Composer Emilie Mayer: Was She the Female Beethoven?

by Emily E. Hogstad  

Emilie Mayer, sometimes referred to as the “female Beethoven,” was one of the most prolific composers of her generation.

Emilie Mayer

Mayer’s symphonies, chamber music, and piano works stand as testaments to both her talent and her determination to succeed in a male-dominated world.

Today, we’re looking at her gripping biography and how she made a hugely successful career for herself in her middle age, after enduring unimaginably painful personal loss.

Emilie Mayer’s Family

Emilie Mayer was born Emilie Luise Friderica Mayer on 14 May 1812. She was the third of five children and the eldest daughter.

The Mayers lived in the German town of Friedland, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, roughly seventy kilometers from the Baltic Sea, where her father worked as an apothecary.

Tragedy struck the family a few years after Emilie’s birth, when her mother died. After her mother’s death, Emilie would have been expected to play the role of matriarch within the immediate family.

This may have been one reason why she never married…and one reason why she felt freer to become a composer.

Emilie Mayer’s Early Education

Emilie Mayer

It is believed that Emilie’s education was overseen by private tutors, as the local Latin school only accepted boys.

She began piano lessons at the age of five with a local organist named Carl Heinrich Ernst Driver.

She later wrote modestly, “After a few lessons… I composed variations, dances, little rondos, etc.” Driver was amused by his student’s precocity and helped notate these works for her.

Her father was thrilled by his daughter’s musical talent and supported her studies throughout her childhood.   

Unexpected Tragedy Changes Everything

The defining event of Emilie’s life occurred in 1840, on the twenty-sixth anniversary of her mother’s burial, when her father shot and killed himself.

She dealt with her shock and grief by throwing herself into composing. But tragically, she suffered another major blow a few months later, when her teacher, Driver, also died.

Emilie was fast approaching thirty, without the economic protection a nineteenth-century husband would provide. Suddenly, she had to figure out what to do with the rest of her life, and how to make a living – and fast.

She decided to devote herself to music. Fortunately, her brothers supported the decision.

Moving to Szczecin

After her father’s affairs were settled, she moved to the city of Stettin (now known as Szczecin, Poland) where her younger sister and brother-in-law had moved after their marriage.

Women were barred from formally studying composition at most institutions of higher learning. The only option for most women who were interested in composing was private study with a tutor.

Carl Loewe

So she began taking private lessons from composer and conductor Carl Loewe, whose nickname was the “Schubert of North Germany.”

He was astonished by her natural ability, claiming that “such a God-given talent as hers had not been bestowed upon any other person he knew.”

He also famously commented: “You actually know nothing and everything at the same time! I shall be the gardener who grows your talent from a bud to a beautiful flower.”

The wording may have been patronising, but his heart was in the right place, as evidenced by the support and encouragement he gave her over the following years.   

Studying with Loewe

During her apprenticeship with Loewe, she wrote her first two symphonies (No. 1 in C-minor and No. 2 in E-minor).

Emilie Mayer’s Symphony No. 1   

Because of his support and the support of the local music directors, Mayer had the opportunity to hear her orchestral works performed: an unusual opportunity for a woman composer of the era.

She incorporated what she learned into her next compositions for large ensembles.

She also began performing her chamber music at more and more private concerts and salons.

But there was only so much she could accomplish in Szczecin, and she became curious how far she could go if she relocated to a bigger city.

In 1847, on Loewe’s advice, she moved to Berlin – this time by herself, without any family.

Studying in Berlin

Adolf Bernard Marx

In Berlin, Emilie began studying fugue and double counterpoint with theorist and musicologist Adolf Bernard Marx.

Marx was a one-time friend of Felix Mendelssohn who had since feuded with him (and, in a fit of typically dramatic Romantic Era pique, destroyed their correspondence by throwing it into a river).

She also studied instrumentation with pioneering military bandmaster Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht.

Reviews of her scores soon began appearing in local music journals. At first, she submitted them under the name E. Mayer, where they were widely praised.

However, as soon as it became known that she was Emilie Mayer and not, say, Edward Mayer, reviewers’ attitudes grew more critical.  

Publishing Her Music

Around this time, she set her mind on publishing her works.

To publish music in 1847 Berlin was a provocative step for a woman to take. Many women composers opted to keep their works private. To many, a woman publishing was seen as unseemly and immodest…as well as an implicit criticism of male relatives’ abilities to provide economically.

To grant perspective to Emilie’s decision, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s family – also based in Berlin at the time – were notably cool on the idea of her publishing her works.

In 1846, the year before Mayer arrived in town, Hensel had gone against her family’s wishes and overseen the publication of a few of her hundreds of works.

