Overture No. 3

But when her father took his own life in 1840, 26 years after the death of her mother, she set out on a path to become a composer. With a significant inheritance, she moved to Stettin to join her brother and studied composition with Carl Loewe, who was the first to recognize her immense talent. In 1847, after publishing her first two symphonies, she moved to Berlin to continue her composition studies with Adolf Bernhard Marx and orchestration with Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht. As a financially independent and unmarried woman, she was able to organize concerts to promote her music, which led to increased recognition in Berlin.

Despite the prejudices and conventions of the time, Mayer achieved a certain level of success with both audiences and critics, earning the nickname “the female Beethoven”—and not only due to her prolific output but also her compositional style. She wrote eight symphonies, around fifteen overtures, piano music, and an impressive body of chamber music. Her works were performed in Berlin, Vienna, Cologne, Munich, Lyon and Brussels. Emilie Mayer died in Berlin in 1883 and was buried in Trinity Cemetery, not far from Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn.

Composed around 1850, her Overture No. 3 is likely a revised version of an earlier work. Much like an operatic overture, it begins with a slow and solemn introduction, followed by a lively and springlike Allegro built around two contrasting themes: the first a dance and the second more lyrical. The work is consistent with Classical Viennese music, with hints of Beethoven’s influence.