Jenö Takács  Austrian / American composer of Hungarian descent

Born Siegendorf, Austria, 25.09.1902 - Eisenstadt, 14.11.2005 at the record-setting age among composers of 103!

Takács studied in Vienna with Hans Gál and Josef Marx (composition) and Paul Weingarten (piano). Since then he lived a rather exotic life - first as teacher first at Cairo's Conservatory and later at the University in  Manila, the Philippines, where he also conducted some ethnographic musical research. From 1952 until 1970 he was teacher at The University of Cincinnati, after which he returned to his native town in Austria.

Takács at the piano

Toccata and Fugue op. 56  1951
The very beginning of this work is taken almost literally from the beginning of Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. This piece was not commissioned by Wittgenstein but after completing it Takács sent it to him - to no avail. Wittgenstein didn't like it and sent it back.

The Toccata and fugue  is recorded by Leon Fleisher, SONY Classics SK 48081

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Hilda Tanner

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One Can Tango

Patrick's Blues

Shadow Waltz

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Alexandre [Alexander] Tansman  Polish-French pianist, conductor and composer

Lodz, Poland, 12.06.1897 - Paris, 15.11.1986  

Tansman got his education first at the Lodz Conservatory under Gawronski and later at the Warsaw Conservatory as a pupil of Piotr Rytel (born: 1884). In 1919 he entered  the Warsaw musical competition in a most refined way. He entered two pieces under two different pseudonyms - and guess what? The two pieces won the first and second prize. 
In 1921 he moved to Paris and began his world-wide career as a pianist. In spite of his new French citizenship - he took refuge in USA from 1941 to 1946 due to his Jewish origin, and from this time on a Jewish Awareness began to influence his life and work. 
He had started composing under the influence of Chopin, but later he was influenced by Szymanowski, Ravel and Stravinsky - with a little dash of jazz; but he developed a unique style with a dynamic originality, picturesque orchestration, lyric tenderness and melancholy.
His oeuvre encompasses several operas, ballets and pieces of incidental music, more than seven symphonies, two piano concertos, and other works for solo instrument and orchestra, seven string quartets, other chamber music works and numerous pieces for piano solo.

Concert piece for piano and orchestra  1943
About this piece Wittgenstein wrote: Before I commissioned this work I made sure that the style of the composer was congenial to my own method of performance. I found that Tansman's modernism of the more conservative type made me feel at home. During the period of its creation  we studied the music thoroughly. We got to understand each other very well. In fact, I feel that I have absorbed the composer's idiom thoroughly  and I am confident that the public will find the work very interesting.

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Wilhelm Tappert  German composer, writer on music and critic.

Ober-Thomaswaldau, Silesia, 19.02.1830 - Berlin, 27.10.1927

He began his professional life as a schoolmaster but later at the age 26 he turned to music as a pupil of Siegfried Dehn and the music historian Adolf Kullak. 
From 1858 to 1866 he worked as a music critic on Glogau (Glogów) in Silesia. He was a in strong favor of the new German school and Wagner, and he published a small dictionary of critical abuse and satire of Wagner gathered from different papers, periodicals, pamphlets and monographs. This was not considered as funny and was certainly not appreciated by Tappert's friend, Richard Wagner himself.
At that time he was well established as a Teacher - teaching in Tausig's School for Higher Pianoforte playing in Berlin, but it was as a writer on music he became known and his own compositions have since been quite forgotten - indeed so forgotten that Grove's contributor, Thomas A. Grey did quite overlook that Tappert also was a composer himself of many songs, arrangements of folk songs and piano works (Etudes etc.). Not even the fact that Tappert for many years was a teacher at Tausig's School (documented in Grove's 5th edition from 1954 - but not mentioned by one word in the 1980 edition) made Mr. Grey suspect that Tappert was more than a writer on music - but also a composer.
But one of Tappert's scholarly writings certainly is interesting indeed: 54 Erlkönig-Kompositionen (54 compositions on the poem Der Erlkönig, Berlin 1858) - this probably making Erlkönig and Faust the two most used literary works set to music - and both were by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (of course the text to Masses and Requiems far exceeds this - but that is quite another story).

25 Übungen für die linke Hand allein (25 studies for the Left hand Alone) (Berlin: Simrock)
Mentioned in Louis Köhler: Führer durch den Clavierunterricht. Ein Repetorium der Clavier-literatur, p. 93

50 Übungen für die linke Hand allein (50 studies for the Left hand Alone)  (1867) (Simrock)
There has been some confusion about the number of pieces in this collection (48 or 50), but this confusion has now been solved once and for all by the pianist and music scholar Albert Sassmann from Vienna. With the score in his hand he has written to me (naturally with his left hand): The correct number is: 50. The reason for the error is very simple: Paul Wittgenstein was asked to edit a new publication of these Studies, and in the preface he states that in his edition he has omitted two exercises of the 50 Studies. Thus it became only 48. 

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(Karl Gottfried) Wilhelm Taubert  German composer, conductor and pianist

Berlin, 23.03.1811 - Berlin, 07.01.1891

Taubert was a pupil of Ludwig Berger (piano) and Bernhard Klein (composition) at the same time as he studied at the Berlin University from 1827 to 1830. In 1831 he was appointed accompanist to the court concerts and from that time on he advanced quickly: 1834 he became member of the Academy of Arts, 1841 he was made musical director of the Royal Opera and from 1845 to 1869 he was court Kapellmeister - the last years with the title of Oberkapellmeister. He continued to conduct the Royal Orchestra until 1883 and he was highly estimated as a teacher at the Royal Academy, where Theodore Kullak was one of his students.
Taubert was a close friend of Mendelssohn, who predicted him a glorious future as a composer, which  would also have come true - if it wasn't for two important things: Taubert had all the artistic and musical qualities that were required - but according to Mendelssohn he lacked the spirit and strength that it takes. And thus today - he is forgotten and none of his hundreds of works are performed any more.
Among these are the operas Der Kirmes (1832), Der Zigeuner (1832), Marquis und Dieb (1842), Macbeth (1847) Cesario, oder was ihr wollt (after Shakespeare's Twelfth Night - 1874).
For orchestra he wrote three symphonies, several orchestral pieces, two piano concertos, chamber works, songs and works for solo piano - including 5 sonatas.

Canzonetta in D flat major  c.1840

Canzonetta in G major  c.1840

Painting of Taubert by Eduard Magnus 1862

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Franklin Taylor  English pianist teacher and composer

Birmingham, 05.02.1843 - London, 19.03.1919

At first Taylor studied piano with C. Flawell and organ with the organist from Litchfield Cathedral, T. Bedsmore after which he was appointed organist at the Old Meeting-house in Birmingham. In 1859 he left this post to study at the Leipzig Conservatory for two years where his teachers were Louis Plaidy and Ignaz Moscheles  (piano), and Moritz Hauptmann, Richter and Papperitz (theory) so among his fellow-students were: Arthur Sullivan, John Frances Barnett, Francesco Berger and Edvard Grleg. 
He then moved on and became not only a pupil of Clara Schumann for a few years, but as a public performer and afterwards as a teacher he became a prominent exponent of her sound methods. During this time he became personally acquainted with Stephen Heller, Julius Schulhoff and Pauline Viardot-Garcia. 

	Stephen Heller (1814-1888)	Julius Schulhoff (1825-1898)	Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821-1910)

From 1862 on he was back in England plying in London, Liverpool and Birmingham and other cities and he was appointed organist of St. Peter's, Charlotte St., Twickenham Parish Church and St. Michael's, Chester Square. In n 1876 he became a staff-member at the National Training School and in 1882 piano professor at the Royal College of Music, which opened in 1882 as well as he was president of the Academy for the higher development of piano playing from 1873 to 1897.