In August 1846, Hensel wrote to a friend about pursuing publication:

I can truthfully say that I let it happen more than made it happen, and it is this in particular which cheers me… If [the publishers] want more from me, it should act as a stimulus to achieve. If the matter comes to an end, then I also won’t grieve, for I’m not ambitious.

Mayer, however, was ambitious. She was determined to “[make] it happen”…which it soon did.

Organising a Concert

Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, 1847

In the spring of 1850, Emilie began organising a concert consisting solely of her own works. The date was set for 21 April 1850.

The professional connections she’d been making paid off. Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, subsidised the costs of the performance and made free tickets available to the hand-picked audience.

The program ultimately included an overture, two symphonies, and her setting of Psalm 118 for chorus and orchestra, as well as chamber works including a string quartet and some works for solo piano.

Her teacher Wilhelm Wieprecht conducted.

Soon after, Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria, the Queen of Prussia, awarded her a gold medal of art.

The audience came away impressed. Famous critic Ludwig Rellstab wrote that her themes “flow smoothly through the securely defined realm of tonal colours, often with surprising elegance.”

A Blossoming Career

Over the following months, she would continue to organise concerts of her music. As a result, her output as a whole became increasingly acclaimed.

Her dramatic B-minor symphony, dating from 1851, with its bold Beethovenian gestures, became especially popular.

Emilie Mayer’s Symphony No. 4   

Loewe wrote of his student’s work, “The minor symphony by Miss Emilie Mayer is, in my deepest conviction, in any case an important and ingenious work of art with which the talented artist has enriched musical literature.”

Remarkably, Emilie would write a symphony annually during her time in Berlin, on top of her other compositions.

An International Career

Her productivity and self-promotion paid off. Soon her works were being performed in cities across Europe.

She traveled to Cologne, Munich, Leipzig, Halle, Brussels, Strasbourg, Dessau, and Lyon to oversee various performances.

She also became an honorary member of the Philharmonic Society in Munich, and, back home, started co-chairing the Berlin Opera Academy.

In 1856, she was invited by Archduchess Sophie, the mother of Emperor Franz Josef I, to perform her chamber music in Vienna, which she did. She was accompanied to Vienna by her brothers.

Lisztian Praise

Franz Liszt

Ever scrappy and resourceful, she kept up the momentum by writing to Franz Liszt, the most famous musical celebrity of his day, asking if he would be interested in transcribing her D-minor String Quintet for piano. (Savvily, she had dedicated the piece to him.)

Emilie Mayer: String Quintet in D major (a similar work)   

He turned her down because he didn’t want to transcribe a string quintet for piano, but he praised the work:

I received your excellent quintet in D minor, which you are so kind to dedicate to me, only when I returned to Weimar these days, and therefore I would like to apologise for the delay in my sincere thanks to you.

Reading this work has given me a lot of interest – and I hope to hear even more[…]

The impossibility of reproducing orchestral works and especially string quartets with their indispensable sound and color on the dry piano has been with me for a long time of all arrangements – Attempts averted.

So do not misinterpret it, dear composer, when I [decline] your kindly wish, to transfer your quintets for the piano forte…

Returning to Szczecin and Her Roots

In 1861, at the age of forty-nine, she moved back to Szczecin.

We don’t know exactly why, but it may have been to be closer to her family, or possibly due to health reasons. In any case, she moved in with her brother and his family.

She still composed, but, having written eight symphonies, turned her attention to mastering chamber music.

Historians are still assembling her output, but it appears that she wrote at least…

• Seven violin sonatas
• Eleven cello sonatas
• Eight piano trios
• Two piano quartets
• Seven string quartets
• Two string quintets
• Eight symphonies
• Seven overtures
• One piano concerto
• One unfinished Singspiel opera, Die Fischerin

Some scores were lost in World War II when libraries were bombed.

However, the scores to many of these works (some of them still handwritten) are available on IMSLP for free here.

Return to Berlin and Later Life

In 1876, Mayer moved back to Berlin. As her comeback piece, she wrote and presented her Faust overture, inspired by Goethe.

The work was a major success and marked two decades of triumph in the music industry.   

Emilie Mayer died in Berlin on 10 April 1883 from pneumonia, a few weeks before her seventy-first birthday. She was buried at the Holy Trinity Church near Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and her brother Felix.

She died unmarried. Without a husband or children to carry on her legacy, many of her works fell into obscurity, despite their high quality and popularity.

Emilie Mayer’s grave

With the increased interest in women composers nowadays, more and more modern people are discovering her works. A series of wonderful recordings have been produced over the past few years. Hopefully, we will see her music on programs more and more in the seasons to come.

For further reading on Mayer, here is a link to “The Lieder of Emilie Mayer”, a research paper by Stephanie Sadownik.

