A true artist with a “productivity akin to a bubbling spring,” who disregarded social conventions and devoted herself entirely to music—this is how Emilie Mayer’s contemporaries described her. She herself entered the public address books of Berlin and Stettin with the addition of “composer” and was one of the first to shape the profession of composer, since until that time composing was usually part of other professions such as that of a bandmaster or church musician.
Born in 1812 and raised in the small town of Friedland in Mecklenburg, where her father was a pharmacist, Emilie Mayer began taking piano lessons from the local organist at the age of five. She is said to have composed her first pieces soon after. After her father’s death in 1840, she moved to Stettin to take composition lessons from the famous cantor, organist, and composer Carl Loewe, who was best known for his ballads. From the outset, she cultivated her own compositional style, which was oriented toward classical music in its formal clarity, but at the same time pointed toward Romanticism in its expression, rhythm, and harmony. In 1847, she moved to Berlin and continued her studies with Wilhelm Wieprecht and Adolf Bernhard Marx. In Berlin, she organized her first public concerts featuring exclusively her own works and composed eight symphonies from this time onwards – more than most of her male contemporaries.
It is unclear exactly how Emilie Mayer, who remained unmarried, earned her living. Organizing concerts was expensive, especially with large orchestras, and selling sheet music did not bring in much money either. Unlike others, Mayer did not work as a music teacher or concert soloist, but devoted herself entirely to composing.
