d piano-playing. Her sight-reading abilities
were something phenomenal, and she could play from full instrumental
scores with ease. Her home became the centre of a brilliant circle,
including Weber, Hummel, Lindpaintner, and poets as well as musicians.
She was much prized as a teacher of piano and singing, and a personal
favourite in her native city. Of her compositions, the most ambitious is
an overture to the play "Die Geister Insel." She wrote also several
piano pieces, among them three polonaises. But according to German
authority,[7] it is her songs that have made her memory honoured. Her
originality and her skill in metrical treatment have won her high
praise, and many of the songs achieved wide popularity.

Leopoldine Blahetka, the Austrian pianist, was one of the most prolific
of women composers. Born near Vienna in 1811, she made such rapid
progress under her mother's tuition that by Beethoven's advice she was
placed under Czerny in her fifth year. She pursued composition as well
as piano, and when twelve years old was able to appear in Vienna and
play a set of variations with her own orchestral accompaniment. Among
her later teachers were Moscheles, Kalkbrenner, and Sechter. She made
frequent tours, and met with universal success. The criticisms of her
work include an extremely favourable notice by Schumann. In 1840 she
settled in Boulogne, where she became renowned as a teacher, and led a
successful career until her death in 1887.

Of her many works, the most ambitious are a piano concerto, the
"Souvenir d'Angleterre" for piano and orchestra, and two sets of piano
variations with orchestral accompaniment. Among her numerous examples of
chamber music are found variations for string quartette and piano, two
piano quartettes, a piano trio, several violin sonatas, a polonaise, and
sets of variations for 'cello, violin, and flute with piano. She has
composed a grand duet and a number of solos for piano, also numerous
vocal duets and songs. Her operetta, "Die Raeuber und die Saenger," was
successfully produced at Vienna.

One of Germany's greatest women composers was Emilie Mayer. Hers was a
fortunate position, for she was always well provided for, and could
exercise her powers without the need to think of the financial result.
She was born in Friedland in 1812, her father being "Apotheker," a
position of far more importance in German towns than that held by our
pharmacists. Emilie showed the usual signs of music