Pauer, Ernst

Pauer, Ernst, Austrian pianist, teacher, editor, and composer, father of Max von Pauer; b. Vienna, Dec. 21, 1826; d. Jugenheim, near Darmstadt, May 9, 1905. He studied piano with Mozart’s son, F.X.W. Mozart, and composition with Sechter. In 1851 he went to London, where he later taught at the Royal Academy of Music (1859–64). In 1861 he began a series of historical performances of harpsichord and piano music in chronological order, which attracted considerable attention. After a number of concerts in Germany and Austria, he was appointed pianist to the Austrian court (1866). He served as prof, of piano at London’s National Training School for Music (from 1876), remaining there when it became the Royal Coll. of Music (1883); retired to Jugenheim (1896). He pubi, in London a number of educational works, among them The Art of Pianoforte Playing (1877), Musical Forms (1878), and The Elements of the Beautiful in Music (1877), as well as The Birthday Book of Musicians and Composers (1881) and A Dictionary of Pianists and Composers for the Pianoforte (1895). He further brought out collections for piano students: The New Gradus ad Parnassum, Classical Companion: Celebrated Concert-studies, and Cultures of the Left Hand. He made excellent arrangements of syms. by Beethoven and Schumann, for piano solo, piano, 4-hands, and piano, 8-hands, and also arranged Mendelssohn’s orch. works for piano, 4-hands and 8-hands; these arrangements were widely used in the 19^th century and were extremely useful for young pianists until the advent of the phonograph administered a lethal blow to this type of musical activity.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire