Tobias Matthay

Tobias Augustus Matthay (London, 1858 – High Marley, near Haslemere, 1945) was one of the most influential figures in British piano pedagogy at the beginning of the twentieth century. His parents were German, and his father later acquired British nationality. His importance lies less in his output as a composer than in the method he developed for teaching the piano and in the writings in which he set it out.

Trained at the Royal Academy of Music, which he entered in 1871, he won the Sterndale Bennett scholarship and studied with Bennett himself, as well as with Prout, Sullivan and Macfarren. In 1876 he was appointed sub-professor at the institution, and between 1880 and 1925 he served as a full professor. His first recital in London took place at Princes Hall on 28 November 1884. In 1900 he founded his own school to disseminate his theories on piano technique and the teaching system that derived from them.

These theories were set out in The Act of Touch, a pioneering work that sought to analyse in depth the physical aspects of piano playing, classifying the vertical movements of the fingers into different species of touch and stressing muscular relaxation and the rotation of the forearm. Many of his conclusions were challenged by other researchers in the field, especially by James Ching, who offered scientific evidence in support of his own arguments. Nevertheless, the quality of his teaching was reflected in the success of his pupils and collaborators, among them Hess, Scharrer, Cohen, Craxton, Bowen, Langrish, Lympany and Robertson, and Ching himself acknowledged the singular value of Matthay's pioneering work in his Piano Technique.

His compositions include an overture, In May, a piano quartet, some songs and a considerable amount of music for piano. His legacy endures above all in his extensive written output, which includes titles such as The Child's First Steps in Pianoforte Playing, Musical Interpretation and On Memorizing and Playing from Memory, and in the mark he left on generations of British pianists.