Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin

Violin I Kerstin Erben, Javier Aguilar Bruno, Barbara Halfter, Sophie Wedell, Semion Gurevich, Julita Forck
Violin II Edi Kotlyar, Dörte Wetzel, Erik Dorset, Gabriele Steinfeld, Katharina Grossmann, Thomas Graewe, Erika Takano-Forck
Viola Clemens-Maria Nuszbaumer, Theresa Burggaller, Sabine Fehlandt, Annette Geiger, Monika Grimm
Cello Katharina Litschig, Antje Geusen, Barbara Kernig, Philine Lembeck
Double Bass Christine Sticher, Kit Scotney, Leo Rucker
Flute Gergely Bodoky, Andrea Theinert
Piccolo Emiko Matsuda
Oboe Xenia Löffler, Michael Bosch
Clarinet Ernst Schlader, Odile Ettelt
Bassoon Christian Beuse, Eckhard Lenzing
Horn Erwin Wieringa, Miroslav Rovenský, Jiří Tarantik, Jana Švadlenková
Trumpet Ute Weyrich, Sebastian Kuhn
Trombone Marick Vivion, Till Krause, Tural Ismayilov
Tuba Jörg-Michael Schlegel
Percussion Axel Meier, Lola Mlačnik
Timpani Francisco Manuel Anguas Rodriguez

Emilie Mayer (1812–1883)

“Faust” Overture Op. 46 (c. 1880)

Adagio – Allegro

Symphony No. 6 in E major (1853)

I. Adagio – Allegro con spirito
II. Marcia funebre. Andante maestoso
III. Scherzo
IV. Finale. Allegro

Intermission

Emilie Mayer

Symphony No. 7 in F minor (1856?)

I. Allegro agitato
II. Adagio
III. Scherzo. Allegro vivace
IV. Finale. Allegro vivace

Symphonic Self-Confidence
Emilie Mayer—Rediscovering a Forgotten Composer

Linus Bickmann


As one of the most important and best-known female composers of the 19th century, Emilie Mayer achieved something extraordinary: she made herself and her music heard in a cultural business dominated by men. But she was forgotten soon after her death. Only in recent years, interest in this remarkable artist has surged, with her works appearing in concerts, recordings, and publications. In Mayer’s case, this is not only due to the rising interest in the long-ignored artistic output of women in general—it is also because the outstanding quality of her work demands appropriate esteem. The unique volume and variety of her oeuvre is quite amazing, with a catalogue of works extending from chamber music to large-scale orchestral compositions and even including an early singspiel based on a text by Goethe, Die Fischerin.

Apart from many overtures and a piano concerto, Emilie Mayer wrote a total of eight symphonies, five of which have come down to us in full orchestral score, while a sixth is only extant as a four-part piano reduction. She particularly dedicated herself to this genre, which was destined for public consumption more than any other ever since Beethoven had addressed the entire world with the humanistic message of his Ninth Symphony—“All human beings shall be brothers.”

For the first time, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin now presents Mayer’s surviving orchestral works in their entirety and in historically informed performances. At first glance, this may seem an unusual undertaking for an ensemble known to specialize in Baroque repertoire and music of the First Viennese School. But Mayer’s music, audibly rooted in these Viennese works especially regarding her earlier compositions, sparked the orchestra’s curiosity—there is a distinctly individual sound and a great sense of independence to them. The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin has long made the occasional foray into the 19th century—not so much glancing backward than approaching this repertoire from the vantage point of comprehensive experience in the historical performance practice of late–18th century music. As the ensemble found its way to the historical soundscape of Mayer’s music, the decision quickly followed to make her work accessible through the Akademie’s own edition of her compositions, which have been preserved in the holdings of Berlin’s State Library.

For this orchestra, which has made a point of regularly exploring the works of local composers such as Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Mayer was also an obvious choice because she made her home in Berlin. In the Prussian capital, she achieved her breakthrough as a composer of large-scale orchestral works; it was the center of her professional life from 1847 to 1862 and again from 1875, when she returned to Berlin for a second sojourn. Her grave on Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof (Trinity Cemetery) in the Kreuzberg district was only rediscovered in 2021, during filming for the documentary Komponistinnen – eine Spurensuche by Kyra Steckeweh and Tim van Beveren. It is a recent marker on the path of reclaiming Emilie Mayer for a wider audience.

