Born in Potsdam, the son of Hans Chemin-Petit the Elder [de] and a concert singer[1] studied from 1920 to 1926 violoncello with Hugo Becker and composition with Paul Juon at the Musikhochschule Berlin.
On 7 October 1934, he was still able to perform excerpts from the incidental music to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in a concert of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
[7] Chemin-Petit was considered one of the most important choral conductors of his time and made a special contribution to the Berlin Philharmonic Choir, which he conducted from 1943 to 1981.
Thus, he conducted numerous premieres and first performances of the works of composers such as Paul Hindemith, Johann Nepomuk David, Boris Blacher, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, Günter Bialas and Harald Genzmer, as well as his own compositions.
He also wrote orchestral works, operas, chamber music and numerous smaller pieces for choir a cappella.
Chemin-Petit's style unites various influences from Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach to Anton Bruckner, Max Reger and Paul Hindemith and can be characterised overall as Neoclassicism rooted in the tradition of German late Romanticism, in which archaising and modern elements come together.