	Royal College of Music, London

Taylor wrote a Primer of the Piano in 1879 and Piano Tutor and a series of Progressive Studies in 56 books. From 1891 to 1893 he was director of the Philharmonic Society and he was an important contributor to the first edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Progressive studies for the pianoforte. Book 10 and 11 (Part I & II)  edited, arranged in groups and the fingering revised and supplemented  1892

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Peter (Ilyich) Tchaikovsky  Russian composer

Kamsko-Votinsk, Viatka, 07.05.1840 - St. Petersburg, 06.11.1893

Compared with the majority of the composers on these pages Tchaikovsky was unique in one way at least - he did not come from a musical family - actually rather the opposite. Although he was deeply devoted to his French governess - Miss Dürbach - she did not encourage his musical appetite in any way - in fact she tried to curtail his time at the piano - and it was only the over-sensitive boy's own instinct that kept him aiming for a professional career of music.

First at the age of seven did Tchaikovsky get a proper piano teacher (Maria Palchikova - see above) and when the family moved to St. Petersburg he was entrusted to a Filippov (whose first name nobody seems to remember) where the boy made phenomenal progress. The story of another piano teacher of his and which is quite amusing, can be seen under the name Rudolf Kündinger. This - however - still didn't convince his family, so Tchaikovsky was sent to law school and in 1859 he passed into The Ministry of Justice as a first-class clerk. 
But all the time he stuck to his education as a pianist and composer and finally in 1863 he gave up his career of jurisprudence to become - not only a musician - but one the great composers of the world. The rest of the story is well known - except for the final chapter.
For almost a hundred years the whole world believed the story that he died from cholera after drinking a glass of infected water at a restaurant and hardly anybody questioned this. That is - at least not outside Russia for in that country there were still 50 years ago people around who had been in contact with those who witnessed his final days. Any way they knew that the story about cholera clearly was not true. Indeed everything about his death pointed towards something  - which can best be described as a devious conspiracy.
In short - Tchaikovsky had had a homosexual affair with the son of a very high-ranking person and some sort of tribunal (or court of honor) assembled to deal with the matter before it became publicly known. The result was that Tchaikovsky was voted guilty and was then given two choices: being exposed to public scandal, criminal prosecution with the loss of all rights and perhaps deportation to Siberia - or - like Socrates - take his own life. Since Tchaikovsky had always feared that the truth may one day come out (in fact he even tried to convince himself, that he was not a homosexual) - he chose the latter making his 6th symphony his farewell to this world  f.ex. by quoting a tune from the orthodox Russian requiem (1st movement bars 201-207):

Thus Tchaikovsky's last symphony was clearly autobiographical and his last testament to this world, which he also indicated with very enigmatic comments - that one day people would understand! His very close brother Modest knew the truth and he saw to it that the two doctors - Lev Bertenson and his brother - were both sworn to secrecy and Modest himself concocted the story of cholera though at the same time giving suspiciously many details. Maybe - in fact - he was sending out signals to the right people, that this was not the true story - just like crossing your fingers when telling a lie.

  Tchaikovsky on his deathbed - 
clearly not a victim of cholera

Perpetuum mobile for piano by Karl Maria von Weber for the left hand - arranged by P. Tschaikowsky.

This is almost made to fool anybody, but the notes themselves tell a different story.

These are the first bars and they can under no circumstances be played with one hand alone no matter which.
The piece is dedicated to the pianist Alexandra Jurewna Sographe (1850-1919) who could not play the right hand part. Instead she wanted it placed in the left hand and in 1871 Tchaikovsky arranged Weber's original in accordance with her wishes.
The reason for Tchaikovsky calling it Perpetuum mobile - and not just plain Rondo like Brahms is that in the period of the great romantic pianists this movement was often given as an encore under the name Perpetuum mobile. In the original score it is only called Rondo but Weber also wrote the following description: L'infatigable - that is the tireless one. Play it and you will realize why.

(Flower-waltz from the ballet The Nutcracker) See: Frédéric Meinders

(Barcarolle (June from the Seasons op. 37b) See: Frédéric Meinders 

(Lullaby op. 16 no. 1) See: Frédéric Meinders and Marc-André Hamelin

Fritz Teichmann

Born: ?  

