Elizabeth Gladman Jonas (born Southwark, London, England about 1825; died 1877) was an English pianist, child prodigy, and music teacher.
Elizabeth Gladman Jonas (born Southwark, London, England about 1825; died 1877) was an English pianist, child prodigy, and music teacher.
Jonas was one of six children of John and Henrietta Jonas of 35 Prospect Place, Southwark; an 1851 London directory described her father as a "gentleman", so it is likely the family was a prosperous one. [1] Jonas began piano lessons at four years of age and later studied with pianist and composer John Field around 1831–2; her public debut was at a concert of his in March 1832. [2] In September 1832 she twice performed command performances at Windsor Castle. [3] In 1833 she performed several times on the same bill with Niccolo Paganini. [4] [5] She later studied with Ignaz Moscheles. She was given a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in 1836 and re-elected in 1838; she studied there with Moscheles and with Thomas Attwood (until his death in 1838). She continued to perform publicly music of Felix Mendelssohn, [6] her teacher Moscheles, and others with success.
Jonas taught piano at the Academy as early as 1838; following her graduation in 1841 she was hired by the Academy as a professor of piano and harmony - one of the first female professors at the Academy. She taught classes there until 1850. After her retirement she performed only in private, describing herself in 1854 as having been in ill health for several years. [7] She actually survived many more years, dying in 1877, at which time she was living in St. John's Wood in London with her sister Emily (1831-1891).
The engraving above is by lithographer Maxim Gauci. A portrait of Jonas was exhibited at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1838 by miniaturist Mary Mulready Leckie. [8]
Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi was an Italian-British composer, virtuoso pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer, who was mostly active in England.
Pauline Viardot was a French dramatic mezzo-soprano, composer and pedagogue of Spanish descent. Born Michelle Ferdinande Pauline García, she came from a musical family and took up music at a young age. She began performing as a teenager and had a long and illustrious career as a star performer.
John Field was an Irish pianist, composer and teacher widely credited as the creator of the nocturne. While other composers were writing in a similar style at this time, Field was the first to use the term 'Nocturne' specifically to apply to a character piece featuring a cantabile melody over an arpeggiated accompaniment.
Adolphe Charles Adam was a French composer, teacher and music critic. A prolific composer for the theatre, he is best known today for his ballets Giselle (1841) and Le corsaire (1856), his operas Le postillon de Lonjumeau (1836) and Si j'étais roi (1852) and his Christmas carol "Minuit, chrétiens!".
Sigismond Thalberg was an Austrian composer and one of the most distinguished virtuoso pianists of the 19th century.
Isaac Ignaz Moscheles was a Bohemian piano virtuoso and composer. He was based initially in London and later at Leipzig, where he joined his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as professor of piano in the Conservatory.
Friedrich Wilhelm Michael Kalkbrenner, also known as Frédéric Kalkbrenner, was a pianist, composer, piano teacher and piano manufacturer. German by birth, Kalkbrenner studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, starting at a young age and eventually settled in Paris, where he lived until his death in 1849. Kalkbrenner composed more than 200 piano works, as well as many piano concertos and operas.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren was an English composer and musicologist.
Christine Croshaw is a British pianist and a professor at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London, England.
Maria Szymanowska was a Polish composer and one of the first professional virtuoso pianists of the 19th century. She toured extensively throughout Europe, especially in the 1820s, before settling permanently in St. Petersburg. In the Russian imperial capital, she composed for the court, gave concerts, taught music, and ran an influential salon.
Lucy Anderson was the most eminent of the English pianists of the early Victorian era. She is mentioned in the same breath as English pianists of the calibre of William Sterndale Bennett.
Otto Moritz David Goldschmidt was a composer, conductor, pianist and educator, whose works included a piano concerto and other piano pieces, and an oratorio, Ruth, on a biblical theme, written for the Three Choirs Festival. From a prosperous mercantile family in Hamburg, he studied under Felix Mendelssohn at the Leipzig Conservatoire and quickly established himself as a pianist. Among the singers whom he accompanied was "the Swedish Nightingale", the soprano Jenny Lind. They married in 1852, after which she insisted on being billed as "Madame Lind-Goldschmidt".
Gustave García was an Italian baritone opera singer and singing teacher.
Atala Thérèse Annette Wartel, née Adrien, was a French pianist, music educator, composer and critic.
Fanny Arthur Robinson was an English pianist, music educator and composer who spent most of her career in Dublin, Ireland.
Kate Fanny Loder, later Lady Thompson, was an English composer and pianist.
Annie Jessy Curwen, born Annie Jessy Gregg, usually known from her books as Mrs. Curwen or Mrs. J. Spencer Curwen, was a writer children's books and books for music teachers, on music theory and performance, and particularly piano playing, which were published by J. Curwen & Sons Ltd. of London in the late 19th century.
Frances Elizabeth (Fanny) Dickens was an English pianist and singer who trained at the Royal Academy of Music. She is the elder sister of Charles Dickens.
Margaret "Grete" Moscheles was a British painter.
The Grimson family was a family of classical musicians active in London from the early 1870s.