Luella Totten

Luella Totten (c. 1870 – November 5, 1950) was an American pianist, composer, and music educator. She was also known as Louis von Heinrich. Early life Luella G. Totten was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of William Henry Denny Totten and Ann Elizabeth Covert Totten. Her father was in the iron business. “Pittsburgh, that wonderful city of steel, iron, coal, smoke, art and progress, with its unnumbered millions and millionaires, has produced nothing more remarkable than this woman composer,” declared a music magazine in 1908. She studied piano in Chicago, and in Vienna with Theodor Leschetizky. She also worked with Edvard Grieg. Later in life, she studied composition at Yale University School of Music. In 1900 she won the Steinert Scholarship, a competitive award for piano study at Yale. In 1902 she became the third woman to earn a Bachelor of Music degree at Yale. She pursued further studies in composition at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and with Max Reger in Leipzig, before World War I. Career Totten taught music at Shimer College from 1894 to 1898. She had an affair with politician and physician Henry Winfield Haldeman. She was fired from her position at S