William Mason was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and pianist

Pianist

A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

 and a member of a musical family.

Mason's father was composer Lowell Mason

Lowell Mason

Lowell Mason was a leading figure in American church music, the composer of over 1600 hymn tunes, many of which are often sung today. His most well-known tunes include Mary Had A Little Lamb and the arrangement of Joy to the World...

, a leading figure in American church music. His younger brother, Henry Mason

Henry Mason

Henry Mason was one of the co-founders of the American piano manufacturer Mason and Hamlin.He was the son of American church music composer Lowell Mason, and the brother of composer William Mason.-Notes:...

, was a co-founder of the piano manufacturers Mason and Hamlin

Mason and Hamlin

Mason & Hamlin is a piano manufacturer based in Haverhill, Massachusetts.-The nineteenth century:Mason & Hamlin was founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1854 by Henry Mason, son of Lowell Mason, the American hymn composer and musical educator, and Emmons Hamlin, a mechanic and inventor who had...

.

After a successful debut at the Boston Academy of Music, William went to Europe in 1849; there he was the first American piano student of Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

 and Ignaz Moscheles

Ignaz Moscheles

Ignaz Moscheles was a Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso, whose career after his early years was based initially in London, and later at Leipzig, where he succeeded his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as head of the Conservatoire.-Sources:Much of what we know about Moscheles's life...

. Mason was the leader of a chamber ensemble based in New York that introduced many works of Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

 and other famous Europeans to Americans during the Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 era and beyond, at a time when classical music still had little specifically American identity. He published numerous pedagogical works for the piano student but is remembered above all for his Chopinesque

Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....

 compositions for piano.

The American composer and pianist Edward MacDowell

Edward MacDowell

Edward Alexander MacDowell was an American composer and pianist of the Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites "Woodland Sketches", "Sea Pieces", and "New England Idylls". "Woodland Sketches" includes his most popular short piece, "To a Wild Rose"...

(1860-1908) dedicated his second piano sonata, Op. 50 Sonata Eroica (1895), to William Mason.

Further reading