Amanda Maier: Tranquillamente from "Six Pieces for Violin and Piano" transcribed for string orchestra

I have been spending some time during the past couple of days with Amanda Maier:


The score and parts for the transcripion (as well as for the violin and piano original) can be found on this page of the IMSLP.

Amanda Maier on the Notes on Notes Podcast

How exciting to find a podcast discussion about Amanda Maier with Oxford University's Leah Broad on the Notes on Notes Podcast!

After listening to the podcast you might find it interesting to read through the more than a dozen posts I have made about Maier during the past decade. You can find them all here.

In which Amanda Maier's Great Granddaughter shows us Amanda's violin, and Cecilia Zilliacus plays it

Cecilia Zilliacus meets the violin Amanda Maier played as a teenager, and very likely used to write her B-minor Sonata in this video.

The video below gives a taste of Zilliacus's new recording of Amanda Maier's violin music and some of her songs.

We Are Still Far From Eradicating Gender Bias in Music, Folks

I like to believe that in the field of music we are making serious progress towards eradicating gender bias. Blind (internet) tests have shown that nobody listening to a performance of a piece of music can tell the gender of the person performing it. But in spite of the fact that everyone agrees that the quality of a person's playing matters far, far, more than the gender of the person playing, and the fact that orchestras are often populated by more women than men, and that some of the best 21st-century conductors around happen to be women, gender bias is still lurking under the surface of the world where I swim. And even though women composers have been given a small share of prizes and such, the real proof is in the concert programs.

This article by Max Moran pokes at some nerves.

The notion that someone can objectively determine quality assumes that they are “living in some patriarchy-free universe somewhere,” Curtis added.

“We all know that gender bias exists, and even those of us who work every day against it can never be free of it,” she said, sharing an anecdote about seeing conductor Susanna Malkki walk on stage and thinking, “Who’s the soloist?”

Yet the labels “women composers” and “men composers” still have a place in this discussion, Curtis concluded. “We need these labels to point out the presence of men without women and the lack of women and the lack of inclusion,” she said. “We both need special events that celebrate women, and we also need more women in the mainstream.” She added that orchestras are making some progress, especially smaller orchestras playing women composers, but that there is still more progress to be made.

I'm pleased to notice that Emilie Mayer is among the "common practice" composers Moran mentions. And though he doesn't mention her partronymic homophone, Amanda Maier, this is as good a place as any to let everyone know that an excellent edition, with orchestral parts and a piano reduction, of her Violin Concerto is available for free in the IMSLP. I find it terribly sad, given the quality of the piece and the importance of the composer, that it only seems to have been downloaded around 35 times. If any piece should be played by major symphony orchestras that feed their audiences a diet of 19th-century music, this one should. And the score and parts are available for free.

Not available for free, but very much worth paying for, is an excellent edition of Amanda Maier's Piano Quartet (another GREAT piece). I can't help myself from thinking that if these pieces had been written by a man they would be hailed as great 19th-century discoveries.

Gregory Maytan, a great champion of Amanda Maier's music, made a soon-to-be-released recording Maier's Violin Concerto and her Piano Quartet. Keep your eyes on this spot for a review.

Why I Love Amanda Maier, and Why You Will Too

The third piece of Amanda Maier's Six Pieces for Violin and Piano is short, rich, simple, and complicated. It is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I know. You can listen to a recording of it from last night's concert here. (If you would like to hear more from last night's concert, send me an e-mail, and I'll send more links to you.)

Maier studied in Leipzig during the time when Bach's music was first becoming available to musicians. You will certainly hear a Bachian element here, but notice that it also recalls something in Schumann's most lovely song "Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen" from the Dichterliebe. Maier's mixes her Bachian-Schumanesque gem with some characteristic hemiolas here and there.

Here's the music for the Maier:



Here's the Schumann that seems to lurk in the piece's shadow:



You can listen to a wonderful recording of this song by Yves Saelens and Inge Spinette here.