Two contemporary portraits of the composer are known to exist, but it is hard to find documents that allow Emilie Mayer’s voice to speak to us directly, such as her correspondence with publishers, in which she pursues the printing and dissemination of her works in a polite but firm manner. What has come down to us through encyclopedias and the words of those who knew her well paints a portrait of a woman who might have been modest but never shy. While we may regret that her personality remains somewhat hidden behind the work, this also allows for an appropriate appreciation of that work. After all, forming an impression of Emilie Mayer today means one thing first and foremost: allowing her music to speak.

A Pharmacist’s Daughter Becomes a Symphonist

Born in 1812 to a wealthy pharmacist in Friedland in Mecklenburg, she was brought up in a bourgeois home where domestic music-making was a regular part of life. Music came into Emilie’s life at the age of five in a significant manner, when the local organist and teacher Carl Heinrich Ernst Driver gave her her first piano lessons and quickly encouraged her to compose her first variations, dances, and rondos.

As the oldest daughter, she later ran her widowed father’s household. Not until she was 28 did she decide to move to Stettin (Szczecin) to become a composer. This was precipitated by a dramatic family event: in 1840, her father committed suicide, for reasons that remain unknown to this day. Apparently, this was the moment when Emilie decided to take the initiative, pursuing her life’s dream. From then on, she would lead a self-determined existence, unmarried, but with music for company. Incidentally, this act of emancipation recalls the daring act of another daughter of Friedland: the seamstress Caroline Krüger (1789–1848) is remembered for going to war disguised as a soldier, fighting in Prussia’s war of liberation against France.

In her new hometown of Stettin, Mayer studied with Carl Loewe, chiefly remembered today for his ballads, but also a composer of a large number of oratorios and operas. Loewe held the position of municipal music director and was the lynchpin of a vibrant musical life in the capital of Pomerania. Here, Emilie Mayer attended various musical salons and began to make a name for herself as a composer of large-scale instrumental music. The Municipal Music Association hosted the premieres of her first two symphonies presumably in the mid-1840s—early steps in her attempt at public recognition, as well as early proof of her compelling musical imagination.

While the Symphony in C minor (known as No. 1 today) still skews strongly towards classical models, it already offers many characteristic details, such as the unusual Minuetto moderato section within the third movement: a lyrical reminiscence of the 18th century. The Second Symphony in E minor on the other hand, also composed in Stettin, reveals both a more liberal approach to the development of themes and a deepening of emotional expression: one example is the slow introduction, which serves as a striking exploration of the work’s sonic landscape. Presumably, the Overtures in D major and C major also belong among Mayer’s early orchestral works. In the absence of reliable dates, this seems to be indicated by the specific arrangement of parts within the score that she preferred around this time, placing the high strings above the winds.

To the Big City

In 1847, at the age of 35, Emilie Mayer undertook another courageous step and moved to Berlin to continue her studies with Adolf Bernhard Marx. The former editor of the Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, Marx was known as an ardent admirer of Beethoven and an authority on music theory. Mayer also took lessons in instrumentation with Wilhelm Wieprecht. This reformer of Prussian military music would become a champion of her works as the conductor of his orchestra Euterpe. At the time, Berlin was a vibrant musical metropolis, as the composer Hector Berlioz remembered in his memoirs: “Music is in the air there, one breathes it in, one is suffused by it. It is found in the theater, in churches, in concerts, on the street, in the public gardens, everywhere.”

