Biography
Maria Theresia von Paradis, active as a composer, singer and keyboardist, lost her sight in childhood. Around 1800 she founded a music academy for girls and played a key role in developing notation tools that enabled blind musicians to write down their work. Among her surviving output are three stage pieces, cantatas, piano concertos, sonatas and numerous songs, although many of the latter have disappeared. Salieri and Kozeluch served as her teachers, and their stylistic fingerprints remain audible throughout her scores. Her prodigious ability and unusually sensitive keyboard technique took her on concert tours through nearly every major European capital, where she performed as pianist, organist and vocalist alike. Mozart, whom she likely encountered in 1783 or 1784, dedicated his B-flat piano concerto, K456, to her.