Hélène Nolthenius (1920–2000)

Hélène Nolthenius (also known as Hélène Wagenaar-Nolthenius) was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She studied musicology at Utrecht University, continuing a family tradition. Both her grandfather Hugo Nolthenius and her father Hugo Balder Nolthenius, were classicists and musicians. In 1938, she traveled to Italy for the first time, taking an Italian course in Florence. Back in Holland, out of a strong anti-fascist and social justice commitment, she joined the Dutch Communist Party (CPN). In August 1939, she resigned from the Party over the Hitler-Stalin Pact. During World War II, the Nolthenius family hid Jews from the Nazis in their home in Bloemendaal, and Hélène was active in the Dutch Resistance. Her father was arrested and deported to the concentration camp at Dachau; he survived in part by playing the cello in the camp. In 1945, Hélène completed her master's degree. She started writing music reviews for the Roman Catholic daily newspaper De Maasbode. In 1946, she became head of the music department of the Catholic Radio Broadcasting (KRO). She married William Wagenaar, a broadcasting director at KRO, with whom she had three children. She obtained her doctorate in music in 1948 with musicologist Albert Smijers as her advisor, with a dissertation called The Oldest Melody in Italy: A Study of the Music of the Duecento. It was published in book form in 1951 as Duecento. She published her first short story collection Addio, Grimaldi! in 1953. In 1958, Nolthenius began teaching music history of antiquity and the Middle Ages at the University of Utrecht. In 1966, she was named a full professor. In 1974, she was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the 1970s and 1980s she published historical novels set in medieval Italy and crime fiction. She was most widely known for her often-reprinted history of Florence called Renaissance in May (1956) and Duecento (1951), as well as her study on Gregorian chant, Music Between Heaven and Earth (1981), and a biography of St. Francis of Assisi, A Man from the Valley of Spoleto (1988), which won the Henriëtte de Beaufort Prize in 1992. In 1999, Nolthenius received the biennial Anna Bijns Prize for her entire body of work.