old Dominion University - the university's largest to date - to endow a professorship in music, a concert series and visits by artists and scholars. The gift is also financing an addition to the Fine and Performing Arts building. The Ludwig Diehn Composers Room will house Diehn's scores and those solicited from other composers.
When the gift was announced, Old Dominion University did not specify the amount. President James V. Koch said it would ``catapult our music program to the forefront of those in Virginia.''
Diehn is survived by his wife, Maude Harding Diehn, whom he married in 1987. His previous wife, Virginia Peter Diehn, died in 1986.
A funeral service will be conducted Wednesday at 2 p.m. at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Norfolk. ILLUSTRATION: The orchestral works by F. Ludwig Diehn were played by groups in
the United States, Europe and Jamaica.
by CNB