Tobias Matthay

Tobias Matthay studied at Royal Academy of Music. Training under William Sterndale Bennett, Arthur Sullivan and Walter Cecil Macfarren is recorded. George Aitken, Eileen Joyce and Moura Lympany are recorded as having studied under Tobias Matthay. The recorded working language is English. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are classical music. Employment is recorded with Royal Academy of Music.

• Name — Tobias Matthay • Born — 19 February 1858 • Birthplace — Clapham, London, England • Died — 15 December 1945 • Place of death — High Marley, Haslemere, Sussex, England • Education — Royal Academy of Music • Relatives — * Marjory Kennedy-Fraser (brother-in-law) • David Kennedy (father-in-law) • David Kennedy Fraser (nephew)

Matthay was born on 19 February 1858 in Clapham, London to Tobias Matthey and Dorothea Matthey (Wittich). Both of Mathay's parents were language teachers who were born in Bergisches Land, Prussia (present-day Germany). Matthay was the elder brother of the music professor and examiner Dorothea Kennedy (née Matthay). He entered London's Royal Academy of Music in 1871 and eight months later he received the first scholarship given to honour the knighthood of its principal, Sir William Sterndale Bennett. At the academy, Matthay studied composition under Sir William Sterndale Bennett and Arthur Sullivan, and piano with William Dorrell and Walter Macfarren.

He served as a sub-professor there from 1876 to 1880, and became an assistant professor of pianoforte in 1880, before being promoted to professor in 1884. With Frederick Corder and John Blackwood McEwen, he co-founded the Society of British Composers in 1905. Matthay remained at the RAM until 1925, when he was forced to resign because McEwen—his former student who was then the academy's Principal—publicly attacked his teaching. In 1903, after over a decade of observation, analysis, and experimentation, he published The Act of Touch, an encyclopedic volume that influenced piano pedagogy throughout the English-speaking world. So many students were soon in quest of his insights that two years later he opened the Tobias Matthay Pianoforte School, first in Oxford Street, then in 1909 relocating to Wimpole Street, where it remained for the next 30 years. The teachers there included his sister Dora. He soon became known for his teaching principles that stressed proper piano touch and analysis of arm movements. He wrote several additional books on piano technique that brought him international recognition, and in 1912 he published Musical Interpretation, a widely read book that analyzed the principles of effective musicianship. However, whilst acknowledging its importance, his RAM colleague Ambrose Coviello later felt the need to interpret his writing, which he criticized for its lack of clarity: The interminable repetitions, recapitulations, summaries, footnotes, all with a change of emphasis and as often as not with new names for the same thing, led enquirers into a maze from which only the clearest brain equipped with a dogged perseverance, could extricate itself. Many of his pupils went on to define a school of 20th century English pianism, including Arthur Alexander, York Bowen, Hilda Dederich, Norman Fraser, Myra Hess, Lloyd Hartley, Denise Lasimonne, Clifford Curzon, Harold Craxton, Moura Lympany, Gertrude Peppercorn, Louise Christine Rebe, Ruth Roberts, Irene Scharrer, Lilias Mackinnon, Guy Jonson, Vivian Langrish, Hope Squire, Eileen Joyce, jazz "syncopated" pianist Raie Da Costa, Harriet Cohen, Dorothy Howell, and the duo Bartlett and Robertson. He taught many Americans, including Ray Lev, Eunice Norton, and Lytle Powell, and he was also the teacher of Canadian pianist Harry Dean, English composer Arnold Bax and English conductor Ernest Read. In 1920, Hilda Hester Collens, who had studied under Matthay from 1910 to 1914, founded a music college in Manchester named the Matthay School of Music in his honour. It was later renamed the Northern School of Music, a predecessor institution of the Royal Northern College of Music.

In 1893, Matthay married Janet "Jessie" Henderson Matthay (née Kennedy; died 1937) a reciter, professor of elocution and writer. Through his wife, Mathay was the son-in-law of the singer David Kennedy, the brother-in-law of Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, a singer, educator and suffragette, and the uncle of the psychologist David Kennedy Fraser. A biography of Matthay, written by Jessie, was published in 1945.. On 15 December 1945, Matthay died at his country home, High Marley, in Haslemere, Sussex.

Orchestral • Concert Overture (1874) • Symphony in A minor (1874) • Piano Concerto in D minor (1874) • Scherzo for Orchestra in D minor (1875) • Concert Overture in C (1877) • Symphony (1878) • Reminiscences of Country Life, concert overture (1879) • Hero and Leander, scena for contralto and orchestra (1879) • In Summer, symphonic overture (aka Introduction and Allegro) (1880) • Andante for Orchestra (1881) • Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra in D minor (1881) • In May, symphonic overture (1883) • Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra in A minor (1895) Chamber • Piano Quartet in F (1876) • Piano Quartet, op. 20 (1882, revised 1905, published 1906) • Piano Trio in F • Ballade for cello and piano, op.40 (1936) Piano Works (selected) • Moods of a Moment, op.11 (1886, revised and published 1920) (ten pieces) • Love Phases, op.12 (1880, published 1912) (includes 'Doubts', 'Avowal', 'Response') • Studies in the form of a Suite op.16 (1887) (eight studies) • Elves, op.17 (1898, published 1911) • Con Imitazione, op. 18 • Sketch-Book No 1 op.24 (includes 'May Morning', 'Terpsichore') (1914) • Sketch Book No 2, op.26 (1916) • 31 Variations and Derivations on an Original Theme op.28 (1891, published 1918) • Five Cameos, op. 29 (1919) • On Surrey Hills op.30 (1919), includes 'Twilight Hills', 'On Holiday', 'Night Shadows', 'Wind Sprites' • Three Lyric Studies, op.33 (1921) • Ballade in A minor, op. 39 (1926) • Five Miniatures, op.45