Eva Ruth Spalding


Eva Ruth Spalding was a British composer, violin and piano teacher who wrote six string quartets, solo piano music and songs.
Spalding was born in Blackheath, Kent, to Henry Spalding 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, later Lady Lennard.
Spalding studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where she passed the violin teacher exam in 1904. She also studied with Leopold Auer at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia. After returning to England, she taught piano and violin privately and at Bradfield College. In the 1920s she was sharing rooms and appearing in concerts with pianist composer Beatrice Mary Hall.. From the 1940s she lived at Tyndrum, Pond Lane, Churt in Surrey. In the 1950s she still occasionally performed in a piano duet with Daniel Kelly.
She set texts by the following poets to music: Léon Bazalgette, William Blake, Phineas Fletcher, Paul Fort, Fernand Gregh, George Herbert, Ioannes Papadiamantopoulos, Edmund Spenser, Charles van Lerberghe, Clara Walsh, and Walt Whitman.
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. It was described by critic Scott Goddard as "contemporary in sentiment, and not at all modern in manner". Her music was published by Maurice Senart, with many of the song texts in both French and English versions.
She died at Churt in 1969, aged 85.

Selected works

Piano
Songs
  • 'Berceuse d'Izumo'
  • Five Songs from Spencer's Amoretti
  • 'Mort! le vent pleure autour du monde'
  • 'Oses-tu maintenant'
  • 'Passing of the Spring'
  • 'Une Plaint'
  • 'Quand je viendrai m'asseoir'
  • 'Le Silence de l'eau'
  • 'Soupirs'
  • Three Melodies for voice and piano or string quartet
  • *'The Lamb'
  • *'The Litany'
  • *'Easter Words'
  • Three Melodies for voice and piano
  • * 'Youth, Day, Old Age and Night'
  • * 'A Clear Midnight'
  • * 'The Lost Invocation'
  • 'Le Vent nous pousse'
  • 'Vers le soleil s'en vont ensemble'
Chamber
  • Poeme  
  • String Quartet No. 1
  • String Quartet No. 2
  • String Quartet No. 3
  • String Quartet No. 4
  • String Quartet No. 5
  • String Quartet No. 6
  • Violin Sonata No. 1
  • Violin Sonata No. 2
  • Violin Sonata No. 3
Orchestral
  • Music for Strings