Elise Mülleraus romantic + classic

Elise Maria Müller (* 15 September 1782 in Bremen; † 30 December 1849 ibid.) was a German pianist, piano teacher and composer.

Life

Elise Maria Müller was the daughter of the music writer and cathedral cantor Wilhelm Christian Müller (1752-1831) and Maria Amalia Müller, née Buken. Her brother was Adolph Wilhelm Müller (1784-1811). Both children received music lessons from their father and were able to play the piano at the age of four. They took part in the regular house concerts. Her first public concert took place in 1792, when she was 10 years old. After an accident as a child, Müller was permanently disfigured and also had to interrupt her music lessons for a time.

In 1804, she opened an educational establishment for girls in Bremen, where she taught geography, history, music, grammar, French and English. She continued to perform publicly as a pianist. The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported in 1807: “Among the dilettantes, two women stand out on the pianoforte who have played several times in concerts: Mad. Sengstacke and Dem. Müller. Both play with ease, assurance and expression… They both seem to be particularly fond of Mozart’s and Beethoven’s most marvellous works.” In 1807, at a concert in the Bremen Stock Exchange, she also plays the violin. From 1804 she also seems to have composed for the first time and in 1817 Senator Johann Georg Iken (1786-1850) reported on her compositions. Her strength, however, remained playing.

In 1814, her father and she visited Goethe in Wiesbaden and she sent him four settings in 1817, but he considered them “weak”. In 1815, father and daughter as well as the composer and cathedral organist Wilhelm Friedrich Riem were involved in the founding of a Bremen Singakademie. The pupils at her school were active in the Singakademie. In 1820, she had to give up the educational institute for health reasons. In the same year, she appeared in public for the first time as a composer of songs. She honoured Ludwig van Beethoven as a composer. In 1820/1821, father and daughter travelled to Austria, Italy and the Netherlands and visited Beethoven, Andreas Streicher,Nannette Streicher and Gioachino Rossini in Naples, among others. After the visit, the Müllers and Beethoven wrote to each other more frequently.

After 1821, Elise Maria Müller taught only rarely. In 1833, she was barely able to play the piano due to an illness in her hands. From the 1830s until her death, she was friends with the chronicler Karl August Varnhagen von Ense through an extensive correspondence. In 1837, Robert Schumann corrected and published songs by her. She then sent him several compositions, but received no further replies. She met Clara Wieck (Clara Schumann) in Bremen in 1840 and Robert Schumann in person in 1842.

Elise Müller favoured works by Beethoven, Wilhelm Friedrich Riem, Louis Ferdinand von Preußen, Mozart, Anton Halm and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Her father labelled her as a “pianoforte player of Beethoven’s works”. Friedrich Wellmann commented in 1914: “Elise Müller was later the best pianist in Bremen alongside the famous Madame Sengstake.” Most of her compositions and song texts were lost in later years.

In her will, she endowed the Elise Foundation for the welfare of needy maids and also made a donation to the Great Women’s Association of 1816 in Bremen.

Elise gave a large number of the letters addressed to her and her family to her friend Karl August Varnhagen von Ense. They have been preserved in the Varnhagen Collection and are now kept in the Jagiellonian Library.

Source Wiki: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elise_Müller