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Laura Wilson Barker

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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

She 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]

Her other works 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),[10] 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.[11] The composer was present.[12]

Several of Barker's paintings hang at Smallhythe Place in Kent, Ellen Terry's house.[13]

Personal life

Barker 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 Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Henry Irving, Charles Reade, Alfred Tennyson, Ellen 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.[14]

Selected works

  • Seven Romances for voice and guitar (1836)
  • Ode to the Passions (text William Collins 1846)
  • Six Songs (1847)
  • 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

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ "Laura Wilson Barker (1819–1905)", Royal Academy of Arts, accessed 19 February 2023
  3. ^ a b c Rathbone, Jeanne. "Laura Wilson Barker", Damesnet, accessed 18 February 2019
  4. ^ "Nicolo Paganini: His Life and Work" (2022)
  5. ^ a b Aaron C Cohen. International Encyclopedia of Women Composers (1981), p. 33
  6. ^ David Griffiths. A History of Institutional Music-Making in York, University of York thesis (1990) p. 231
  7. ^ a b Howes, Craig. "Taylor, Tom", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 3 January 2008 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  8. ^ "Tom Taylor", The Magazine of Art, Vol. 4 (1881), p. 68
  9. ^ Taylor, Tom (translator). Ballads and Songs of Brittany (1865), Internet Archive
  10. ^ 'Songs of Youth', in The Musical Times, Vol. 25, No. 499 (September 1884), p. 533
  11. ^ The Academy, Vol. 57, p. 90
  12. ^ 'Hovingham Festival', in The Musical Times Vol. 40, No. 678 (August 1899), pp. 545-546
  13. ^ "'Laura Wilson Barker", ArtUK, accessed 19 February 2023
  14. ^ 'Porch House', Coleshill.org