15 Pieces of Classical Music About Mountains

 By Emily E. Hogstad

Mountains have intimidated and inspired humanity for centuries…and that goes for composers, too!

Some fabulous classical music has been written over the centuries about mountains, travels up and across mountains, the unique natural phenomena found in mountains, and more.

Get ready: we’re about to climb the mountain of classical music about mountains!

Slovakia’s Tatra Mountains

Johannes Eccard: Übers Gebirg Maria geht (ca. 1600) 

German composer Johannes Eccard lived from 1553 to 1611. He became a famous composer during the early days of Protestantism.

“Übers Gebirg Maria geht” translates into “Over the mountains Mary goes.”

This motet tells the story of how Mary, the mother of Jesus, traveled over mountains to find her cousin Elizabeth, whom she wanted to tell about her divinely ordained pregnancy.

The motet is written for five vocal parts (first soprano, second soprano, alto, tenor, and bass).

Franz Schubert: Der Alpenjäger (1817)   

The word “Der Alpenjäger” means “The Alpine Hunter” in English.

In this song, Schubert sets a poem by his dear friend Johann Mayrhofer describing the hunter’s hike.

He climbs up into the mist on steep paths, thinking of his beloved, who is still at home. When he mounts the summit, the beams of sunlight remind him of her.

Hector Berlioz: Harold en Italie, Movement 1 “Harold aux montagnes” (1834)  

Harold en Italie is an unusual piece. In many ways, it resembles a symphony, but with a twist: there’s a very prominent solo viola part.

Said viola represents the piece’s protagonist, whose name is Harold.

Titles of the work’s four movements suggest a story starring Harold:

1. Harold in the mountains
2. March of the pilgrims
3. Serenade of an Abruzzo mountaineer
4. Orgy of bandits

The mysterious opening movement opens in a melancholy fashion, but soon Harold’s genial good nature is revealed as the music shifts from a soulful adagio to a bouncy, lively allegro.

Franz Liszt: Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne (1848)   

“Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne” translates into “What one hears on the mountain.” It’s based on a famous Victor Hugo poem from 1831.

This piece is not quite an overture and not quite a symphony (although it is sometimes referred to as the Bergsymphonie, or Mountain Symphony). It’s probably most accurate to call it a symphonic tone poem.

Liszt himself described the story behind the work:

The poet hears two voices; one immense, splendid, and full of order, raising to the Lord its joyous hymn of praise – the other hollow, full of pain, swollen by weeping, blasphemies, and curses. One spoke of nature, the other of humanity! Both voices struggle near to each other, cross over, and melt into one another, till finally they die away in a state of holiness.

Modest Mussorgsky: Night on Bald Mountain (1867)   

Like Liszt, composer Modest Mussorgsky also jumped on the tone poem bandwagon in the mid-nineteenth century.

He originally meant to write an opera that included scenes from a witches’ Sabbath set on the Lysa Hora, also known as Bald Mountain, outside of Kyiv.

Lysa Hora (Bald Mountain), Kyiv © travels.in.ua

Mussorgsky described the scene in his head:

The witches used to gather on this mountain, … gossip, play tricks and await their chief—Satan. On his arrival, they, i.e. the witches, formed a circle round the throne on which he sat, in the form of a kid, and sang his praise. When Satan was worked up into a sufficient passion by the witches’ praises, he gave the command for the sabbath, in which he chose for himself the witches who caught his fancy.

The project went through a variety of guises until it became the classic that we associate today with Halloween and Disney’s Fantasia.

Edvard Grieg: In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 (1875 ) 

In 1867, famous Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote a play called Peer Gynt. It wasn’t staged until 1875.

At that first staging, fellow Norwegian Edvard Grieg provided music to go alongside it.

In the Hall of the Mountain King, the protagonist Peer Gynt enters into a dream where he is brought into the headquarters of the troll king.

The description sets the scene: “There is a great crowd of troll courtiers, gnomes and goblins. Dovregubben sits on his throne, with crown and sceptre, surrounded by his children and relatives. Peer Gynt stands before him. There is a tremendous uproar in the hall.”

Grieg intended this excerpt to be satirical: “For The Hall of the Mountain King, I have written something that so reeks of cowpats, ultra-Norwegianism, and ‘to-thyself-be-enough-ness’ that I cannot bear to hear it, though I hope that the irony will make itself felt.”

Joachim Raff: Symphony No. 7, “In the Alps” (1875)   

German-Swiss composer Joachim Raff was a prominent composer in Germany during the Romantic Era.

His music is rarely heard today, but it’s still worth listening to, given that he was an important colleague of many composers we know today, like Brahms and Bruckner.