Lyrische Stücke  c.1911 (Leipzig: Edition Peters)
12 Transcriptions from Grieg's op. 12, 58, 65 and 68.
Mentioned in Hofmeisters Handbuch der Klavierlitteratur 1914-1918, p.145

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Georg Philipp Telemann  German composer

Magdeburg, 14.05.1681 - Hamburg, 25.06.1767

Leichte Fuge (Easy Fugue) - (Einhändig)  (Verlag J. P. Tonger)

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Gaetano Tesoriero

Born: ?

Bells  (Albert Editions)

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Op. 91. Ein-finger-Übungen  (Dresden-Weinbohla: Verlag Aurora)

Op. 92. Zwei-finger-Übungen  (Dresden-Weinbohla: Verlag Aurora)

Op. 93, no. 2 Skalen-Vorstudien  (Dresden-Weinbohla: Verlag Aurora)
All three are mentioned in Hofmeisters Handbuch der Klavierlitteratur 1914 -1918, p. 456

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A. Charles Thibault  French-American pianist and composer

Born: ?

Thibault settled in USA teaching the piano from 1818 and until his death in 1853.

Etude de Concert: L'Ora Santa op. 8  c.1828
Dedicated to Henri Herz and a very early left hand piece
Mentioned in Hofmeisters Handbuch der Klavierlitteratur 1844-1851, p. 159

Etude Caractéristique: L'Invocazione op. 9  c.1828
Mentioned in Hofmeisters Handbuch der Klavierlitteratur 1880-1885, p. 653

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Metz, 05.08.1811 - Paris, 12.02.1896

(Romanza from the opera Mignon) See Ranieri Vilanova

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Bonnie Eloise - arr: George Pratt Maxim  (Boston: Boston Music Co)

Port Louis, Mauritius, 18.10.1850 - Paris, 169.11.1909

From 1866 to 1870 Thomé was a pupil of Marmontel and Duprato at the Conservatoire de Paris where he won second prize in 1869 (piano and harmony) and first prize in 1870 (counterpoint and fugue).
After that he worked as a teacher and at the same time composing songs, piano music, operas, operettas, ballets, a cello concerto, orchestral and choral works - his most famous piece being Simple Aveu op. 25. 

Barcarolle pour la main gauche seule from 20 Pièces d'enfant op. 130  (Paris: Lemoine)
Mentioned in Henry Lemoine & Cie; Musique de Piano. 

John S. Thompson  American pianist, teacher and composer

Born: Williamstown, PA, 1889 

Thompson began his musical studies at the Leefson-Hille Conservatory in Philadelphia and at the University of Pennsylvania. Since that he toured the United States and Europe as a concert pianist, and built a solid reputation as an outstanding musician and performer. 
He also taught in Philadelphia and in Indianapolis. In 1918, he joined the piano department of the Conservatory of Music of Kansas at age 29, and by 1926, he was serving as a member of the Conservatory's administrative board. When the Conservatory's previous president and director retired in 1930, Thompson became the acting director. Later he was officially appointed to the position of director, a post he held until 1939.
Apart from his teaching, administrative, and performance roles, Thompson was an active composer and transcriber but his perhaps most famous publications were his Teaching Little Fingers to Play; his six-volume series, Modern Piano Course and his three-volume series, Adult Piano Course. In these he used his own original compositions, simplified transcriptions of familiar classics, and actual works by famous composers. Thompson created a graded a series of piano pieces that allowed the student to begin with an introduction to the keyboard and music reading and then to progress to a more sophisticated performance level. All of his books teach, in the simplest language possible, interpretation and expression. One of his ideals was to use in miniature the same attacks as those used by the concert artist. These piano schools influenced thousands of piano students and made Thompson one of the most respected and sought-after pedagogues in the nation.

For the left hand alone  Vol. I 1959 & Vol. II 1962 (Willis Music Co.)
20 children's pieces of original character, adaptations or traditional tunes in arrangement

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Peter Thompson  British composer

Born: Peterborough, 1955

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Waltz  2004 (Fand Music Press)
In his note to this piece Peter Thompson writes: This Waltz was written to my aunt, Margaret Boyd, a pianist who, together with her baritone husband Wesley, emigrated to the U.S.. There they enjoyed a successful performing career before returning to their native Northern Ireland.
If the piece is successful, I hope it conveys some fragrance of delicate memory - imbued within enduringly - as may be the scent of sweetpeas one rainy August morning in Donaghadee.

