Jean Louis Nicodé (1853-1919) was a German composer, conductor, pianist and teacher. He was born in Jersitz (now in Poland), the son of a violinist and music teacher of Huguenot extraction. Nicodé received private instruction from the organist Hartkaes. In 1869 he became a student at the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst (New Academy of Music). There he studied piano with the director, Theodor Kullak, theory and composition with Richard Wurst and Friedrich Kiel.
Thereafter he began his career with a performance in Berlin, and after a concert tour in 1878 with the soprano Désirée Artôt de Padilla through Galicia and Rumania he was offered the position of first teacher at the royal conservatory in Dresden. Under the direction of Franz Wüllner he worked there until 1885, when he went to Berlin to accept a position from Hermann Wolff as the artistic director of the Philharmonic Concerts. However, he soon returned to Dresden and took over the direction of the Philharmonic Concerts there. In 1888 he resigned in order to dedicate himself to composition.
After five years, in 1893, he returned to his position as conductor, but continued to compose, including his main work, the Sinfonie Gloria. Shortly before his death he was appointed professor of music (1918) and member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin (1919).
Nicodés harmony is "bold and audacious, his contrapuntal mastery impressive, his orchestration poetic, dramatic and of a specially beautiful and unique coloring." (Ferdinand Pohl, after a performance of the Symphonic Variations, op. 27 in the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1892.)