Raff enjoyed attaching descriptive subtitles to his symphonies. His seventh portrays the grandeur of the Alps.

Alps from Garmisch

Raff had a friend and colleague named Hans von Bülow, who had a student named Richard Strauss. Turns out, Strauss also wrote a massive orchestral work inspired by the Alps. Many listeners have pointed out the similarities between these two works. A generation separates the two pieces, and it’s fascinating to hear what elements the works share – and what they don’t!

Vincent d’Indy: Symphony on French Mountain Air (1886)   

French composer Vincent d’Indy wrote his Symphony on French Mountain Air in 1886. It’s unique for a symphony in that it contains an important piano part, creating an unusual aural texture.

D’Indy heard the work’s main theme as a folk song while in the mountains of southern France. He then adapted it for orchestra and piano, expanding on it.

Charles Ives: From the Steeples and the Mountains (1901-02)   

American composer Charles Ives became famous for his artistic independence and iconoclasm. He was a successful insurance salesman, writing music on the side, and could afford to follow the beat of his own drum, so to speak.

Supposedly, when he was a child, he was taking a hike and heard four different churches’ bells ringing at the same time, all sounding different notes. The experience made a big impression.

Something like that effect is replicated here, with its orchestration for four sets of bells and brass.

He wrote on the score, “From the Steeples—the Bells—then the Rocks on the Mountains begin to shout!”

Arnold Bax: A Mountain Mood (1915)   

In 1914, 31-year-old married father Arnold Bax fell in love with a lovely, charming, jaw-droppingly talented piano student named Harriet Cohen, who turned nineteen in December. As you can imagine, their relationship faced its share of difficulties.

Bax nicknamed her Tania, because they and all of their friends gave each other nicknames inspired by trendy Russian ballet.

Their desperate romance continued on and off for nearly forty years. He wrote A Mountain Mood for her and dedicated it to “Tania who plays it perfectly.”

Richard Strauss: An Alpine Symphony (1915)   

The scale of Strauss’s Alpine Symphony is staggering. It calls for 125 musicians, lasts nearly an hour, and charts eleven hours in a mountain climber’s day.

Over the course of this day, Strauss portrays all kinds of mountaintop scenes: sunrise, the ascent, a waterfall, a pasture, an overgrown wrong path, a glacier, mists, a massive thunderstorm and tempest, and finally, a descent.

Strauss loved the mountains so much that he built a villa in the Alps, and that passion for them shows through in this piece.

Pavel Haas: String Quartet No. 2 “From the Monkey Mountains” (1925)   

Czech composer Pavel Haas was born in 1899. He studied with influential composer Leoš Janáček in the early 1920s.

He had a relatively small output, and, due to his perfectionistic nature, refused to give all of his works opus numbers. “From the Monkey Mountains”, however, was among the lucky ones and was bestowed with the number opus 7.

In it, Haas combines Janáček’s sometimes jagged compositional language with elements of jazz.

If you’re surprised by how good this quartet is and wondering why you’ve never heard of its composer before, it’s because Pavel Haas was killed by the Nazis in Auschwitz. Read more from “5 Composers Who Died in the Holocaust Who You Need to Know”.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Lake in the Mountains (1947)   

In 1941, actors Leslie Howard and Laurence Olivier appeared in a British wartime propaganda film called 49th Parallel. The movie follows a crew of German U-boat operators who escape to Canada and meet a variety of fates.

Its soundtrack was written by Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the music from that soundtrack is the quiet piano piece The Lake in the Mountains.

Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 2, “Mysterious Mountain” (1955)   

In 1955 Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness was commissioned to write an orchestral work by Leopold Stokowski and the Houston Symphony, with the premiere appearing on television on NBC. Eventually, it was bestowed the title “Symphony No. 2.”

Interestingly, Hovhannes ended up not being a very big fan of the work. He later said:

I remember hearing celestial ballet in my head as I lay down to rest from writing the work. Later, I transcribed what I heard in my sleep. After I wrote it, then heard it again in my sleep, certain versions were wrong. So I corrected it. Now I cannot bear to hear it […] it’s just certain parts move me. I go out of the hall whenever the piece is performed.

Jennifer Higdon: Cold Mountain (2015)   

In 1997, author Charles Frazier wrote a novel called Cold Mountain. It tells the story of a soldier in the Confederate Army who deserts during the American Civil War, and his journey to North Carolina to return to his beloved…and the tragic fallout that follows him.

The novel was turned into an Oscar-winning film in 2003.

Cold Mountain movie poster

In 2015, composer Jennifer Higdon wrote an opera based on the book. Higdon was a fitting choice, as she’d spent years in Tennessee as a child. She even helped the librettist “southernize” the libretto, so it would be more faithful to speech patterns found in the Appalachian mountains.