Violin and Piano Concert February 28th 2014

I'm extremely excited about this year's WHAM concert because the music is so wonderful (and so rare). John David and I played Amanda Maier's Sonata a couple of years ago, and are enjoying working on her Six Pieces a great deal. Clara Kathleen Rogers, who performed as an opera singer under the name Clara Doria, was a British composer who studied in Leipzig and settled in Boston. Her Sonata had its premiere at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, and, like Amanda Maier's music, has only recently come back into the repertoire. With only a few exceptions, Emilie Mayer's music has been hidden in libraries since her death in 1893. Her Violin Sonata is a terrific piece that, had it been known during the 20th century (it and her many other compositions have been sleeping silently in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek), would probably have been in the repertoire of many musicians. The American composer Florence B. Price was the first African American woman to have a piece performed by a major American Orchestra. Her "Adoration," from 1951 is one of her last works. She wrote it for organ, with an indication to use a violin stop for the middle section. I took it as a cue to make a transcription.

Maier and Lipinski Continued

Could Amanda Maier be holding the Lipinski Stradivarius in this photo?

An Amanda Maier Connection to the "Lipinski" Stradivarius

Thank goodness the famous Lipinski Stradivarius will be returned to Frank Almond after the horrible robbery that happened last week. Almond's Kickstarter page about the history of the instrument mentions that the instrument's owner after Lipinski was Julius Röntgen's family. In 1861, when the instrument went to the Röntgen family, Julius was only a child. He also became a pianist and not a violinst, but he did marry the violinist Amanda Maier (1853-1894). I imagine that the Röntgen who played the instrument after Lipinski was Engelbert, the concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester (and Amanda's former teacher). Perhaps Engelbert kept the instrument in the family by giving it to his daughter-in-law, since his son was not a violinist.

The recording that Frank Almond made with William Wolfram has music by Röntgen on it. Perhaps their next recording might include something by Amanda Maier. A few of her excellent violin pieces are in the IMSLP.

More Musical Assumptions posts about Amanda Maier.

Six Pieces for Violin and Piano by Amanda Maier

Violinists and lovers of violin music will be happy to know that I just put two editions of Amanda Maier's Six Pieces for Violin and Piano on her page in the IMSLP Petrucci Library The first is a scan of the 19th-century original, and the second is a modern "engraving" edited by the violinist Gregory Maytan, who has made excellent recordings of both the Six Pieces and her B minor Violin Sonata.




For readers new to Amanda Maier (1853-1894), here are several posts I made about her over the past few years.

I am happy to report that Maier's Swedische Weisen und Tanze are also in the IMSLP, along with these pieces and her Sonata.

Here's a link where you can buy Gregory Maytan's recording of the Sonata and his recording (the first and only, so far) of the Six Pieces.

Amanda Maier's Grave

This is a picture of Erika Vermeulen-Illes, a violinist from Amsterdam, who is playing Amanda Maier's Sonata for Violin and Piano there on September 13th. She sent me this picture of herself standing next to Maier's grave, and I haven't been able to successfully e-mail a note of thanks. So I'm voicing my thanks here. Perhaps, if you would Erika, you could send me details about where your performance is, and I can include a notice about it on this post.

Amanda Maier's E minor Piano Quartet

I just learned (by way of a comment on another post) that Amanda Maier's E minor Piano Quartet, a piece she wrote in 1891, will be published for the very first time by Donemus in the Netherlands. Since the publication is still forthcoming, Maier is not yet on their list of published composers. I'm hoping that within a year the piece will be performed all over the world and will be recorded by excellent musicians. Spread the word, and bookmark the publisher.

A Concert of Music by 19th, 20th, and 21st Century Women

Due to an unfortunate encounter yesterday between John David's left hand and a pane of glass, our concert that was scheduled for this Sunday, March 21st, of music by Amanda Maier, Germaine Tailleferre, Louise Farrenc, Lili Boulanger, Mel Bonis, and me (proudly representing the first decade of the 21st century), has been rescheduled for Saturday, April 10th at 3:00 at the Tarble Arts Center in Charleston, IL (same place, same time, different day).

More Photos of Amanda Maier and her Family

Amanda Maier's great grandson Fridtjof Thaidens sent more family photographs! He also identified some of the people in the photographs in a previous post about Amanda Maier. If you haven't read it yet, make sure to read this post about her as well.


Amanda's father, Carl Edward Maier who like his daughter passed the "Musik-direktor" exam in Stockholm (1852). He was the son and grandson of a schoolmaster in Riedlingen in the former kingdom of Wuertemberg in Germany.


Amanda with her eldest son Julius Jr., Fridtjof Thiadens' father.


