Background

Stephen Albert Emery was the son of the famous lawyer and judge, Stephen Emery, of Paris, Maine, and his wife Jennett Loring. As a boy, Emery was gifted with such acute musical understanding that he composed little pieces before being able to read notes; later, with the aid of an elder sister, he learned how to write out his musical thoughts.

Education

On finishing the usual school work in his home town, he entered Colby College in 1859, but a year there impaired his sight and left him unwell.

Career

After a rest, he turned to music as a career. Following his first instruction under Henry S. Edwards, in Portland, he went abroad in 1862. This gave the young man a chance for more serious study at Leipzig, under Plaidy, Papperitz, Richter, and Hauptmann, supplemented by a season at Dresden, under Spindler. Returning to Maine in 1864.

It was in connection with this work that he published his well-known Elements of Harmony (1879), and his Foundation Studies in Pianoforte Playing (1882), written primarily for his own children. He also began a course in theory, though this subject was treated in a rather elementary fashion at the time, with the emphasis on somewhat simple esthetics instead of the detailed analysis of later days. He introduced also into his teaching the enlivening device of a weekly question- and-answer hour, in which the speaker answered all relevant questions that the students had dropped into the box used for that purpose. He was so well liked personally that when he was ill, no less a man than Chadwick took over his lessons, so that the invalid might lose no salary. Emery also became professor of composition and theory at Boston University, which was one of the earliest colleges to create a music department. As one of the assistant editors of the Musical Herald, he wrote many interesting articles. His numerous lectures were another factor in extending his influence. His compositions, of which there were about 150, were sometimes rather simple in style, but very popular in their appeal. They included sonatinas of some merit ; string quartets which illustrated the composer’s classical learning; smaller piano pictures, such as the “Kinderspiel, ” and “Die Schwester spielt” ; and songs and choruses, both sacred and secular. Emery died in Boston.

Achievements

• Emery gave lessons at Portland until the “great fire” caused such serious financial damage to his pupils’ families that he left for a career of larger usefulness in Boston. There he became professor of harmony and piano at the opening of the New England Conservatory, founded by Eben Tourjée. His teaching at that institution made him famous, and he numbered among his pupils many musicians of later prominence.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Supplementary Exercises, Chants And Chorals To Emery's Elements Of Harmony (Russian Edition)

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Elements of Harmony 1879

    (Originally published in 1879. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • Heads and Hands. Fundamental technique for the pianoforte. Op. 37. Parti ... Augmented and revised edition
  • Grasshopper's Song (Sherwood Music School Courses Preparatory B, Composition 254)
  • 3 Albumblätter für das Piano

Connections

Father:

Stephen Emery

Mother:

Stephen Emery