Amy Woodforde-Finden

Amy Woodford-Finden (1860 – March 13, 1919) was a composer who is best known for writing the music to "Kashmiri Song" from "The Four Indian Love Lyrics" by Laurence Hope.

Amy Woodforde-Finden, neè Amy Ward, was born in 1860 at Valparaiso, Chile, to an American officer serving as British Consul, and a British mother. She was one of nine children and when her father was killed, her mother relocated the family back to London. Around that time Amy displayed a skill for composition and became a student of Carl Schloesser and Amy Horrocks. Her early work, published as Amy Ward, though promising was received only tepidly.

At the age of 34, she married Lt Col Woodford Woodforde-Finden a brigadier and surgeon in the Indian Army; they lived in India for several years, during her time there she wrote and published what would become her most famous pieces: The Lover in Damascus and Kashmiri Song. The latter was originally self-published in 1902 but because of its popularity and the influence of Hamilton Earle, it was eventually published by Boosey & Co. The popularity of Kashmiri Song and kept her in the good graces of her publishing house and in the hearts of her audience. Her songs are noted for their sentimentality, their romantic fluidity and how they blend a particularly British, middle class sensibility with an Asian pastiche. In the years that followed the success of Kashmiri Song Amy composed On Jhelum River, The Pagoda of Flowers and Stars of the Desert. The year 1916 was a bittersweet one for Amy, she lost her husband in April and her work was featured in the film Less Than Dust. This was just the first of her work to be showcased in film. In 1943 Kashmiri Song would be used in the film Hers To Hold. Amy moved back to London after she lost her husband and survived him by only 3 years, passing on March 13, 1919. It is said that she died composing at the piano. Amy is buried at Hampsthwaite in Yorkshire and memorialized by a recumbent figure in white marble.

The legacy Amy Woodforde-Finden leaves is one of bridging cultures with music and words. She interpreted the sounds and motives of Asian-South Asian music to an American-European audience and transported the listener to a world of romance and the exotic.

ee also

* Orientalism
* Music of India

External links

* Lamb, A, grovemusic.com, accessed April 2007
* www.woodforde.co.uk/page32.htm
* [http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2001/nov01/article1.html NLA News, November 2001: Love Among the Lotuses ] at www.nla.gov.au