When Emilie Mayer moved into an apartment at Markgrafenstraße 72, not far from the Royal Schauspielhaus (today’s Konzerthaus), she had her profession listed as “composer” in the city’s public address book—a sign of self-confidence that was unique for her era, as we have to keep reminding ourselves today. At the time, middle-class women dedicating themselves to music at most would appear publicly as singers or pianists. Taking on public office, as a conductor or music director, was unthinkable. Elsewhere, things were more liberal: in France, the pianist and composer Louise Farrenc (1804–1875), who taught piano as a professor at the Paris Conservatoire for three decades, successfully proved her independence from a music business that discriminated against women. In the German states, however, the freedom of art, as it were, ended where the boundaries of gender began. During the very years when Mayer was settling in Berlin, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote in his essay Über die Weiber (On Women): “Neither for music, nor poetry, nor the visual arts do they truly have any sense or sensibility.”

The fact that Emilie Mayer wanted to be acknowledged as a professional composer stands testament to her self-image. There were of course well-known fellow female composers, including Fanny Hensel, whose creative force equaled that of her brother, Felix Mendelssohn. Their father, however, denied her an artistic career of her own, telling the 15-year-old in a letter that for her, music would be “only decorative, never the foundation of your life.” Social decorum in the Biedermeier age—itself defined by men—usually only allowed women to perform in domestic or semi-public settings, and to compose for the desk drawer. Clara Schumann might have broken this closely circumscribed mold as a composer and performer of her own Piano Concerto in A minor, but ultimately she too had to bow to contemporary reality, in which a life as a wife and composer meant pursuing incompatible goals.

Mayer was fortunate that her teachers, who accepted her as a private student, were more progressive in their thinking. Adolf Bernhard Marx wrote in 1855: “We cannot bar women from teaching nor from the concert hall… We must recognize women’s right to unlimited education, and do our full duty also towards them.” It may be considered a case of contradictory irony that Marx, of all people, was also the one to establish gender-specific connotations in composition via his vastly influential manual on musical composition. In his analyses of the sonata form, he identified energetic themes as “male” and sensitive ones as “female.”

New Facets of Expression

While Mayer’s teachers were highly supportive, overcoming the resistance of her times still required an uncommonly energetic commitment to self-fulfillment for her to succeed. At the Royal Schauspielhaus in Berlin, she organized and bankrolled concerts dedicated exclusively to her own works. The first of these, on April 21, 1850, included the premiere of her Symphony No. 3 in C major, subtitled “Militair.” Mayer’s studies with Wilhelm Wieprecht, the reformer of the Großer Zapfenstreich, a ceremonial form of Prussian military music, may have inspired this work. Further inspiration, however, was literally in the air, as Mayer’s early years in Berlin were marked by the revolutionary uprisings of 1848–9. But by the time the Symphony premiered, liberal spirit had long been suppressed, and German hopes for a nation-state of their own had been dashed. Only in the final movement does Mayer employ instruments typical for the military bands of the day, such as piccolo, triangle, bass drum, and cymbals. Despite its military dazzle, this eminently boisterous movement foregoes any martial rhetoric. On the contrary: individual sections, such as the elegiac Adagio beginning and its recurrence shortly before the end of the movement, are proof that this music leaves space for pensive moments, alluding not just to the glory, but also the suffering of war.

This thoughtful attitude is also part of Mayer’s treatment of character pieces, such as the funeral march. A comparison of the extensive funeral march of the 1853 Sixth Symphony in E major with its counterpart, which sets the mood as an introduction to her First Symphony in C minor shows Mayer’s developing perspective on musical events. In the later work, the Marcia funebre becomes a foil for extensive, narrative composing that, with its fragile, questioning attitude, opens up new emotional facets of expression for the genre.

Backhanded Compliments

Mayer’s music met with great resonance among contemporary critics. Yet influential reviewers such as Ludwig Rellstab assessing her work without prejudice remained the exception to the rule. In the Vossische Zeitung, whose authors included Rellstab, her symphonies were described as being among “the best works of modern times, written with enthusiasm and displaying an unusual talent, which cannot be denied the respect it is due.” Most critics, however, offered backhanded compliments or even ridiculed her. The Neue Berliner Musikalische Zeitung wrote: “What female forces, forces of the second order, are capable of, Emilie Mayer has mastered and reproduced.” To this day, bias mars the perception of her works when the composer, in a pointed exaggeration, is labeled the “female Beethoven,” which continues to obfuscate the individual creative heights that her works scaled.