Conclusion

Mountains have not only shaped humans’ physical landscapes. They’ve also clearly shaped cultural and musical landscapes, too.

We hope you’ve enjoyed these fifteen pieces of classical music about mountains! Let us know which one is your favourite.

10 Greatest Piano Concerto Openings of All Time

by Emily E. Hogstad    

 

There’s something thrilling about the opening of a great piano concerto. The big instrument gets rolled onstage; the soloist and conductor stride out to applause; the pianist sits and raises their arms and nods to the conductor to begin.

Today, we’re looking at piano concerto openings that have a claim to be among the best: excerpts that are particularly striking, surprising, or spellbinding.

Of course, when it comes to ranking classical music, there is no such thing as an objective list. Today, we’ve made some subjective calls and made a countdown list in reverse order.

Keep scrolling to find out which piano concertos we think have the best openings, and which concerto nabbed the number one spot.

10. Robert Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor  

The first movement of Robert Schumann’s piano concerto began life as a Phantasie in A minor, which he wrote over the course of four days in May 1841.

He had just married Clara Wieck, one of the great pianists of her generation, and the work was clearly inspired by her.

Robert and Clara Schumann

Clara was so taken by the Phantasie that she urged him to write two more movements to make it an official piano concerto. He did so in 1845, and she premiered the whole concerto in December 1845.

The concerto begins with a bold, unsettled statement by the soloist, followed by a sympathetic response by the orchestra.

The soloist answers the orchestra in a dreamy way, but she soon begins to brood. And with that, listeners are off to the races.

9. Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor  

This concerto dates from 1868, the height of the Romantic Era, so you might expect it to begin with a lush, Romantic flourish.

Instead, Saint-Saëns begins with a jaw-dropping solo cadenza that is clearly a tribute to Baroque Era master Johann Sebastian Bach.

This unexpected homage makes for one of the most arresting openings in the entire piano repertoire.

After the soloist pounds out the gutsy tribute to Bach, the orchestra steps in with a dramatic, almost operatic response. The piano replies, beginning a dialogue between the two forces.

The work does eventually ease into a more Romantic language, but it does so while retaining a kind of aloof Baroque aesthetic…making for a fascinating tension.

8. Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue  

We’re cheating a little bit by including this one, since, technically speaking, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue isn’t a concerto. However, its opening is so iconic that it had to go on this list.

Why? That opening clarinet glissando. (In fact, that entire opening clarinet solo is unforgettable.)

Amazingly, this iconic moment in music history came about by accident.

Portrait of George Gershwin

Charles Schwartz writes in his 1979 biography:

As a joke on Gershwin…[Ross] Gorman [the clarinettist at the premiere] played the opening measure with a noticeable glissando, “stretching” the notes out and adding what he considered a jazzy, humorous touch to the passage. Reacting favorably to Gorman’s whimsy, Gershwin asked him to perform the opening measure that way…and to add as much of a “wail” as possible.

This delightful accident set the stage for a work that melded the long-standing traditions of European art music with the fresh energy of American jazz.

7. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20 in D-minor  

Mozart wrote 27 piano concertos. Only two were written in a minor key. This was the first.

This music here sounds theatrical: like the overture to an opera set on a windswept island.

As per Classical Era convention, the soloist doesn’t enter until over two minutes in. The solo part calls for a pianist to meld restraint with storminess.

6. Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major   

Franz Liszt began writing his first piano concerto in 1830, when he was 19. According to scholars, its main themes date from this time. However, he didn’t finish and premiere it until 1855.

The opening features a bold, sassy statement in the orchestra, followed by a mind-boggling display of virtuosity by a snarling solo pianist.

Legend has it that Liszt assigned sarcastic lyrics to this opening theme: Das versteht ihr alle nicht, haha! (“None of you understand this, haha!”).

Franz Liszt

This opening theme recurs throughout the work. It’s no wonder that Béla Bartók called the concerto “the first perfect realisation of cyclic sonata form.”

5. Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-minor  

The opening to Brahms’s first piano concerto has a shocking gravity to it, especially for a composer in his early twenties.

But despite his youth, Johannes Brahms had already been through a lot. One of his mentors, Robert Schumann, had recently attempted suicide by jumping into the Rhine. After he was rescued, Schumann agreed to move into an institution for his and his family’s safety.

Many people believe that the falling sensation depicted in the opening to this concerto is a reference to Schumann’s plunge into the water and the depths of incurable mental illness.

As if all that weren’t enough, Brahms was also falling in love with Robert’s wife, Clara, who was pregnant with her eighth child, and fourteen years Brahms’s senior. The two would never marry, but would be close soulmates and creative partners for decades to come.

