Robert Edward Kreutz

Robert Edward Kreutz was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on March 21, 1922. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago and a master’s degree from the University of Colorado. His composition teachers included Arnold Schoenberg, Leo Sowerby, and Norman Lockwood, linking his church music with several important streams of twentieth-century American composition.

Kreutz’s career joined technical and musical work in an unusual way. He was employed for many years as a development engineer by the Gates Rubber Company while composing outside his working hours. He also directed the choir of St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Lakewood, Colorado, for more than twenty-five years. That long parish appointment kept his writing close to the practical needs of worshiping communities. His catalog eventually comprised about three hundred published choral and instrumental works, including psalm settings and other Roman Catholic liturgical music.

In Denver in 1976, Kreutz composed BICENTENNIAL specifically for Westendorf’s selected Eucharistic Congress text. The words and tune therefore belonged together from the hymn’s first public use, unlike many hymns whose familiar pairing was made much later. His setting was printed with the text for the 41st International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia and copyrighted by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 1977. Kreutz died of heart failure in Golden, Colorado, on April 7, 1996.