William Smythe Babcock Mathews was born on May 8, 1837 in Loudon, New Hampshire. He was the son of Samuel S. Mathews, a Methodist minister, and Elizabeth Stanton Babcock. His mother encouraged the development of his musical talent from an early age.
After studying piano with local teachers, he attended the Lowell, N. H. , Conference Seminary, and then continued his studies in Boston.
At the age of fifteen he was already a teacher of music at the Appleton Academy, Mount Vernon, N. H. From 1857 to 1860 he was professor of music at the Wesleyan Female College of Macon, Ga. Later he taught piano in Greensboro, N. C. , and in Marion, Ala. , but he left the South for Chicago where, from 1867 to 1893, he was organist of the Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church. During this period also he wrote most of his books on music. In 1866 he had become a contributor to Dwight's Journal of Music, and he continued to write for the journal until its discontinuance in 1881. From 1869 to 1871 he edited Lyon and Healy's Musical Independent, and at various times he acted as music critic for the Chicago Record, Times, and Daily Tribune. On November 1, 1891, he issued the first number of the magazine Music, which he edited until it merged with the Philharmonic in 1902. In 1910 he removed from Chicago to Denver where he died two years later. Just before his death he spent several months in Dallas, Tex. , revising the correspondence courses of the Columbian Conservatory of Music.
Mathews' books on music, popular and educational in character, include: An Outline of Musical Form (1868), with William Mason; Emerson Organ Method (1870), in collaboration with L. O. Emerson; A System of Technical Exercises for the Pianoforte (1878), with William Mason; How to Understand Music; One Hundred Years of Music in America (1889); A Popular History of the Art of Music (1890); Pronouncing and Defining Dictionary of Music (1896), with Emil Liebling; Music, Its Ideals and Methods (1897); The Masters and Their Music (1898); and The Great in Music (3 vols. , 1900 - 03), each volume designed to cover a year's work in study and appreciation for music-student extension clubs. He also published various compilations of instructive technical studies for the piano, notably the Studies in Phrasing (2 vols. , 1883 - 88); Standard Graded Course of Studies for the Pianoforte (1893) in ten grades; and the supplementary eight volumes of Graded Materials for Piano Teaching (1895).
Mathews did much to raise the general level of music educationin the West. He was a zealous advocate of the cultural value of music in the community and continually preached the need of organization among teachers and musicians.
Mathews' first wife was Flora E. Swain, of Nunda, N. Y. , to whom he was married in 1857. His second wife was Blanche Dingley, whom he married in 1902.