The tragedy and trauma of witnessing Robert’s illness, Clara’s devastation, and his own doomed love are immediately obvious in this concerto’s opening moments.

4. Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G-major   

On its own, this unassuming opening might not seem particularly striking.

But here’s some important context: at the time of this concerto’s composition in 1805-1806, it was not standard for a soloist to begin a concerto.

Beethoven‘s crafting of an opening to a concerto where the orchestra didn’t state the theme first was revolutionary.

Breaking this rule encouraged later composers to create several of the other great concerto openings on this list.

3. Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor   

This concerto begins with a short but monumental French horn call.

Next, the soloist accompanies a lush, wistful string theme with massive chords. The instrument practically plays a percussive role here.

Finally, the soloist takes the spotlight in a commanding solo cadenza, creating an intimidating aura of grandeur.

2. Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C-minor   

Countless classical music lovers have been drawn into the art by the dark, hypnotic opening of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto.

The opening chords in the solo part peal out like bells and lead to an equally dark, lush theme in the strings.

In under sixty seconds, Rachmaninoff creates a swirling world of passion and heartbreak.

Even today, this opening remains one of the most cinematic moments in the entire piano repertoire. (And, in fact, this concerto has been used in a number of classic films over the decades.)

But in the end, there can only be one greatest piano concerto opening of all time, and today, on this very subjective list, the prize is going to:

1. Grieg: Piano Concerto in A-minor  

Everything about this opening is unforgettable:

• The menacing, thunderous timpani roll.
• The heroic cascade of chords from the soloist, equal parts tragic and terrifying.
• The orchestra coming in with an unforgettable, folk-inspired melody.

It’s the perfect opening to a piano concerto.

Interestingly, Grieg was inspired by the first concerto on this list: Robert Schumann’s. Notably, it’s in the same key and features similar gestures in the opening…bringing this list full-circle!

Edvard Grieg, 1891

What’s your favourite piano concerto opening?

The Eight Greatest Teachers in Classical Music History?

by Emily E. Hogstad  

Have you ever wondered who the best teachers in classical music history were?

Us, too. But of course, there’s no way to objectively measure who “the best” teachers are. (Surely the best teachers in your life are the incredible men and women who have taught you over the years.)

Nevertheless, we wanted to try to put together some kind of list addressing the question, so today we’re looking at eight candidates.

If a teacher worked with over half a dozen famous names, they became a candidate for this list. From there, we looked at who had the most impact on the art. After that, we made some subjective choices.

It goes without saying, it was a hard job to narrow a list down to the top eight, but here’s our best shot at it, presented in rough reverse order of influence and importance.

Let us know if you think we got our ranking wrong (or right!).

8) Maria Curcio

Pupils: Martha Argerich, Myung-whun Chung, Simone Dinnerstein, Leon Fleisher, Radu Lupu, Mitsuko Uchida

Maria Curcio – piano teacher, her life and musical philosophy (part 1) 

Maria Curcio was born in the summer of 1918. Her father was Italian, and her Jewish-Brazilian mother was a talented pianist.

She began playing piano when she was three years old and was consequently barred by her parents from having a normal childhood. She enrolled in the Naples Conservatory when she was nine years old and graduated at fourteen.

An important moment in her artistic development came in 1933, when she auditioned for the studio of influential pianist Artur Schnabel. Initially, he didn’t want to accept such a young pupil, but when he heard her, he was flabbergasted and claimed she was “one of the greatest talents I have ever met.”

Maria Curcio

In 1939, barely twenty years old, she followed Schnabel’s Jewish secretary Peter Diamand on tour to Amsterdam. While they were there, World War II broke out, and soon the city fell under Nazi control.

The couple went into hiding. Between the stress, poor nutrition, and a tuberculosis infection, Curcio ended the war very sick. The chronic health issues that developed afterwards derailed her performing career for over a decade.

Effectively barred from a performing career, she began teaching more and more. Her studio witnessed a number of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century, and her legacy lives on through them today.

7) Franz Liszt

Pupils: Eugen d’Albert, Hans von Bülow, Amy Fay, Agathe Backer Grøndahl, Sophie Menter, Carl Reinecke, Pauline Viardot, and countless others. 

Today, Franz Liszt is remembered primarily as a composer and virtuoso who revolutionised piano technique. But he was also a hugely important mentor for countless nineteenth-century musicians.

According to student Amy Fay, who wrote a book about her European training, Liszt hated being thought of as an official teacher. His teaching arrangements tended to be loose and informal.

But he was incredibly generous with his time and attention, and even those musicians he never taught “officially” soaked in his artistry and technique via listening and conversation. They, in turn, shared what they had learned with their students. His legacy continues today.

