Trio (à Rosemène) by Werner Jaegerhuber

Trio (à Rosemène) by Werner Jaegerhuber from a Crossing Borders Music performance at the Milwaukee Art Museum's Haitian gallery in 2019. The original arrangement of this piece is for flute, viola, and cellos and was arranged by CBM for violin, viola, and cello.

Read more about Werner Jaegerhuber's fascinating life and history from Dr. Diana Golden below.

Werner Jaegerhuber was the son of Anna Maria Tippenhauer, a German-Haitian from an elite family, and Anton Jaegerhuber, an American citizen of German descent. Trained in composition, conducting, and organ, Jaegerhuber was sent for a musical education in Germany as soon as the U.S. Occupation began in 1915. Many German families fled Haiti to avoid being targeted as political and economic threats to the U.S., which feared German intervention in Haitian affairs. From 1915 to 1922 he studied at the former Voigt Conservatory in Hamburg, Germany. But despite his successful career as a musician in Germany, Jaegerhuber was caught in a dilemma. In Germany, Hitler’s National Socialists were gaining power and were persecuting persons of color. He returned to his native Haiti in 1937, and heeded the writer Jean Price-Mars’ call for developing a Haitian nationalist music taken from the Vodou ceremony.

He decided to dedicate himself to the study of Haitian folklore and ethnographic research. He travelled the country collecting folk melodies, especially those used in Vodou ceremonies, and then he founded and composed for a folkloric choir. Jaegerhuber was the first composer doing ethnographic work in Haiti who attempted to accurately transcribe folk melodies and rhythms. As part of the creation of a national music based on folklore, Jaegerhuber also envisioned incorporating Haitian folk music into pedagogy. In addition to helping other folklorists prepare their collections, Jaegerhuber was first to study the musical structure and lyrics to Vodou songs.


Jaegerhuber wrote over 60 compositions, including songs, chamber music, choral works, a symphony, and a mass. Just as Jaegerhuber faced pressure to leave Germany due to his racial background, many refugee musicians left Germany for Haiti, arriving in the late 1930s. The talent and number of string players newly available in Port-au-Prince inspired Jaegerhuber to form a chamber music society called the Pro-Arte chamber music society, and to write chamber music works for strings, piano, flute, soprano and organ. Many of Jaegerhuber’s chamber compositions were written between 1938 and 1952, a year before his death (illness compromised Jaegerhuber’s mobility in his later years). Choosing to write chamber music for strings allowed Jaegerhuber to freely weave folk song melodies into the music, since the controversial religious aspect of the music was removed with omission of the texts. Jaegerhuber’s chamber music writing spurred many other Haitian composers to explore instrumentation for small ensembles, especially for flute, viola, and cello, and for string quartet. Jaegerhuber’s style varied from Baroque to folkloric and Neoclassical. In his Trio for flute, viola, and cello, Jaegerhuber discreetly incorporates the melodies taken from several ceremonial songs – Dambala Oh, Solè Oh, and Erzili Oh – into the flute part of the first, second and fourth movements, respectively. This trio is characterized as one of his folkloric pieces.


Jaegerhuber’s work motivated several subsequent generations of Haitian musicians. Through his ethnographic studies of Haitian folklore, he inspired ethnographers and ethnomusicologists such as Laguerre, Fleurant, and Dauphin. In creating performance opportunities for Haitian musicians through the Pro Arte Society, Jaegerhuber stimulated the musical scene in Haiti. As one of the most prolific Haitian composers and a dedicated educator, Jaegerhuber inspired other composers to incorporate Vodou rhythms and melodies into their compositions, including Casséus, Laguerre, Durand, Woolley, Brouard, Dauphin, Coulanges, Racine and Mathon-Blanchet. Jaegerhuber’s chamber music compositions spurred a wave of Haitian chamber music in the 1950s, while his work with folkloric dance troupes and tourist shows gave Haitian classical music (and Haiti) international standing.

Jaegerhuber helped elite classes to reimagine the Vodou ceremony as folklore, changing a stigmatized musical tradition in Haiti into a national treasure. In notating various elements of musical style, Jaegerhuber expressed his vision for what comprised a Haitian musical identity. Arguably more than any other Haitian composer, Jaegerhuber helped to stage Haitian art music’s distinct national musical voice.

Performers at Caitlin Edwards, violin; Jay Pike, viola; and Tom Clowes, cello.