Emerson Meyers, Composer and Pianist, Dies

The Washington Post - Washington, D.C. by Claudia Levy, Dec 7, 1990

H. Emerson Meyers, a Washington pianist and teacher and professor emeritus of Catholic University, who was an early composer of electronic music, died of pneumonia Dec. 5 at Providence Hospital. He was 80.

Mr. Meyers was particularly active in the Washington arts community in the decade after World War II. He appeared as a soloist, organized music for Washington's 150th anniversary celebration, directed fund-raising for the National Symphony Orchestra and was music director for revived summer concerts at the Watergate bandshell on the Potomac.

Known then as a dazzling classical pianist, he helped train young musicians interested in one of music's new directions, the electronic, tape-augmented tones that were created in Europe in the late 1930s.

"I couldn't stand the sounds when I first came into contact with them," Mr. Meyers said in an interview 26 years ago. "There was no direction, no form; they were just sensational noises, not music. In fact, I disliked them so much that electronic music aroused my curiosity, and I decided to look into it." He said he soon discovered that a composer had greater control over that kind of music than any other form.

His own compositions, sometimes incorporating the taped sounds of voices and unlikely instruments, were performed in recitals and concerts here and elsewhere in the country.

Washington Post music critic Joseph McLellan described Mr. Meyers's work as wide in range. The composer was "a moody impressionist" in one piece, an "ascetic atonalist," in another, and, in a third, "a parodist whose sense of humor stops a hairsbreadth short of slapstick," McClellan wrote. Mr. Meyers was also a composer who demanded "considerable virtuosity from his performers," the critic said.

In 1964, Mr. Meyers founded the electronic music center at Catholic University, whose faculty he joined in 1943. He said he hoped to promote the then-experimental musical form that was being widely explored in Europe and half a dozen American universities.

Mr. Meyers, a resident of Hyattsville, was born in Washington. He graduated from Central High School and studied piano and composition at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. In addition to his work at Catholic University, he taught privately and at several other colleges.

In 1943, he won first prize for chamber music from the National Federation of Music Clubs, one of a number of awards, prizes and commissions that he received over the years.

During World War II, he served as an Army infantryman in Europe. In 1955, and again in 1962, he was awarded Fulbright grants to study at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Liege, Belgium.

Mr. Meyer was a member of the board of directors of the National Symphony and a past president of the Washington Music Teachers Association, the Maryland Music Teachers Association, the Eastern Division of the Music Teachers National Association, the Peabody Alumni Association and the Kindler Foundation.

He was a member of the Cosmos Club.