Discover with us the composer Emilie Mayer (1812–1883).

(Excerpt from the CD booklet text by Linus Bickmann)

Symphonic self-confidence
Emilie Mayer – The Rediscovery of an Incredible Woman Composer

Emilie Mayer (1812-1883), one of the most important and – in her time – best-known female composers of the 19th century, managed the considerable feat of making her music heard in a cultural sphere dominated by men. Her works were played all over Europe, though she was quickly forgotten after her death. It is only in the past few years that interest in this remarkable creative artist has intensified, as more of her works are played in concert, recorded and published: not just because of the increased attention paid to the works of women composers and artists in general, but because the outstanding level of her work demands a corresponding recognition. The sheer range and quality of her output is astonishing: from chamber music to works for large orchestra, and even an early Singspiel, Die Fischerin, to a text by Goethe.

Because her music was little-known – largely unavailable in print, and receiving scant attention from academia – for a long time Mayer’s orchestral works in particular gathered dust in the archives. Moreover, her symphonic music dates largely from the years between Schumann’s last Symphony (1850) and Brahms’s First (1876) – a period that musicologists had long rated as a phase of symphonic crisis. In addition, the constant comparison of her to Beethoven (as the yardstick of all things symphonic) hindered an unbiased view: even now, Mayer’s music often encounters prejudice, when pre-concert publicity labels her exaggeratedly as a ‘female Beethoven’, belying the individual creativity of her work. For the healing groundwork of research into her rich and varied contribution to many different genres we are particularly indebted to Almut Runge-Woll and her wide-ranging thesis in 2003 on Mayer’s life and work.

Emilie Mayer was born in 1812 in Friedland, Mecklenburg, the daughter of a well-off apothecary and his second wife. Two years later her mother died in childbirth. Music entered Emilie’s life with lasting consequences when at the age of five she had her first piano lessons from the town organist and teacher, Carl Heinrich Ernst Driver, who gave her early encouragement in her first compositions – variations and dances. For Emilie, music making was a normal and natural part of her home background.
One by one her sisters married and left the house, leaving Emilie in charge of her widowed father’s household. Finally at the age of 28 she resolved to leave for the city of Stettin (today Szczecin in Poland) and establish herself there as a composer. The trigger was a family tragedy: her father took his own life, on the 26th anniversary of his wife’s death in 1840. Now parentless, Emilie decided to take the initiative: to follow her own chosen way of life, unmarried but dedicated to music, her financial independence made possible by her father’s inheritance.

In Stettin she studied with Carl Loewe, today known mainly as a song composer, though he also left behind a large output of operas and oratorios. In her new surroundings she frequented the city’s musical salons, soon attracting attention with her compositions for large instrumental forces: early evidence both of her fertile musical imagination, and of her purposeful first steps towards gaining public recognition as a professional composer.

At the time, practising women musicians and composers were definitely gaining in profile, though their capacity for artistic individuality was frequently challenged. Indeed there were a few reputed women composers, such as Fanny Hensel, whose musical creativity fully equalled that of her brother Felix Mendelssohn, though their father prevented Fanny from turning professional. The social proprieties of the Biedermeier era – dictated by men – as a rule restricted women to performing in the household or at semi-professional concerts, and composing only for the desk drawer. Even Clara Schumann had to resign herself to the reality that life as a housewife was irreconcilable with a career as a composer. Elsewhere the situation was more liberal: in France the pianist and composer Louise Farrenc (1804-1875), a professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire for thirty years, was able to maintain a large degree of independence, despite the norms of musical life that viewed women with intolerance.

Emilie Mayer took a further courageous step in 1847 when – now aged 35 – she settled in Berlin, to continue her studies with Adolf Bernhard Marx, the former editor of the influential Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, a passionate admirer of Beethoven and an authority in the field of music theory. She also took orchestration lessons with Wilhelm Wieprecht, famed for reforming the organization of Prussian military music. From then on Wieprecht, with his ‘Euterpe’ orchestra, did what he could to perform and support her work.