Julius Jr. with his Norwegian wife, and Agnes Roentgen in New York where they lived from 1908 to 1913. Julius Jr. was the second violinist in the famous Kneisel Quartet, from 1907-1912 traveling through all of North America playing the Stradivarius that he inherited from his grandfather, Engelbert Roentgen Sr.



The two sons of Amanda in Woodstock USA 1947:  Julius Roentgen Jr. (with the violin) and Engelbert Roentgen Jr. (with the cello). At the beginning of World War I Engelbert escaped to America. He subsequently returned with the U.S. army to France, playing as cellist for the generals, and as trumpeter for the troops. He worked all his life in America, mainly as first cellist in the New York Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

Photos of Amanda Maier

Thanks to André and Frederik, our blog-reading friends in Sweden, we now have a motherlode of photos of Amanda Maier to supplement this earlier post about her, and a huge thanks to Amanda Maier's great grandson Fridtjof Thiadens for identifying the other people in the photographs.



(There's sure to be some kind of a story behind this one.)






(Amanda with violin, the soprano Louise Pyk standing, the pianist Augusta Kiellander at the piano, and Amanda's father Carl Edvard Maier standing.

(These people were probably Swedish relatives or friends. Amanda's mother was the youngest daughter of Anders Nillson Sjöbeck, blacksmith of the village Tirup near Landskrona. All Sjöbeck's were blacksmiths, farriers, veterinarians and served in times of war in the South Skaane cavalry- and dragoon regiments since the 16the century.)

This portrait must be of Amanda Maier with her soon-to-be husband Julius Röntgen. Here's another photo of him.

(Amanda was already Ill here.)

Unjustly Neglected Composers: Amanda Maier

While seeking out material for our annual March concert of music written by women, my pianist friend randomly came upon a sonata for violin and piano by Amanda Maier in the World Cat. After the first two measures we both agreed to postpone our previous choices for this year's program for another year, and spend a few wonderful months with Amanda Maier. I set out to find out everything I could about her, which led me to corresponding with her great grandson, and locating the rest of her music.

Amanda Maier was born into a working-class family (her father was a baker), she became the first woman to get a music degree from the Stockholm Conservatory of Music in 1869. She continued her studies from 1873-1876 with Engelbert Röntgen, the concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, at the Leipzig Conservatory. Like many of the other violin soloists of her time, she wrote her own music. She wrote her B-minor Violin Sonata while she was in Leipzig (around the time of the above picture, taken when she was 20). It was published in Stockholm in 1878, and it is possible that Amanda included this work in her extensive tour through Sweden and Norway during the spring and summer of that year.

She met her future husband, Julius Röntgen, in Leipzig. He was the son of her violin teacher. They married in 1880, and entertained guests like Johannes Brahms and Edward Grieg in their home. Both Brahms and Grieg admired Amanda's ability as a composer, but the ethos of the time prevailed, and when Amanda became a mother, her main musical outlet became teaching her sons.

She contracted tuberculosis after the birth of her second son, and she died at the age of 41 in 1894. Her superb violin sonata probably went unplayed until 1994 when it was recorded for the first time. Here's the first movement, the second movement , and the third movement. This recording, and this excellent series of performance videos beginning with this one miraculously appeared on YouTube at about the same time that we first read the music (just a few weeks ago).

The Stockholm State Library houses her manuscripts and published editions of her other music. There are also diaries in old Swedish, and an exchange of letters with Johannes Brahms. I have written to the rare manuscript people there, requesting that they contribute scans of these works to the Petrucci Library, but I would seriously appreciate it if anyone in Stockholm with access to the library could help make a case for making Amanda Maier's music available to musicians everywhere. The B-minor Sonata is the only piece available through interlibrary loan, and the paper, from 1878, is growing weak. There are only two copies in circulation in the United States. One is at the Loeb Library at Harvard, and the other is at the University of California, Riverside. There's a copy in Copenhagen as well as the one in the copy in Stockholm.

In manuscript there are 25 Preludes for Piano (1869), a Violin Concerto (1875), a piece for cello and piano (1880) that she wrote with her husband, a couple of songs, and an E-minor Piano Quartet (1891). Her Six Pieces for Violin and Piano (1878) were published, and are available at the Haag in the Netherlands.

I hope that someone (or everyone) reading this will share my enthusiasm for this unjustly neglected composer, and share in my quest to make her music easily available to anyone who would like to play it.

UPDATE: There are more photos of Amanda Maier here.