Henk Badings

Henk Badings was an Indo-Dutch composer, born in Bandung, Java, Dutch East Indies. Orphaned at 7, he moved to the Netherlands in 1915. A mining engineer and palaeontologist by training, he turned to music despite initial discouragement. His early music success came with his cello concerto in 1930. Badings, a largely self-taught composer, was a pupil of Willem Pijper but later severed this connection over creative differences. After WWII, he was briefly ostracized for alleged collaboration but was reinstated in 1947. He used unique musical scales and had composed over a thousand pieces by the time of his death in Maarheeze in 1987.