He studied from 1926 to 1930 at the Hochschule für Musik Köln, where his most important teachers were Heinrich Lemacher and Walter Braunfels (composition), Hermann Abendroth (conducting), and Hans Bachem (organ).
[1] His main sphere of activity as composer, conductor and organist were supplemental to his work as a professor of choral conducting, counterpoint, and composition.
Upon graduation from the conservatory, he obtained a post teaching music theory at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne.
He remained in this post until the end of the war, adding the position of director of the Trier School of Music in 1940.
His works are characterized by the employment of medieval elements such as Gregorian chant, modal scales, and fauxbourdon which he combined with quintal and quartal harmonies and 20th-century polyphonic linear, sometimes atonal writing similar to that of Paul Hindemith.