The American Matthay Association for Piano
Founded in 1925 • Celebrating One Hundred Years
For over a century, the American Matthay Association for Piano has preserved and promoted the teaching principles of Tobias Matthay (1858-1945) through scholarship, publications, annual festivals, recordings, and the continuing work of teachers and performers throughout the world.
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History of the Association
In July of 1925, Tobias Matthay hosted a dinner at High Marley, his beautiful country home in Sussex, in honor of what he termed his American summer school—lessons and classes that had been attracting U. S. citizens increasingly since the end of World War I. A few weeks earlier, since she knew Matthay planned to lead a toast on that evening, his wife, Jessie, asked Bruce Simonds, a professor at the Yale School of Music, to "respond" for the Americans by preparing a few remarks. Simonds spoke somewhat shyly that evening, and had no idea that he was about to give birth to the American Matthay Association.
The Matthay Piano Festivals
Each year the American Matthay Association sponsors the Matthay Piano Festival, bringing together teachers, students, scholars, and performers for lectures, masterclasses, recitals, and discussions devoted to the teaching principles of Tobias Matthay.
Additional information about the current Festival will appear here, along with registration information, programs, and special announcements.
Tobias Matthay (1858-1945)
Tobias Matthay has gained a hallowed, respected status among contemporary piano teachers and theorists, but through much of the twentieth century, his ideas were often regarded as controversial. In 1922, composer Frederick Corder, a professor at London's Royal Academy of Music, wrote that Matthay had revolutionized piano teaching and brought British pianism to new heights internationally, but less than fifty years later, British composer and pianist Alan Bush declared that Matthay had been "the ruination" of pianism in England. Ironically, for his entire life, Matthay revered science and sought to apply the scientific method to piano instruction, but after World War I, his ideas were often regarded as "unscientific."
