Marie Jaëll

Marie (Trautmann) Jaëll (17 August 1846 – 4 February 1925) was a French pianist, composer, and pedagogue. Marie Jaëll composed pieces for piano, concertos, quartets, and others, She dedicated her cello concerto to Jules Delsart. and was the first pianist to perform all the piano sonatas of Beethoven in Paris. She did scientific studies of hand techniques in piano playing and attempted to replace traditional drilling with systematic piano methods. Her students included Albert Schweitzer, who studied with her while also studying organ with Charles-Marie Widor in 1898-99. She died in Paris.

Her father was the mayor of Steinseltz in Alsace, and her mother was a lover of the arts. She began piano studies at the age of six and by seven, she was studying under piano pedagogues F.B. Hamma and Ignaz Moscheles in Stuttgart. Marie's mother served as her advocate and manager. A year after she began lessons with Hamma and Moscheles, she gave concerts in Germany and Switzerland.

In 1856, the ten-year-old Marie was introduced to the piano teacher Heinrich Herz at the Paris Conservatory. After just four months as an official student at the Conservatory, she won the First Prize of Piano. Her performances were recognized by the public and local newspapers; the Revue et gazette musicale printed a review on July 27, 1862 that reads: "She marked it [the piece] with the seal of her individual nature. Her higher mechanism, her beautiful style, her play deliciously moderate, with an irreproachable purity, an exquisite taste, a lofty elegance, constantly filled the audience with wonder."

On August 9, 1866, at twenty years of age, Marie married the concert pianist, Alfred Jaëll. She was then known variously as Marie Trautmann, Marie Jaëll, Marie Jaëll Trautmann or Marie Trautmann Jaëll. Alfred was fifteen years older than Marie and had been a student of Chopin. The husband and wife team performed popular pieces, duos, solos, and compositions of their own throughout Europe and Russia. As a pianist, Marie specialized in the music of Schumann, Liszt, and Beethoven. They transcribed Beethoven's "Marcia alla Turca Athens Ruins" for piano; the score was successfully published in 1872.

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