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William H. Thompson

Born: ?

Londonderry Air; old Irish Melody  1943 (Presser)
Dedicated - To My Pupil Gerald Peel

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(No portrait)

Jacques Thouvenot 

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Sonatine pour la main gauche seule  (Merseyside ca. 1990) 

George Peter Tingley  American composer, teacher, and pianist

Born: Oakland, California, 19.06.1950

George Tingley began playing the violin at the age of four but it was when he got a piano at the age of 10 he began to improvise and write songs at the same time as he was getting piano lessons from his father. 
George Tingley received a BA in piano performance from California State University, Hayward, and completed both BM and MM degrees in Music Theory at the University of Southern California. During the 1970's he was a private composition student of the legendary Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
Today he is a highly active member of the Music Teacher's Association of California, participating in Marin County events and serving of the Board of Director's of the Alameda County Branch. In 1996 he was a featured composer at the national convention of the MYNA in Kansas City, Missouri.
In 1989, George began writing music for the educational market and now has  published over 60 piano pieces. 
His late-intermediate piano solo "Reverie", published by Alfred in 1991, has become a standard teaching piece and is performed over 3000 times a year in the United States and abroad. His collection of piano duet music, "Fiddle and the Tuba" (written for teachers and students to perform together on one piano), is listed in the bulletin of the National Federation of Music Clubs.
Tingley's association with Olympic figure-skating champion Kristi Yamaguchi began in 1992 when he completed a composition written especially for her entitled "Kristi's Theme". The piece to which she has skated several times was arranged for full symphony orchestra and recorded at the Fantasy Studios in Berkeley featuring Mr. Tingley as piano soloist.
In March 1997, the Berkeley Symphony premiered George's arrangement of the Irish folk melody "The Gold Ring" - a performance that featured his 10-year old daughter Ariel as flute soloist.

Scherzino  (Alfred Publishing) 

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Antoine Tisné  French composer

Lourdes, 29.11.1932 - Paris, 21.07.1998

The first thing that made a musical impact on Tisné was the sound of the mighty organ at The  Cathedral of Tarbes. This became a permanent influence on his later works - both the large masses of sound and the sacral and the spiritual atmosphere.
When he was twenty years old in 1952 he entered Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris as pupil of Georges Hugon, Noel Gallon, Darius Milhaud and André Jolivet
He has written in all genres from small educational pieces to opera, symphony an liturgical works - like the Offertorium pour Chartres, but Tisné is also a composer who has gathered much inspiration from nature from all the different places on the earth where he has traveled and much of his music is built on mystical thought and the position of Man in the Great Universe.

Lac (Lake)
The work which falls in four part is inspired by a symbolist poem by David Niemann the beginning of which is given here in my own English translation

Lac is recorded by Raoul Sosa Fleur de Lys FL 2 3080-1

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John Tobin  British conductor, composer and musicologist

Liverpool, 1891 - Weston-Super-Mare, 1980

John Tobin studied privately and got Music Master from the Liverpool College (1916-1918) after which he at the Holt School from 1918 to 1926.
As a conductor he was active first with the British National Opera Company (1926-1927) and from 1935-1939 he was appointed Director of Music at Toynbee Hall in London. During WW II he conducted the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (1940-1945) and one year later  he became conductor of the London Choral Society.
One of his major achievements as a musicologist was a new edition of Handel's Messiah which he made together with another Handel expert; Max Schneider (1875-1967). The first performance of this edition was given by the Society on 18 March 1950 in St Paul's Cathedral to outstanding critical acclaim, the Guardian describing the edition as being as near to the original as modern scholarship and resource can get. (It was first published in 1965).
His compositional output includes Song Cycles, Art Songs, Choral Works, Pianoforte Pieces and volumes of Educational Songs.

One hand piano pieces (Left or Right): 1. Prelude, 2. Caprice, 3. Barcarolle, 4. Night March, 5. Nocturne  1941 (Curwen)

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Hans Toifl  Austrian teacher and composer

???

