Emilie Mayer
Emilie Luise Friederika Mayer (born May 14, 1812 in Friedland (Mecklenburg) , † April 10, 1883 in Berlin ) was a German composer .
She was highly celebrated in her time and was widely regarded as the "female Beethoven".
Life
Emilie Mayer was the fourth child of the council pharmacist August Friedrich Mayer (1777–1840) and his wife Henrietta Carolina Louisa, nee. Maas (1790–1814), daughter of the post office administrator from Strelitz. Two brothers later became pharmacists in Szczecin.
She received her first piano lessons at the age of five from an organist in Friedland and was a student of Carl Loewe in Stettin in the early 1840s . She completed further musical studies (probably from 1847 in Berlin, among others with Adolf Bernhard Marx ) and traveled to Vienna, Halle, Hamburg, Pasewalk and Stettin. Later she lived in Berlin with occasional longer stays in Stettin.
Emilie Mayer remained unmarried. She ran her own open house in Berlin and cultivated contacts with important personalities in social and aristocratic life. She found her final resting place in the Trinity Cemetery I in Berlin-Kreuzberg . For a long time the exact location of the grave was thought to have been forgotten. In 2018, the pianist Kyra Steckeweh , the filmmaker Tim van Beveren and the historian Jörg Kuhn managed to locate their grave during the research and shooting of the documentary female composers (which deals with the life and work of the composer, among other things).
Works
Emilie Mayer left behind an extensive musical oeuvre, which Almut Runge-Woll thoroughly describes, specifying the locations and publishers. She composed eight symphonies, twelve string quartets, piano chamber music, fifteen concert overtures, violin and cello sonatas, piano works, a singspiel based on Goethe , songs and four-part choirs. Her compositions were largely forgotten after her death.
Honors
Queen Elisabeth of Prussia awarded her a medal. In Munich she was made an honorary member of the Philharmonic Society.
literature
- Marie Silling: Emilie Mayer, a forgotten artist . In: Our Pommerland . Issue 9/1923, pp. 280-282.
- Almut Runge-Woll: The composer Emilie Mayer (1812–1883). Studies on life and work (= Europäische Hochschulschriften, Series XXXVI, Musicology. Volume 234). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-631-51220-1 .
- Claudia Breitfeld: Approaches to symphonies by women composers of the 19th century . In: Rebecca Grotjahn , Freia Hoffmann (ed.): Gender polarities in the history of music from the 18th to the 20th century . Centaurus-Verlag, Herbolzheim 2002 (Contributions to the cultural and social history of music, edited by Eva Rieger, Volume 3), pp. 117–127, ISBN 3-8255-0330-5 , ISSN 1616-2927 .
Movie
- 2018: female composers , (Kyra Steckeweh and Tim van Beveren )
See also
Web links
- Works by and about Emilie Mayer in the catalog of the German National Library
- Literature about Emilie Mayer in the Landesbibliographie MV
- List of works on Emilie Mayer on Klassika
- Sheet music and audio files by Emilie Mayer in the International Music Score Library Project
- Johanna Sinn: Introduction to the Symphony in F minor on Werktextblog
Individual evidence
- ↑ The female Beethoven on July 4, 2019 on ndr.de
- ↑ Almut Runge-Woll: The composer Emilie Mayer (1812-1883). Studies of life and work .
- ↑ The film shows, among other things, stations in Mayer's biography, and Steckeweh plays her piano sonata in D minor.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mayer, Emilie |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mayer, Emilie Luise Friederika (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German composer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 14, 1812 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Friedland (Mecklenburg) |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 10, 1883 |
| Place of death | Berlin |