Hermann Emil Alfred Max Trapp (November 1, 1887 – May 31, 1971) was a German composer and teacher. A prestigious figure in the Berlin cultural scene during the 1930s, Trapp, amongst others in the Nazi influenced scene, was regularly invited to contribute to concert programs and competitions.

Trapp was born in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and attended the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (now the Berlin University of the Arts) where he studied under Paul Juon

Paul Juon

Paul Juon was a Germanised Russian composerHe was born in Moscow, where his father was an insurance official. His mother was German, and he went to a German school in Moscow. He entered the Moscow Conservatory in 1889, where he studied violin with Jan Hřímalý and composition with Anton Arensky...

 and Ernő Dohnányi

Erno Dohnányi

Ernő Dohnányi was a Hungarian conductor, composer, and pianist. He used the German form of his name Ernst von Dohnányi for most of his published compositions....

. After the completion of his studies, he did not have regular employment and worked as an itinerant pianist

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

. In 1920, however, he obtained a post as lecturer at the Berlin conservatoire, becoming a professor there in 1926. His best-known pupils include Josef Tal, Saburo Moroi and Günter Raphael

Günter Raphael

Günter Raphael was a German composer. Born in Berlin, Raphael is the grandson of composer Albert Becker. His first symphony was premiered by Wilhelm Furtwängler in 1926 in Leipzig. From 1926 to 1934 he taught in Leipzig, but illness and the rise of National Socialism - he was declared a half-Jew -...

.

Between 1926 and 1930, Trapp offered a master class in composition at the music conservatoire in Dortmund

Dortmund

Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....

. In June 1933, Trapp joined the National Socialist movement through an "Appeal to the Creative" (Appell an die Schaffenden). In 1934, he stepped down from the Berlin conservatoire and became the director of a masterclass in composition at the Berlin Academy of Arts (since merged with the University of the Arts). Here from 1936-9 he taught Sophie Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté

Sophie Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté

Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté was a Russian-born Canadian composer and virtuoso pianist and violinist.Born in Moscow as Sofia Fridman-Kochevskaya, Eckhardt-Gramatté studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, where her teachers included Alfred Brun and Guillaume Rémy for violin, S. Chenée for...

.
In 1940, Trapp received the national composition prize. From 1950 to 1953, he was a teacher at Berlin's Städtischen Konservatorium.

He died at the age of 83 in Berlin.

Heavily influenced by Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

 and Max Reger

Max Reger

Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...

, Trapp composed orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...

l, chamber

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 and piano works, including seven symphonies

Symphony

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...

, as well as choral and theatre music. While his music was fairly widely performed through the 1940s, it has rarely been performed since.

A 1935 performance, conducted by Willem Mengelberg

Willem Mengelberg

Joseph Willem Mengelberg was a Dutch conductor, famous for his performances of Mahler and Strauss with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.- Biography :...

 of his 1931 piano concerto

Piano concerto

A piano concerto is a concerto written for piano and orchestra.See also harpsichord concerto; some of these works are occasionally played on piano...

 has been released on CD. (Walter Gieseking

Walter Gieseking

Walter Wilhelm Gieseking was a French-born German pianist and composer.-Biography:Born in Lyon, France, the son of a German doctor and lepidopterist, Gieseking first started playing the piano at the age of four, but without formal instruction...

was the pianist.)