Marian Arkwright
Marian Ursula Arkwright was an English composer, pianist and string player. She was one of the first women in England to earn a Bachelor of Music degree, and the first woman to earn a doctorate in music, which she gained in 1913. Arkwright worked as an orchestral musician, composer and conductor, and received a prize for an orchestral work from The Gentlewoman.
Life
Marian Arkwright was born in Norwich, Norfolk, England on 25 January 1863, a descendent of Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the Spinning Jenny. Her brother was the musicologist Godfrey Edward Pellew Arkwright.Arkwright studied piano with Bernhard Althaus and also took piano lessons from Charles Hallé. She also studied double bass with Charles Henry Winterbottom and composition with J.S. Liddle, organist at Newbury. She was awarded the L.R.A.M. in 1891, earned a Bachelor of Arts in music at Durham University in 1895, and a doctorate in music at the same university in 1913, making her the first English woman to gain a PhD in music.
After completing her studies, she worked as an orchestral musician and composer and conducted orchestras including the Newbury Amateur Orchestral Union. She served as secretary of the English Ladies' Orchestral Society and the Highclere Choral Society, and was a leader of the Rural Music Schools movement.
In 1906 she received the £25 first prize from The Gentlewoman for an original orchestral work The Winds of the World, inspired by the Kipling ballad ‘The Flag of England’. It was first performed at Newbury in 1907 and repeated in the same year by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, with the composer conducting. Her Melbourne Suite for strings was composed for the 1907 Australian Exhibition of Women's Work.
She died unexpectedly on the 23 March 1922 at Crowshott, Highclere, a few hours after performing in the orchestra for a Newbury Choral Society performance of The Messiah.
Works
Arkwright published three volumes of violin and piano duets and two Concert Pieces for viola and piano. She was noted for unusual instrument combinations. She took an interest in folk music and her Japanese Symphony contained Japanese airs that she had noted down herself, following a trip to Japan with Lucy Broadwood.. Nigel Burton considers her The Dragon of Wantley, a ballad for three voices, to be her best children's work.Her 1914 Requiem Mass was well received in the early stages of World War 1, though Kate Kennedy has since judged it "jingoistic in the extreme". A more authentic response to the war came later, in Through the Mist, a musical account of the returning of the body of the Unknown Warrior on HMS Verdun in 1920.
OrchestralA Blackbird's Matins, concert overture Hymn of Pan, scena for baritone and orchestraJapanese Suite for strings Melbourne Suite for strings
- Symphony in A minor, The Japanese Through the Mist Variations on an air by Handel Winds of the World, symphonic suite
- Up to those bright and gladsome hills, psalm, two part canon
Chamber music
- Piano and violin duets, Vol. 1, 2 and 3
- Quintet for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoonA Retrospect, cello solo
- Rêveries for piano, oboe and viola
- Scherzo and Variations for piano, clarinet and bassoon
- Trio for piano, oboe and horn
- Trio for pianoforte, oboe and viola
- Two concert pieces for viola and piano