Katharine Mary Adela Maddison, née Tindal (15 December 1862[1] – 12 June 1929), usually known as Adela Maddison, was a British composer of operas, ballets, instrumental music and songs.[2] She was also a concert producer. She composed a number of French songs in the style of mélodies;[3] for some years she lived in Paris, where she was a pupil, friend and possibly lover of Gabriel Fauré.[4] Subsequently living in Berlin, she composed a German opera which was staged in Leipzig.[3] On returning to England she created works for Rutland Boughton's Glastonbury Festivals.[5]
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She was born at 42 York Terrace, Regent's Park, London on 15 December 1862 (rather than in 1866 as is sometimes stated),[1] the daughter of Vice Admiral Louis Symonds Tindal (1811–76)[2] and Henrietta Maria O'Donel Whyte (1831/2–1917).[6] Her grandfather was the judge Nicolas Conyngham Tindal.[7] She seems to have been raised in London.[2] On 14 April 1883 she married barrister and former footballer Frederick Brunning Maddison (1849–1907), at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate, London.[7] They had two children, Diana Marion Adela and Noel Cecil Guy,[8] born in 1886 and 1888 respectively.[2] Her first published works date from 1882.[5] Twelve Songs in 1895 marked the emergence of a distinctive style.[3]
From around 1894, Maddison and her husband played a major part in encouraging and facilitating Fauré's entry onto the London musical scene.[9] Her husband was now working for a music publishing company, Metzler, which obtained a contract to publish Fauré's music during 1896–1901. She provided English translations of some of his mélodies,[4] and of his choral work La naissance de Vénus, Op. 29; Fauré used the latter translation in 1898, when he conducted a choir of 400 at the Leeds Festival.[10] Fauré was a friend of the family and in 1896 vacationed at their residence in Saint-Lunaire, Brittany.[4] She became Fauré's pupil,[5] and he thought her a gifted composer.[4] She composed a number of mélodies, setting the works of poets such as Sully Prudhomme, Coppée, Verlaine and Samain;[3] in 1900 Fauré told the latter that her treatment of his poem Hiver was masterly.[5]
During 1898 – c. 1905, she lived in Paris without her husband;[2] Fauré's biographer Robert Orledge believes there was a romantic liaison with Fauré,[4] who dedicated his Nocturne No. 7, Op. 74, to her in 1898; this piece was expressive of his feelings towards her, according to Orledge.[11] Fauré gave her the nocturne's manuscript; it is now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.[8] In Paris she was also acquainted with Delius, Debussy[3] and Ravel,[2] and produced performances of her own works and those of others.[3][5]
From Paris she moved to Berlin, where she continued to produce concerts,[5] and composed an opera, Der Talisman, which was staged in Leipzig in 1910.[3] While in Germany she formed a friendship with Martha Mundt,[5] who was from Königsberg.[10] Music historian Sophie Fuller believes it is quite likely this was a lesbian relationship.[5] They left Germany for France, where Mundt obtained work with Winnaretta Singer, Princess de Polignac, and they moved on to London when World War I started. Their friendship continued in some form into the 1920s,[5] with Maddison often travelling to Geneva to visit Mundt there.[10]
Maddison moved to Glastonbury, Somerset and spent a number of years in the production of works for the Glastonbury Festivals of that era.[5] These included the ballet The Children of Lir, which was subsequently staged in 1920 at the Old Vic.[3]
Her piano quintet, written in 1916,[3] but first performed in 1920, was a success.[2] She continued to compose opera and songs, and to produce concerts, into the 1920s.[2][5]
She died in Ealing, London in 1929.[3] The scores for the compositions she created during her stays in Paris and Berlin, and for the music she created for the Glastonbury Festivals, seem to have been lost.[5]
Selected works include:[3][12]