BRAHMS the piano teacher
Until the early 20th century, being a pianist-composer tended to encapsulate different ‘piano centric’ activities. Take Clementi (highly regarded by Brahms): virtuoso player, prolific composer, businessman (publisher and instrument maker) and teacher. Or Chopin, whose extensive teaching schedule when living in Paris for about half a year meant that dedicated composition time was by and large restricted to when he was out of town in the French countryside.
Brahms’s own musical journey was different, but then again, being able to live predominantly off composition had become more attainable from the 1860s onwards. Nevertheless, Brahms’s reputation as a piano composer, and his proximity to the Schumann circle, made him someone that a number of younger musicians gravitated towards, whether for compositional feedback or pianistic advice.
The two key accounts of Brahms as piano teacher have slightly different backgrounds: one is almost accidental (that of Eugenie Schumann), the other more intentional (Florence May).
It seems that the youngest daughter of Robert and Clara Schumann, Eugenie (1851-1938),