For the longest time, academic conceit also kept Mayer’s music in the obscurity of the archives. Her symphonic output fell into the years between Schumann’s last (1850) and Brahms’s first symphony (1876)—a period long (mis)labelled by musicology as a putative crisis of this genre. The default perspective of comparing works of this time first and foremost to Beethoven also prevented an unprejudiced look at Mayer’s contributions to the genre.

Between Classicism and Romanticism

Emilie Mayer’s study notebook offers indications of her early influences as a composer. The works she copied here in excerpts under the title “Musical Miscellany” are mainly those of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, all of whom were ubiquitous not only on Berlin’s concert programs in the mid-19th century. Many other composers are represented as well who had an influence on Mayer’s compositional style, including Gioachino Rossini and of course Felix Mendelssohn. A close friend of Marx, his music was also championed by Carl Loewe, who conducted the premiere of the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Stettin, among other works.

Mayer’s symphonic oeuvre situates itself between Classicism and Romanticism in quite an original manner. The Piano Concerto in B-flat major, presumably written in the early 1850s, veers most discernably toward the classicist—it seems reminiscent of a musical treasure hunt for a certain sound she was familiar with from her early youth. Even the orchestration, employing two clarinets instead of oboes, recalls a characteristic of Mozart’s late piano concertos.

The Overture in D minor, most likely composed just a few years later, on the other hand conjures a genuinely Romantic soundscape that evolves from a halting, mysterious introduction. Its further development is marked by a striking rhythmic sharpening of themes, unusual echo effects in the winds, and expressive harmonic shifts. Mayer keeps the surprises coming, most notably at seemingly less important moments of transition, including an exposed flute solo.

Mayer’s last surviving symphony shows the extent to which the composer had developed her personal style, in this as in other genres. The F-minor work (counted as No. 7 today and previously known as No. 5) was probably written in 1856 but only premiered a few years later in Berlin. The explosive gestures of the Allegro agitato draw the listener into the music from the start, with only the emphatic secondary theme providing an element of calm. Arguably Mayer’s most mature symphony, the work also demonstrates her mastery of melodic expression and intensity, as in the beguiling sounds of cellos and horns that accompany the cantabile Adagio theme.

An Enlightening Change of Perspective

The difficulties she encountered in her attempts at having especially her symphonies printed to enable their wider circulation may have persuaded Emilie Mayer to leave Berlin in 1862 and increasingly turn her hand to chamber music. Yet after her return to the city in 1875, aged almost 70, she wrote one more large-scale work, her “Faust” Overture. The only one of her orchestral compositions to appear in print during her lifetime, in 1880, it achieved great popularity, with performances in Prague, Vienna, and elsewhere. Mayer may have been inspired by Richard Wagner’s early “Faust” Overture, which she heard played in concert in Stettin in April 1877, where it shared the program with the Adagio from her Symphony in F minor.

Mayer’s work illuminates Goethe’s drama with theatrical aplomb: low bassoons and strings, as if wandering aimlessly, evoke Faust ruminating in his study. An instrumental quote from the chorale Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele (Rejoice greatly, my soul) is highly significant, as the text of the hymn continues: “Und vergiss all Not und Qual / Weil dich nun Christus, der Herre / Ruft aus diesem Jammertal” (“and forget all misery and pain / because Christ our Lord / now calls you from this vale of tears”). Silent here but heard implicitly, the text points to Gretchen’s desire for redemption—she is wrecked by the guilt an evil spirit whispered into her ear in the play. Mayer thus directs the focus on Margarethe in her overture. Toward the end of the work, when the music ascends to a radiant and triumphant major key, she notes Goethe’s phrase “Sie ist gerettet” (“She has been saved”) in the score. It is a change of perspective that seems characteristic of Mayer: one last time, the composer proves herself a woman of symphonic self-confidence.

Translation: Alexa Nieschlag


Linus Bickmann has been music dramaturg with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin since 2015. After studying musicology and theater studies in Bayreuth, Berlin, and Venice, he previously worked as dramaturg for Lautten Compagney Berlin.