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Maud Powell, American Violinist, Educator, and Visionary (1867-1920)

Born 1868 in Peru Illinois, the United States of America, the legendary female violinist Maud Powell is known not only for having been one of the greatest American violinists of the 19th century, but also for having been one of the only female solo violinists of her time. 

A marvel of her time, Powell as nurtured by her mother, herself an amateur musician and composer, unusual for her day. Power studied both the violin and the piano in her hometown of Illinois. Later moving to Europe to extend her musical education, she then studied with one of its most outstanding teachers – Henry Schradieck in Leipzig, Germany, and then with the great Joseph Joachim in Berlin.

Already performing recital tours at the age of nine, Powell would soon perform with the New York and Berlin Philharmonic respectively. 

Performance, Education, and Outreach

Powell’s contributions to music education take the unique form of performances in and for fledgling musical landscape that was barely formed in her time. 

A firm believer in education – Powell was the daughter of a nationally awarded educator who also penned a number of educational treatises – Powell would seek to change public perception and even awareness of classical music through intensive concertizing in remote and far-flung parts of North America, sometimes and often accepting fees well below any concertizing rate in an effort to bring music to her country. Powell was the first American, to take an instance, to perform the Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms violin concertos on American soil, for example, and Powell is remembered, as Tatiana Goldberg, among others, have written, as someone who should continue through her music ‘a [musical and also metaphorical] message as long as [she] [was] able’, as in her own words.

A pioneering American violinist who sought to bring music to all, Powell’s efforts at music education and outreach were endless. She commissioned music of marganilised composers like Taylor-Coleridge, and made efforts to include both Native American influenced music as well as music of African American spirituals on her recital program. In addition, writing or both literary and musical efforts were a vital part of Powell’s efforts as well, writing for music journal, and even penning her own program notes at a time when such educational and written activity was extremely rare. Also composing transcriptions for violin and piano, she also penned her own cadenza to the Brahms Violin Concerto at a time when her teacher, Joseph Joachim’s, was greatly in vogue, for instance. In her time, Powell was further recognized as being a musical titan that stood alongside her contemporaries like Fritz Kreisler and Eugene Ysaye.

Further Information and Material

For more on Maud Powell, including new educational material and books, as well as notes on Maud Powell’s teaching artistry, please feel free to contact us via e-mail and with the contact form. Orion Music and Arts, Cambridge, MA

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