Laura Wilson Barker (6 March 1819 – 22 May 1905), was a composer, performer and artist, sometimes also referred to as Laura Barker, Laura W Taylor or "Mrs Tom Taylor".[1]
Career
editShe was born in Thirkleby, North Yorkshire, third daughter of a clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Barker.[2] She studied privately with Cipriani Potter and became an accomplished pianist and violinist.[3] As a young girl Barker performed with both Louis Spohr and Paganini.[4] She began composing in the mid-1830s - her Seven Romances for voice and guitar were published in 1837.[3] From around 1843 until 1855 she taught music at York School for the Blind.[5] During this period some of her compositions - including a symphony in manuscript, on 19 April 1845 - were performed at York Choral Society concerts.[6]
On 19 June 1855 she married the English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine Tom Taylor.[7] Barker contributed music to at least one of her husband's plays, an overture and entr'acte to Joan of Arc (1871),[8] and provided harmonisations as an appendix to his translation of Ballads and Songs of Brittany (1865).[9]
Barker wrote several sonatas and a great many other pieces for the piano - including the Four Studies (1846) and Revolution Waltzes (1849) - which are now in the collection of her great great grandson, Rupert Stutchbury. There are also some variations for organ and other music.[10] Other pieces include the cantata Enone (1850), the violin sonata A Country Walk (1860), theatre music for As You Like It, (April 1880), Songs of Youth (1884),[11] string quartets, madrigals and solo songs.[5] Her choral setting of Keats's A Prophecy, composed in 1850, was performed for the first time 49 years later at the Hovingham Festival in 1899.[12] The composer was present.[13]
Several of Barker's paintings hang at Smallhythe Place in Kent, Ellen Terry's house.[14]
Personal life
editBarker lived with her husband and family at 84 Lavender Sweep, Battersea. There were two children: the artist John Wycliffe Taylor (1859–1925), and Laura Lucy Arnold Taylor (1863–1940). The Sunday musical soirees at the house attracted many well-known attendees, including the Prince of Wales, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Henry Irving, Charles Reade, Alfred Tennyson, Clara Schuman, Ellen and Kate Terry and William Makepeace Thackeray.[3]
Tom Taylor died suddenly at his home in 1880 at the age of 62.[7] After his death, his widow retired to Porch House, Coleshill in Buckinghamshire, where she died on 22 May 1905, aged 86.[15]
Selected works
edit- Seven Romances for voice and guitar (1836)
- The Sprite Polka (1844) for piano
- Morceau Characteristique (1845), piano four hands
- Four Studies (1846) for piano
- Ode to the Passions (text William Collins 1846)
- Six Songs (1847)
- Dungeon Ghyll Force (1848), piano four hands
- Piano Sonata No. 1 (1849)
- Proteus: Fantasia (1849) for piano
- Revolution Waltzes (1849) for piano
- Enone, cantata (1850)
- A Prophesy, choir and orchestra (text Keats, 1850, fp. 1899)
- Six Songs (1852)
- Violin Sonata A Country Walk (1860)
- Music to Shakespeare's As You Like It (fp. 14 April 1880)
- Songs of Youth (1883)
References
edit- ^ Brown, James Duff; Stratton, Stephen Samuel (1897). British Musical Biography: A Dictionary of Musical Artists, Authors, and Composers Born in Britain and Its Colonies. S.S. Stratton.
- ^ "Laura Wilson Barker (1819–1905)", Royal Academy of Arts, accessed 19 February 2023
- ^ a b c Rathbone, Jeanne. "Laura Wilson Barker", Damesnet, accessed 18 February 2019
- ^ "Nicolo Paganini: His Life and Work" (2022)
- ^ a b Aaron C Cohen. International Encyclopedia of Women Composers (1981), p. 33
- ^ David Griffiths. A History of Institutional Music-Making in York, University of York thesis (1990) p. 231
- ^ a b Howes, Craig. "Taylor, Tom", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 3 January 2008 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
- ^ "Tom Taylor", The Magazine of Art, Vol. 4 (1881), p. 68
- ^ Taylor, Tom (translator). Ballads and Songs of Brittany (1865), Internet Archive
- ^ Rupert Stutchbury, YouTube channel
- ^ 'Songs of Youth', in The Musical Times, Vol. 25, No. 499 (September 1884), p. 533
- ^ The Academy, Vol. 57, p. 90
- ^ 'Hovingham Festival', in The Musical Times Vol. 40, No. 678 (August 1899), pp. 545-546
- ^ "'Laura Wilson Barker", ArtUK, accessed 19 February 2023
- ^ 'Porch House', Coleshill.org