Back in the days before we had Netflix, podcasts and endless TikTok videos to fill our leisure hours we, like our great grandparents, would have had to create our own entertainment. Back then, one of the most popular ways of doing this was to gather round the piano and have a singsong. And while refined young ladies might play a little Schubert or sing a little lieder what most people wanted was some nice memorable tunes with catchy lyrics and piano accompaniments that were easy enough for the moderate amateur pianist to master.
‘Bless This House’ which Patricia Hammond, accompanied by Matt Redman, is singing here at Sunday’s Highgate Society lunchtime concert, is a perfect example of a popular parlour song. It was composed by May Brahe in 1927, setting words by Helen Taylor.
May was an Australian born in 1885. When she was 15 her mother died and her father’s business failed so, to support the family she left school to teach piano, accompany singers and write songs for the singers to perform. At the age of 27 she took a huge risk and, leaving her husband and two small children behind, embarked for England. Composing as fast as she could go, often under a series of pseudonyms as publishers were reluctant to publish more than 4 songs a years from one compser, she earned 2 (old) pennies for every sheet of music sold. Her songs were hugely successful and she was soon earning enough to bring her family to England.
In 1925 she was taken on an annual retainer (unusual for any composer, let alone a woman) by Boosey and Hawkes. Over the next 18 years she published over 400 songs many of which were ‘covered’ by all the great singers of the day.
And if Bless this House was a classic example of the genre, May Brahe was a classic example of a parlour song composer. Virtually all were women most of whom started composing to support their families who, for whatever reason, had fallen on hard times. So, the three songs that Patrica sings in the short clip below:
‘Come back to Erin’ which most people believe was an Irish folk tune was actually composed by Charlotte Alington Barnard who wrote both music and poetry under the pseudonym of Claribel. Born in 1830 in Lincolnshire she moved to London in the 1850s. She did perform her own ‘charming songs’ but her success as a song writer was mainly thanks to the patronage of the hugely popular contralto Charlotte Sainton-Dolby who brought Claribel’s songs to her own fan base. An early protegée of Booseys Charlotte established one of the first royalty arrangements with her publisher.
‘Pale Hands I loved beside the Shalimar’ (composed in 1903) was one of Amy Woodforde Finden’s Four Indian Love Lyrics – words by Adela Florence Nicholson (pen name Laurence Hope). Both ladies had married officers in the Indian raj, joining their husbands on the North West Frontier where Adela at least lived a somewhat racy life. The Love Lyrics were castigated by the critics as ‘sentimental trash’, but the songs were hugely successful with the public, Pale Hands I love beside the Shalimar inspiring films, novels, plays and two perfumes still available today.
‘At the end of a Perfect Day’ is American Carrie Jacobs-Bond’s most famous song. Born in 1862 and moderately well off as a girl Carrie turned to song writing when first her father’s and then her husband’s businesses failed. When her husband died in 1895 she moved to Chicago where she kept herself and her son by painting ceramics and singing her songs at social gatherings. Failing to persuade any of the male dominated music publishers to print her songs, she established her own sheet music company – and so was the only woman in the industry to own every word of every one of her massively popular songs. Over 25 million copies of the sheet music for ‘At the end of a perfect day’ were sold – making Carrie a very rich woman.
If you want to know more about these fascinating, if now all but forgotten, women Patricia’s book, She Wrote These Songs, is a mine of information and anecdote. Check into her site here where you can buy the book (a snip at mere £10) and the CD which goes with it (a mere £5).
You can also log into hers and Matt’s You Tube channel which is overflowing with fun things to listen to.
Or…. You could pop over to Matt’s site for more on the 50+ instruments that he plays! These include the antique banjo that accompanied ‘Come Back to Erin’ – which had seen service in the trenches – and the harp guitar below on which he is currently writing a PhD!
And, don’t forget……
Saturday 4th November – 6.30pm – Hampstead Lane
Nathaniel Mander plays the Baroque spinet – for more see this post.
£30 to include an 18th century buffet dinner – book here
Sunday 26th November – 10a South Grove
Jazz duo – Shirley Smart – cello – and Peter Michaels – guitar
£15 to include the Bucks fizz – book here or pay on the door
What a wonderful post! I’m a friend of Patricia’s, and I’ve also been researching Claribel for over two years, so I love seeing Claribel get her flowers.
Couple minor quibbles: her middle name was actually Alington, not Alingham (though she did set a poem by William Allingham to music near the end of her life). Regarding concerts, she did sometimes perform at private gatherings, and her identity seems to have been a bit of an open secret in her social circles. Her songs acquired far more fame, though, thanks to Charlotte Sainton-Dolby, the contralto who’d impressed the bejeezers out of Felix Mendelssohn in the 1840s. Sainton-Dolby added one of Claribel’s first published songs, “Janet’s Choice,” to her repertoire in early 1860 and essentially brought Claribel’s music to her existing fanbase. It’s not a stretch to say that the London Ballad Concerts, initially dreamt up by John Boosey and Charlotte Sainton-Dolby, were started as a marketing vehicle for Claribel and other ballad composers in Boosey’s catalogue (e.g. Virginia Gabriel, Elizabeth Philp).
That said, Claribel *did* perform in public concerts on what seems to be a single-digit number of occasions. In her hometown of Louth, people knew exactly who she was, but I believe at other concerts, her real name wasn’t on the program. The most notable public performance by Claribel that I’ve found so far was a charity concert at Dudley House in April 1866, raising money for Dr. Protheroe Smith’s Hospital for Women. Princess Alexandra and Duchess Mary of Cambridge were the royal patrons!
Thank you so much, Whitney, for your comment and the extra information. I have updated the post to include Charlotte Stainton Dobly’s contribution to Claribel’s success.