EMIL VON SAUER

A debut biography resurrects a forgotten musician.

Few remember the name of Emil von Sauer today, but the German virtuoso left his mark on the history of Western music. A pupil and heir of Liszt, he edited piano works by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Chopin. “During the past two decades,” writes Crocus in her introduction, “musicologists have questioned the dearth of information about the man behind the music. My research about this musical giant confirms that Emil von Sauer was a force of nature who merited a biography—and should have never been forgotten.” Born in Hamburg in 1862, Sauer was around a piano from an early age. His mother, Julia, was an accomplished pianist. At the age of 15, Sauer developed his own revolutionary performance style, and he later became a student of Liszt during the final years of the composer’s life. Sauer’s career brought him into collaboration with other musical titans, including Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Strauss, and allowed him to tour the United States. What’s more, Sauer witnessed and reacted to the changing face of a unified Germany through two world wars. With original sources, including Sauer’s own memoirs, the author reconstructs the pianist/composer’s life, relationships, successes, and failures. Crocus’ prose is smooth and accessible, concentrating on her subject’s emotional life in addition to his musical accomplishments. Here, she discusses his unwillingness to train his daughter to follow in his footsteps: “He was not displaying jealousy or denying his children pleasure by discouraging a music career but trying to protect them. He knew only too well the challenges, disappointments, stress, nomadic lifestyle, and loneliness of the constant travel and hotels.” The author will not quite succeed in persuading readers of the injustice of Sauer’s modern obscurity—indeed, he seems just the sort of figure who would become little known after his death. Even so, the milieu in which he lived and worked was an intriguing one, and Crocus is adept at connecting him to many notable figures of the time, showing how the world of musical composition intersected with the political situations of the day.

An often captivating account of an obscure pianist and composer.