Madeleine Dring

Madeleine Winefride Isabelle Dring (September 7, 1923 – March 26 1977) was an English composer and actress.

Life

Madeleine Dring was born into a musical family and showed talent at an early age, taking lessons in the junior division of the Royal College of Music from the age of nine. She attended on scholarship for violin, though her talent for the stage was also noticed, and she performed in the children's theatre. She continued at the Royal College for senior-level study in music, where her composition teachers included Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, and Gordon Jacob; she also studied mime and drama. Dring's two loves of theatre and music would coexist happily; many of her compositions were for the stage, upon which she often sang and played piano.

In 1947 she married Roger Lord, an oboist, for whom she composed several works, including the highly-regarded Dances for solo oboe. They had a son in 1950.

A book, "Madeleine Dring: Her Music, Her Life", by Ro Hancock-Child, was published in 2003, with cartoon illustrations from Dring's own notebooks. Dring died in 1977 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Music

A student of Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams, Madeleine Dring's style is typically light and unpretentious. She admired the idiomatic and rhythmically vibrant writing of Francis Poulenc, which is echoed in her works. Her harmonizations are often jazzy; her writing has often been compared to that of George Gershwin. She wrote many of her songs for herself and as such made no particular effort to make them easy to sing, melodically, as she herself had perfect pitch.

As family responsibilities would keep her from completing large-scale works, most of Dring's output was in shorter forms; she wrote a good deal of solo piano and chamber music, as well as many pedagogical works. She did, however, complete a one-act opera, "Cupboard Love", and a dance drama, "The Fair Queen of Wu".

Works

(Dring often provided no dates for her compositions; many dates come from Alistair Fischer's treatise on her.)

Instrumental and vocal

*"Italian Dance" (1960) Oboe and Piano
*"Fantasy Sonata"(1938), piano and clarinet
*"3 Fantastic Variations on Lilliburlero"(1948), two pianos
*"Jig" (1948), piano
*"Prelude and Toccata" (1948), piano
*"Tarantelle" (1948), piano duet
*"3 Shakespeare Songs" (1949)
*"Festival Scherzo" (1951), piano and string orchestra;
*"Sonata for two pianos" (1951)
*"Thank you, Lord" (1953), vocal, text L. Kyme
*"March: for the New Year" (1954), piano
*"Caribbean Dance (Tempo Tobago)" (1959), piano duet or solo
*"Dance Suite" (1961), piano
*"Polka" (1962), oboe and piano
*"Colour Suite" (1963), piano;
*"The Pigtail" (1963) vocal duet, text A. von Chamisso
*"Danza gaya" (1965), two pianos or oboe and piano
*"Dedications" (1967), vocal setting of 5 poems by R. Herrick
*"3 Dances" (1968), piano
*"Trio for Flute, Oboe, and Piano" (1968)
*"4 Night Songs" (1976), vocal, text M. Armstrong
*"5 Betjeman Songs" (1976), vocal
*"Valse française" (1980), solo or duo piano
*"3 Pieces: WIB Waltz, Sarabande, Tango" (1983), flute and piano
*"Waltz" (1983), oboe and piano
*"Suite" (1984), harmonica and piano (later arranged by Peter Lord for oboe)
*"Trio for oboe, bassoon, and harpsichord" (1986)

Theatre, drama, and television

*"The Emperor and the Nightingale" (1941), incidental music
*"Tobias and the Angel" (1946), incidental music
*"Somebody’s Murdered Uncle" (1947), incidental music for BBC radio
*"Waiting for ITMA" (1947), ballet for BBC TV
*"The Wild Swans" (1950), children's play
*"The Fair Queen of Wu" (1951), dance-drama for BBC TV
*"The Marsh Kings’s Daughter" (1951), children’s play
*"Airs on a Shoestring" (1953), musical revue
*"Pay the Piper" (1954), musical revue
*"From Here and There" (1955), musical revue
*"Fresh Airs" (1955), musical revue
*"Child’s Play" (1958), musical revue
*"The Buskers" (1959), incidental music
*"Little Laura" (1960) cartoon series music for BBC TV
*"The Jackpot Question" (1961), incidental music for Associated TV
*"Four to the Bar" (1961), musical revue
*"The Whisperers" (1961), incidental music for Associated TV
*"The Provok’d Wife" (1963), incidental music
*"The Lady and the Clerk" (1964), incidental music for Associated TV
*"I Can Walk Where I Like, Can’t I?" (1964), incidental music for Associated TV
*"When the Wind Blows" (1965), incidental music for Associated TV
*"Helen and Edward and Henry" (1966), incidental music for Associated TV
*"Variation on a Theme" (1966), incidental music for Associated TV
*"The Real Princess" (1971), ballet, 2 pianos
*"Cupboard Love", opera

References

*Stephen Banfield, "Madeleine Dring". Grove Music online. [http://www.grovemusic.com (subscription access)]
*Richard Davis, "Singer's Notes: Seven Shakespeare Songs of Madeleine Dring". "South Central Music Bulletin", Volume III, no.1, Fall 2004. [http://www.txstate.edu/scmb/SCMB_III_1.pdf (.pdf format)]

External links

*imdb name|id=2317097
* [http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2000/apr00/dring.htm musicweb.uk.net]