Liza Lehmann

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Liza Lehmann (11 July 1862 - 19 September 1918) was an English operatic soprano and composer, known for her vocal compositions.

Contents

[edit] Biography

She was born Elizabetha Nina Mary Frederica Lehmann, in London; her father was the German painter Rudolf Lehmann and her mother was Amelia (A.L.) Chambers, a music teacher, composer and arranger. Liza "grew up in an intellectual and artistic atmosphere" (Baker, 1992, p. 1030) and lived in Germany, France, and Italy in her early years. She studied singing in London with both Alberto Randegger and Jenny Lind, and her composition teachers included Hamish MacCunn in London, Niels Raunkilde in Rome, and Wilhelm Freudenberg in Wiesbaden.

On November 23, 1885, she made her singing début at a Monday Popular Concert, and spent the next nine years performing many important concert engagements in England, and she received encouragement from important European musicians such as Joseph Joachim and Clara Schumann.

She retired from the stage after a final concert at St James’s Hall on July 14, 1894, and married the composer and painter Herbert Bedford. For the rest of her life she concentrated on composing music. She completed one of her best known works two years later, in 1896, the song cycle for four voice and piano titled In a Persian Garden, settings of selected quatrains from Edward FitzGerald’s version of the Rubāiyāt of Omar Khayyām.

She composed many more song cycles and other works in the following years. In 1910 she made a successful tour the United States, where she accompanied her own songs in recitals. She became the first president of the Society of Women Musicians in 1911 and 1912, and was a professor of singing at the GSM and wrote a voice study text, Practical Hints for Students of Singing.

Liza Lehmann and Maude Valérie White were England’s foremost female composers of songs at the beginning of the 20th century. Although they both composed solo settings of serious texts, such as Tennyson’s In memoriam, they excelled in setting lighter material. Some of Lehmann’s compositional practices, such as her frequent use for four-voice cycles and writing piano links between songs, were consistent with her time, yet her pieces were inventive and are now often overlooked and disregarded. She wrote many children’s songs, ranging from the sweet and trivial There are fairies at the bottom of our garden to the melodically and harmonically passionate 'Stars' in The Daisy-Chain. Her tenor song ‘Ah, moon of my delight’ from In a Persian Garden is operatic indeed, even though she wrote very little for the theater.

[edit] Musical works

[edit] Stage

  • Seargeant Brue, musical farce (London, June 14, 1904)
  • The Vicar of Wakefield, light opera (Manchester, November 12, 1906)
  • Everyman, 1-act opera (London, December 28, 1915)

[edit] Vocal with orchestra

  • Young Lochinvar, text by Walter Scott, baritone, chorus, and orchestra (1898)
  • Endymion, text by Longfellow, soprano and orchestra (1899)
  • Once Upon a Time, cantata (London, February 22, 1903)
  • The Golden Threshold, text by S. Naidu, S, A, T, Bar, chorus, and orchestra (1906)
  • Leaves from Ossian, cantata (1909)

[edit] Vocal quartets with piano

  • In a Persian Garden (E. FitzGerald, after O. Khayyām) (1896)
  • The Daisy-Chain (L. Alma-Tadema, R.L. Stevenson and others) (1900)
  • More Daisies (1902)
  • Nonsense Songs (from L. Carroll: Alice in Wonderland) (1908)
  • Breton Folk-Songs (F.M. Gostling) (1909)
  • Prairie Pictures (Lehmann) (1911)
  • Parody Pie (1914)

[edit] Songs for solo voice

  • Mirage (H. Malesh) (1894)
  • Nine English Songs (1895)
  • Eight German Songs (1888)
  • Twelve German Songs (1889)
  • In memoriam (Tennyson) (1899)
  • Cameos: Five Greek Love-Songs (1901)
  • Five French Songs (G. Boutelleau, F. Plessis) (1901)
  • To a Little Red Spider (L.A. Cunnington) (1903)
  • The Life of a Rose (L. Lehmann) (1905)
  • Bird Songs (A.S.) (1907)
  • Mr. Coggs and Other Songs for Children (E.V. Lucas) (1908)
  • Liza Lehmann Album (1909)
  • Five Little Love Songs (C. Fabbri) (1910)
  • Songs of a ‘Flapper’ (Lehmann) (1911)
  • Cowboy Ballads (J.A. Lomax) (1912)
  • The Well of Sorrow (H. Vacaresco: The Bard of the Dimbovitza) (1912)
  • Five Tenor Songs (1913)
  • Hips and Haws (M. Radclyffe Hall) (1913)
  • Songs of Good Luck (Superstitions) (H. Taylor) (1913)
  • Magdalen at Michael’s Gate (H. Kingsley) (1913)
  • The Poet and the Nightingale (J.T. White) (1914)
  • The Lily of a Day (Jonson), 1917
  • There are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden (R. Fyleman), 1917
  • When I am Dead, My Dearest (C. Rossetti), 1918
  • Three Songs for Low Voice (Meredith, Browning) (1922)

[edit] Other vocal works

  • The Secrets of the Heart (H. Austin Dobson), soprano, alto, and piano (1895)
  • Good-Night, Babette! (Austin Dobson), soprano, baritone, violin, ‘cello, and piano (1898)
  • The Eternal Feminine (monologue, L. Eldée) (1902)
  • Songs of Love and Spring (E. Geibel), alto, baritone, and piano (1903)
  • The Happy Prince (recitation, O. Wilde) (1908)
  • Four Cautionary Tales and a Moral (H. Belloc), two voices and piano (1909)
  • Four Shakespearean Part-Songs (1911)
  • The Selfish Giant (recitation, Wilde), 1911
  • The High Tide (recitation, J. Ingelow) (1912)
  • Behind the Nightlight (J. Maude, N. Price) (1913)
  • Three Snow Songs (Lehmann), solo voice, piano, organ, female chorus (1914)

[edit] Instrumental

  • Romantic Suite, violin and piano (1903)
  • Cobweb Castle, piano solo (1908)

[edit] Writings

  • The Life of Liza Lehmann, by Herself (London, 1919)
  • Practical Hints for Students of Singing

[edit] External links

  • [1] a biography of Liza Lehmann
  • [2] more about Liza Lehmann's stage works

[edit] References

  • Baker, Theodore (1992), “Lehmann, Liza”, in Slonimsky, Nicolas, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Eighth Edition, New York: Schirmer Books, pp. 1030-1031, ISBN 0-02-872415-1 .
  • Banfield, Stephen. "Liza Lehmann", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 3 June 2008), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
  • Banfield, Stephen (1995), “Lehmann, Liza”, in Sadie, Julie Anne & Rhian Samuel, The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, New York: W. W. Norton, pp. 275-277, ISBN 0-333-515986 .
  • Stern, Susan (1978). Women Composers: A Handbook. Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., p. 109. ISBN 0-8108-1138-3.