Bertha Feiring Tapper

Background

Tapper was born at Christiania, (now Oslo) Norway on January 25, 1859. She was the daughter of Lars Olsen Feiring and Berthe (Iversen) Feiring.

Education

She was musically inclined from childhood and commenced her first studies in her native town with Johann Svendsen and Agathe Backer-Gr"ndahl. Later she went to Leipzig, Germany, where she was graduated from the conservatory of music in 1878.

In October 1895 she went to Vienna to study with Theodor Leschetizky and remained there until 1896 when she returned to the United States.

Career

In 1881 she came to the United States and became active as a teacher of piano and as a pianist, playing principally with chamber music groups, notably with Franz Kneisel and the Kneisel Quartet. From 1889 to 1895 she was a graduate teacher at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachussets.

She continued her career as a teacher and from 1905 to 1910 was an instructor of advanced piano pupils at the Institute of Musical Art in New York City. A number of her pupils, among them, Leo Ornstein, Newton Swift, and Abram Chasins, achieved distinction on the concert platform and as composers and teachers. She was quick to realize how long she herself should teach each student and when he should go abroad for study to broaden his training and his imagination under new tutorship and in a new environment. She befriended and inspired her pupils; often she would take one of them to the Tapper summer home at Blue Hill, Me. , for an entire season.

She composed a number of piano pieces and songs and contributed articles to musical journals. Her most important published work was Grieg's Piano Works which she edited for the Musician's Library.

She died in Boston, where she had been taken following an illness at Blue Hill.

Achievements

• As a teacher she possessed a keen perception of how much could be made of embryonic talent, and she always had an accurate idea of the technical equipment necessary for each pupil to achieve the goal she had set for him.

Connections

Bertha Feiring was married twice; first, to her piano instructor at the Leipzig conservatory, Louis Mass, and, second, on September 22, 1895, to Thomas Tapper, musician, editor, and author of books on musical subjects.

Father:

Lars Olsen Feiring

Mother:

Berthe (Iversen) Feiring

Spouse:

Thomas Tapper

He was a musician, composer, lecturer, writer, and editor.

Spouse:

Louis Mass

Friend:

Edvard Grieg

He was a Norwegian composer and pianist.