Eva Ruth Spalding

Last updated

Eva Ruth Spalding (19 December 1883 - March 1969) was a British composer, violin and piano teacher who wrote six string quartets, solo piano music and songs. [1] [2]

Contents

Spalding was born in Blackheath, Kent, to Henry Spalding (a paper merchant) and his second wife Ellen. She was the youngest of eight children, with four half-siblings and three full siblings. One of the full siblings was Selma Nellie Spalding (1881-1965), later Lady Lennard. [1]

Spalding studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where she passed the violin teacher exam in 1904. [3] She also studied with Leopold Auer at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia. [4] After returning to England, she taught piano and violin privately and at Bradfield College. [5] In the 1920s she was sharing rooms and appearing in concerts with pianist composer Beatrice Mary Hall (1890-1961). [6] (Hall's Six melodies pour piano (1923) are dedicated to Spalding). From the 1940s she lived at Tyndrum, Pond Lane, Churt in Surrey. [7] In the 1950s she still occasionally performed in a piano duet with Daniel Kelly (1898-1993). [8]

She set texts by the following poets to music: Léon Bazalgette, William Blake, Phineas Fletcher, Paul Fort, Fernand Gregh, George Herbert, Ioannes Papadiamantopoulos (as Jean Moréas), Edmund Spenser, Charles van Lerberghe, Clara Walsh, and Walt Whitman. [5] [9] [10] [11] [12]

Spalding composed six string quartets, the first in the early 1920s. No. 5 was performed by the Aleph String Quartet at the Wigmore Hall on Tuesday 25 April 1950, along with the Five Songs from Spencer's Amoretti, sung by tenor Frederick Fuller. [13] It was described by critic Scott Goddard as "contemporary in sentiment, and not at all modern in manner". [14] Her music was published by Maurice Senart, with many of the song texts in both French and English versions. [1]

She died at Churt in 1969, aged 85. [15]

Selected works

Piano

Songs

Chamber

Orchestral

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Eva Ruth Spalding 1882-1969". www.unsungcomposers.com. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  2. ↑ Stewart-Green, Miriam (1980). Women composers : a checklist of works for the solo voice. Boston, Mass.: G.K. Hall. ISBN   0-8161-8498-4. OCLC   6815939.
  3. ↑ The Musical Times. November 1904. p. 690.
  4. ↑ Hill, Ralph (1946). The Penguin Music Magazine. Penguin Books.
  5. 1 2 Cohen, Aaron I. (1987). International Encyclopedia of Women Composers. Books & Music (USA). ISBN   978-0-9617485-1-7.
  6. ↑ 'British Music Society', in The Woolwich Herald, 15 October 1920, p. 4
  7. 1 2 3 Who's Who in Music 5th edition (1969), p. 294
  8. ↑ 'For Music Lovers', Nursing Times, Vol. 46, Issue 11, 18 March 1950, p. 291
  9. ↑ "Eva Ruth Spalding (1882 - 1969) - Vocal Texts and Translations at the LiederNet Archive". www.lieder.net. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  10. ↑ Office, Library of Congress Copyright (1958). Catalog of Copyright Entries: Third series.
  11. ↑ Catalog of Copyright Entries: Musical compositions. Library of Congress, Copyright Office. 1925.
  12. ↑ Whitman, Walt (1938). Complete Poetry & Selected Prose and Letters. Nonesuch Press.
  13. 1 2 3 'A New Quartet', in The Daily Telegraph, 26 April 1950, p. 6
  14. ↑ 'A new string quartet', London Daily News, 30 April 1952, p. 5
  15. ↑ The Times, 30 June 1969, p. 10
  16. ↑ Patterson, Donald L. (1999). One Handed: A Guide to Piano Music for One Hand. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN   978-0-313-31179-6.
  17. ↑ 'Gifted Pianist Lacks Warmth', in The Daily Telegraph, 30 April 1958, p. 10
  18. ↑ British Music Information Centre (1972). Instrumental Solos and Duos by Living British Composers.
  19. 1 2 British Music Collection
  20. ↑ Radio Times, Issue 1605, 15 August 1954, p. 31
  21. 1 2 "Margaret Kitchin: Concert pianist and champion of modern British composers". The Independent. 30 June 2008. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.