Music like Mason

William Mason (January 24, 1829 – July 14, 1908) was an American composer and pianist and a member of a musical family. His father was composer Lowell Mason, a leading figure in American church music, and his younger brother, Henry Mason, was a co-founder of the piano manufacturers Mason and Hamlin.

Mason was born in Boston. After a successful debut at the Boston Academy of Music, he went to Europe in 1849; there he was the first American piano student of Franz Liszt and Ignaz Moscheles. He became the leader of a chamber ensemble based in New York that introduced many works of Robert Schumann and other famous Europeans to Americans during the Civil War era and beyond, at a time when classical music still had little specifically American identity.