In the words of Fay:

Under the inspiration of Liszt’s playing, everybody worked “tooth and nail” to achieve the impossible. A smile of approbation from him was all we cared for. This is how it is that he turned out such a grand school of piano-playing.

He was not afraid, and his pupils are like him. They are not afraid, either, and it is they who have revealed Liszt’s beautiful compositions and brilliant concert style to the world.

It is the direct inheritance of his teaching and ex­ample, and even his least eminent pupils have caught something of Liszt’s largeness of horizon.

6) Johann Georg Albrechtsberger

Pupils: Ludwig van Beethoven, John Field, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Ignaz Moscheles, Anton Reicha

Johann Georg Albrechtsberger taught some of the most influential teachers of the nineteenth century, but he is little-known today.

He was born just outside of Vienna in 1736. Initially, he pursued a career in church music. Later, his facility with compositional technique made him a popular teacher in Vienna.

In 1790, he wrote a treatise on compositional theory. After his death, his writings on harmony were published posthumously. These works remained in print for many years.

He died in 1809, never witnessing the full flowering of his best students’ potential.

Johann Georg Albrechtsberger

Without knowing it, Albrechtsberger laid the groundwork for the Romantic era: the revolutionary compositions of Beethoven; the emotional and virtuosic piano playing of Field, Kalkbrenner, and Moscheles; and the pedagogical influence of Anton Reicha, whose time working at the Paris Conservatoire in the 1830s made a huge impact on French music.

5) Carl Reinecke

Pupils: Isaac Albéniz, Max Bruch, Ferruccio Busoni, Edvard Grieg, Leoš Janáček, Amanda Röntgen-Maier, Ethel Smyth, Charles Villiers Stanford  

Romantic era music also owes a huge debt to the pupils of Carl Reinecke.

Reinecke was born in the city of Altona, Hamburg, in present-day Germany in 1824. Working under his musician father, he began composing at the age of seven. He gave his first public performance on the piano when he was twelve.

As a young man, he moved to Leipzig, Germany, where he studied under Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, and Franz Liszt.

Carl Reinecke

In 1860, when he was in his mid-thirties, he was named to the music directorship of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He also took a position teaching piano and composition at the Leipzig Conservatory.

Over his decades of working as a teacher, a truly amazing array of pupils came through his studio, including many who composed in diverse styles influenced by the rising tide of nationalism in music.

Albéniz wrote famously Spanish music; Grieg, of course, took great inspiration from the folk music of Norway; Janáček became one of the most famous Czech composers ever; and Ethel Smyth and Charles Villiers Stanford helped to set the stage for a turn-of-the-century renaissance in British music.

4) Antonio Salieri

Pupils: Ludwig van Beethoven, Carl Czerny, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Franz Liszt, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Ignaz Moscheles, Maria Theresia von Paradis, Franz Schubert  

Thanks to the movie Amadeus, Antonio Salieri is unfairly remembered as “the jealous composer who murdered Mozart.” (There is no evidence that he ever did such a thing.)

He was born in 1750 near Verona in present-day Italy. He began studying the violin with a musically talented brother, and moved to Vienna when he was sixteen.

Antonio Salieri painted by Joseph Willibrord Mähler

He eventually worked his way up to become the preeminent composer of Italian opera in Vienna during the late eighteenth century. (Mozart, being a native-born Austrian, was jealous of Salieri’s success.)

In addition to being a well-respected opera composer, he was also a sought-after teacher. Over the course of his career, he ended up tutoring some of the biggest names in nineteenth-century music, including Beethoven, Liszt, Meyerbeer, and Schubert. During these lessons, he usually focused on addressing vocal writing.

Sadly, Salieri’s mental and physical health declined in his later years. He attempted suicide in 1823 and suffered from dementia until his death in 1825. The monument at his grave is decorated with a poem written by one of his pupils, Joseph Weigl.

3) Dorothy DeLay

Pupils: Sarah Chang, Nigel Kennedy, Anne Akiko Meyers, Midori Goto, Shlomo Mintz, Itzhak Perlman, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Gil Shaham, Jaap van Zweden   

The last fifty years of violin playing would be unrecognisable without the pupils of Dorothy DeLay.

DeLay was born in small-town Kansas in 1917 to a musical family. She began playing the violin when she was four.

She studied at Oberlin Conservatory, Michigan State University, and Juilliard. In 1946, she began working at Juilliard as violin teacher Ivan Galamian’s assistant.

From there, she became an increasingly influential presence. She was deeply beloved for her curiosity, collaborative spirit, and willingness to let her students all develop their own unique creative voices.

Itzhak Perlman, arguably her most famous student, once described her teaching style:

I would come and play for her, and if something was not quite right, it wasn’t like she was going to kill me.

