Woman of the Century/Emma Hahr

HAHR, Miss Emma, pianist, composer and musical educator, was born in Fayetteville, N. C. She is of Swedish parentage on the paternal side, and on the maternal of French Huguenot extraction. Her father, Franz Josef Hahr, was a Swedish general whose ancestors had for generation, held prominent places at court. He was both musical composer and artist. He gave Emma the choice of music or painting. She turned to music. The groundwork or her musical education was laid by her father. After his death she was sent to Germany, where she had the peculiar good fortune to be received into the home of Karl Klinworth as a private pupil. That led to another privilege, the happiest that could have fallen to the ambitious young genius, that of becoming a pupil of Liszt. She studied under the great master at Weimar the summer before he died. In him she found her ideal guide. One of the highest of the many honors conferred upon her on her return to America was an invitation to appear in concert in the Music Teachers' National Association in Philadelphia. Then followed a series of triumphs throughout the South. There was but one verdict, from the press, from critical audiences, from rival artists: A musical genius of rarest type. Though Miss Hahr has made Atlanta, Ga., her home for several years, where she has been perhaps a more potent factor than any other in awakening and developing musical interest throughout the South, being a teacher of teachers, it is, however, her intention to accept one of the many calls she has received to go on a concert tour through America. In all her labors, as teacher and on the concert stage, she has never ceased to be a student, and she has found time for much earnest composition. Her "Lullaby" and "Good-Night Song" are perhaps her best known contributions to the music of America. She EMMA HAHR. has also composed the music for two ballads, a "Song" from Browning's "Pippa Passes." and Orelia Key Cell's "Lady in the Moon." Besides these, there are yet many studies which have met the enthusiastic endorsement of the judges, but which the composer modestly withholds until she shall have more fully tested her strength with less ambitious efforts.