When in 1851 Emilie Mayer moved into her new home in the heart of the Prussian capital, at 72 Markgrafenstrasse, near the Gendarmenmarkt and its Royal Theatre (today the Konzerthaus), in Berlin’s directory she gave her profession as ‘Componistin’ – woman composer’ – showing a self-assurance remarkable for the period. It was a step whose importance is difficult to appreciate today. At the same time that Mayer was living in Berlin, Schopenhauer was writing dismissively in his essay On Women (Über die Weiber, 1851): ‘Neither for music, nor poetry, for the fine arts, do they have a real and true instinct and sensitivity.’ As a private student Mayer had the luck to find more progressively-minded teachers, and with their help she was able to promote change.

Even with the sterling support of her teachers, Mayer needed an uncommonly energetic degree of commitment to overcome the resistance of her time. From 1850 to 1854 she organized – and financed herself – annual concerts at the Royal Theatre in Berlin dedicated to her own works. Her music found great critical acclaim from influential critics such as Ludwig Rellstab. However, such unprejudiced praise remained the exception. Most critics issued backhanded compliments or even sneers. The Neue Berliner Musikalische Zeitung wrote: ‘What female powers – powers of secondary order – are capable of, Emilie Mayer has certainly achieved and expressed.’ Yet it was in Berlin that Mayer finally had her breakthrough as a composer of large-scale orchestral works: it was the centre of her activity between 1847 and 1862, and again after 1875, following her later stay in Stettin.

Her grave in the Trinity Cemetery in Kreuzberg, Berlin was discovered only in 2021, during filming for Women Composers: A cinematic search for their lives in music by Kyra Steckweh and Tim van Beveren – a documentary that marks a more recent stage in the attempt to recover Emilie Mayer for the general audience.

Though we have two contemporary portraits of the composer, traces of her personal life are few and far between. The few surviving letters and the sparse information in encyclopedias and eye-witness reports show us the outlines of a woman who was both modest yet self-possessed and ever-active. While we may regret that her personality was so overshadowed by her work, it enables her music to be all the more fairly assessed. To portray Emilie Mayer in her true light means, above all, to allow her music to speak for itself.

Emilie Mayer was more than just a composer. Alongside her musical work, she was also extremely active as a visual artist – more specifically, she created sculptures from a highly unusual material: white bread. Marie Silling, a friend of Emilie Mayer’s niece, recounts in her memoirs of her youth – published in 1921 – as the daughter of a Stettin merchant, Mayer’s artistic skill in this particular field: “During lengthy lunchtimes, she would first take to kneading and shaping breadcrumbs, and with the aid of a pair of scissors and a needle, her tireless, persistent diligence and her skilful hands – the small size of which was often praised – enabled her to conjure up works from this unique material that aroused great admiration.” As early as 1858, a report in the*Illustrirte Zeitung* from Leipzig had described the creation and production of the sculptures in a similar vein: “The white bread must have the right malleable consistency” – to prevent cracks from forming during drying, “the finished figures are coated with a mixture of gum and sublimate”.

Her extraordinary bread art proved extremely useful to the composer Emilie Mayer, as dedicating her unique works to people of high standing was a shrewd networking strategy. Through her bread sculptures, the middle-class daughter of a council apothecary gained access to influential aristocratic circles. If, for example, she required the permission of the Prussian regent Frederick William IV to use the Royal Theatre in Berlin for her self-organised concerts, dedicating a bread sculpture to his wife was a shrewd move. Elisabeth of Prussia received ‘a bowl which, through the architectural beauty of its form and the artistic craftsmanship of the whole, caused such a sensation that people felt compelled to honour the sculptor by awarding her the gold medal’. So reads a biographical sketch of the composer, which appeared in the ‘Neue Berliner Musikzeitung’ in 1877, written by the author Elisabeth Sangalli-Marr. It goes on to say: ‘Under such circumstances, the talented composer could be assured of high patronage. She could not fail to receive it. The concert hall in the Royal Theatre was made available to her free of charge.’