She would ask questions about what you thought of particular phrases—where the top of the phrase was, and so on. We would have a very friendly, interesting discussion about ‘Why do you think it should sound like this?’ and ‘What do you think of that?’

I was not quite used to this way of approaching things.

She died in 2002 at the age of eighty-four. She had led one of the most remarkable teaching careers in the entirety of classical music history.

Dorothy DeLay and Midori Goto

2) Mathilde Marchesi

Pupils: Suzanne Adams, Frances Alda, Emma Calvé, Ada Crossley, Emma Eames, Marie Fillunger, Mary Garden, Gabrielle Krauss, Blanche Marchesi, Nellie Melba, Emma Nevada, Sibyl Sanderson

Mathilde Marchesi was born Mathilde Graumann to a musically talented family in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1821.

Her pianist aunt Dorothea von Ertmann was one of Beethoven’s most beloved pupils and creative partners. After his death, Dorothea championed his music, helping to usher it into the canon.

When she was in her early twenties, Mathilde’s family lost their fortune, so she went to seek hers in Vienna and Paris as an opera singer. She made her debut in 1844, but never became a star.

Instead, she married baritone Salvatore Marchesi in 1852, retired from the stage, and shifted her attention to teaching.

Mathilde Marchesi

She began her teaching career working at the conservatories in Cologne and Vienna. In 1881, when she was sixty, she began her own school in Paris.

She specialised in teaching the bel canto style and valued a more natural attitude than was common at the time.

It is mind-boggling how many famous students she taught. Frances Alda (born 1879) became a famous onstage partner of Caruso. Emma Calvé (born 1858) was considered to be the greatest Carmen of her generation. Ada Crossley (born 1871) was the first recording artist hired by the Victor Talking Machine Company. Mary Garden (born 1874) premiered the role of Mélisande in Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande. Sibyl Sanderson became one of Jules Massenet’s favourite performers, and she created the role of Thaïs. Dame Nellie Melba (born 1861) was possibly the most famous singer of the Victorian era, period.

The depth and breadth of the accomplishments of her students, and the way they influenced late nineteenth and early twentieth century opera, makes Mathilde Marchesi one of the best teachers in classical music history.

1) Nadia Boulanger

Pupils: George Antheil, Daniel Barenboim, Marion Bauer, Lili Boulanger, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Gian Carlo Menotti, Ginette Neveu, Astor Piazzolla, Julia Perry, Walter Piston, and countless others

How Nadia Boulanger Raised a Generation of Composers  

Nearly every classical music lover can agree: Nadia Boulanger has been the single most influential teacher in classical music history. It’s possible that she’s one of the most influential teachers of all time, period.

Nadia was born in Paris in 1887 to a musical family. Her elderly father, Ernest Boulanger (she was born on his 72nd birthday), was a composer and pianist.

Nadia began studying music when she was five years old. When a sister named Lili arrived five years later, Nadia became devoted to her and her education, too.

Both sisters were incredibly gifted, but Lili was a once-in-a-generation talent. Accordingly, when Nadia began studying at the Paris Conservatoire when she was nine, Lili tagged along with her.

Nadia Boulanger

Nadia dreamed of winning the prestigious Prix de Rome prize: something her father had done in his youth, but which a woman had never done. She came close, but never actually won. Lili ended up breaking that particular glass ceiling in 1913.

Despite her promise, Lili’s health was extremely poor, and she died of Crohn’s disease at the end of World War I.

After her sister’s devastating death, Nadia began gravitating more and more toward teaching instead of composing. She also needed to focus on a field that would guarantee a steady income, in order to support herself and her mother. Consequently, in 1921, she began teaching harmony at the French Music School for Americans in Fontainebleu. One of her first students there would become one of her most famous: Aaron Copland.

Copland would later write of her:

Nadia Boulanger knew everything there was to know about music; she knew the oldest and the latest music, pre-Bach and post-Stravinsky.

All technical know-how was at her fingertips: harmonic transposition, the figured bass, score reading, organ registration, instrumental techniques, structural analyses, the school fugue and the free fugue, the Greek modes and Gregorian chant.

Nadia was blunt about her talent for analysis:

I can tell whether a piece is well-made or not, and I believe that there are conditions without which masterpieces cannot be achieved, but I also believe that what defines a masterpiece cannot be pinned down. I won’t say that the criterion for a masterpiece does not exist, but I don’t know what it is.

Her decades of teaching were not without controversy. She could be emotionally abusive and held ideas that today would be considered offensively sexist. She was also accused of advancing students whom she liked personally and making other students’ lives miserable.

Despite those and other shortcomings, she is unquestionably the most influential music teacher of all time. Classical music as we know it today would not exist without her, period.