Martin Bernheimer ’58

Martin Bernheimer ’58, of New York City; Sept. 29, of a long battle with sarcoma. He was a former Los Angeles Times music critic and a Pulitzer Prize winner. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1940 and at the age of 14 submitted his first article to Opera News, which was accepted but later scrapped. At Brown, he studied music history and musicology. He also moonlighted as a supernumerary in opera productions with professional companies performing in Boston. As a graduate student back in Munich, he attended the renowned Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, where he studied musicology on a grant from the German state of Bavaria. Around this time, he published his first article in the New York Times, a short piece on Munich opera. Upon returning to the U.S., he enrolled at NYU and was a NYU part-time lecturer. In 1961 he became a temporary music critic at the New York Post and that same year was made a contributing editor for the Musical Courier. From 1962 to 1965, he served as assistant to the music editor of the Saturday Review and managing editor of the Philharmonic Hall Program. He joined the Los Angeles Times in 1965 and became the chief music critic. He stayed with the newspaper for 31 years and won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1982 and ASCAP’s Deems Taylor Award in 1974 and 1978. He was a member of several music-related education programs and became a faculty member of the Rockefeller program for the training of music critics at USC in 1966. In 1969 he joined the music faculty of UCLA and in 1982 became an honorary member of Pi Kappa Lambda. He was a regular lecturer and taught criticism at Cal State Northridge, San Diego State, and California Institute of the Arts. After leaving the paper, he served as a correspondent in New York for the London-based Financial Times covering opera, classical music, and dance. He also served on the board of Opera Magazine. He is survived by his wife, Linda; three daughters; a son; and his former wife, Cindy Bernheimer. (See “Music Appreciation” in the 2012 November/December BAM)