Professor at Tiroler Landeskonservatorium and he has written a fundamental textbook about musical ornamentation, articulation and  phrasing in connection with the use of the metronome. 

Burleske für die linke Hand allein (Burlesque for the Left Hand Alone). (1949) (Edition Helbling, Zürich)  

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Jaroslaw Tomásek  Czech composer

Koryčany, Moravia, 10.04.1896 - Prague, 26.11.1970

First he attended the piano school of the Philharmonic Society in Brno (1906-1914), then he fought in the WW i, was injured and spent some time in hospital in Vienna. Since then he was not able to play the piano with both hands, and he did not play in the public any longer. After returning from the war he signed up for the study of musicology at the Charles University in Prague. More or less concurrently he studied composition privately with Vitezslav Novák and Jaroslav Křička. During his life he was employed largely as a librarian, 1950 - 1955 he was a director of the Czechoslovak Copyrights Society. In the 1920s and 1930s he became known as a composer of song cycles and piano pieces, as music editor he wrote a lot of reviews and articles in the then music magazines.  
Among his works - apart from his songs and piano pieces there are two string quartets from 1921 and 1942 and a rondo for piano from 1924. 

Sonata op. 7a & b (Two movements: 1. Maestoso lugubre, 2. Allegro appassionato)  (1926) (G. Zanibon)
Written for WW I invalid Otakar Hollmann, who has recorded it on LP record

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Instruktive Charakterstücke op. op. 7 no. 6  (Berlin: Simrock)
Mentioned in Adolf Ruthardt: Wegweiser durch die Klavierliteratur, p. 69 

Percy Turnbull  English composer and pianist

Old Benwell, Newcastle upon Tyne, 14.071902 - Broomers Hill, Pulborough, Sussex, 09.12.1976

Although Turnbull had all the talents to become a composer of some merit - he just didn't really make it - and besides he had other artistic talent which may have caused him not to be able to choose. He was - though - brought up in a very musical home playing all the classics with his father on two pianos and - of course -  being a cathedral choirboy. He early won a place at the Armstrong School of Arts for a course with emphasis on jewellery designing - but this came to nothing because of his father's call-up and young Percy had to go to work.
In 1923 he then entered the Royal College of Music on a foundation scholarship as well as with the economic help of a Mendelssohn Scholarship and a Sullivan Prize. At the college his main teachers were Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams and John Ireland.
One talent - that he did not have - was that of economic sense which often lead him to become a victim of economic depression and he had to fight his way being forced to pick up almost any odd musical work as best he could - score reading for Oxford University Press, editing piano rolls and playing to children at theatres.

Percy Turnbull as a very young man

After WW II he managed to be appointed piano teacher at the Surrey College of Music - a post he held from c.1945 to c.1956 when he retired and lived quietly for the rest of his life in Sussex - and in spite of the abundance of compositional brilliance he possessed  -  mostly painting!
His best music which certainly - along with that of other extinct composers - deserves to be heard again was composed in the twenties and thirties. 

Nr. 1 from: Two Studies in Allemande Style  1954 (Augener)
Nr. 2 is for both hands.

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Alfred Dudley Turner  American pianist, composer and teacher 

St. Albans Me., 24.08.1854 -  St. Albans Me., 07.05.1888

For a number of years Turner taught at the New England Conservatory of Music and Boston College of Music.
Among his works are a Cello sonata, a Violin sonata and numerous piano pieces. 

Four Melodious Studies op. 29  1884 (New York: C. Fischer and A. P. Schmidt)
Mentioned in Carl Fischer; Complete Catalogue of Piano Music, p. 14

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Gustav Tyson-Wolff 

(1840-1907)

20 Studien für die linke Hand op. 52  (Breitkopf und Härtel 1900)
These studies are composed after pieces by Cramer, Clementi und Chopin
Mentioned in Hofmeisters Handbuch der Klavierlitteratur 198-1903, p. 961 and Adolf Ruthardt: Wegweiser durch die Klavierliteratur p. 67

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