Jane Joseph
MIRAGE (Voice & String Quartet)
Bardic Edition BDE1186
Five songs to poems by Christina Rossetti for voice and string quartet edited by Alan Gibbs. Score and parts.
Song; Song in a cornfield; One foot on sea, and one on shore; Mirage; Echo
Jane Joseph (1894-1929) was outstanding amongst Holst’s pupils at St. Paul’s Girls' School and subsequently pursued her own musical career, including as a composer. For Holst she was amanuensis, adviser, copyist, arranger, and trusty "right hand" in organizing such events as Whitsun Festivals and Purcell revivals. A number of her compositions were published but, sadly, many others have disappeared. No doubt the bombing of Morley College in 1940 accounted for some of them, while many were probably mislaid after her early demise or that of her mother in 1938, although listed by Holst in his article on her life and music in the Monthly Musical Record for April 1931. "We lost an artist before her powers were fully developed" he wrote, with more than a hint of how personal to himself that loss had been.
Mirage survives in the RCM Library as MS 5558a among the André Mangeot papers, which suggests that it was submitted to him as a possibility for his Music Society concerts. The cycle would have fitted in nicely to a programme such as that of 11 November 1930, when John Goss sang songs by Warlock and Austin with quartet and quintet respectively, and Kathleen Long premiered Holst’s Nocturne for Imogen. But I have found no evidence that it was ever performed, although two of her songs with quartet (unspecified by name) were featured posthumously by the Kendall Quartet with (probably) Eleanor Marshall as the singer at a concert on 11 July 1931: and Steuart Wilson, no less, sang three songs to words by Walter de la Mare, with quartet, on a similar occasion on 18 December 1920 (these not listed by Holst). She was fond of Christina Rossetti, author of the poems in Mirage, and her other settings include the Seven Two-Part Songs published in 1921, charming and effective. Two songs with piano which were performed on 17 January 1920, Song and Echo, may well be earlier versions of Mirage I and V: one is reminded that some of Warlock’s songs exist in two forms, with piano or chamber ensemble. Alan Gibbs
Song; Song in a cornfield; One foot on sea, and one on shore; Mirage; Echo
Jane Joseph (1894-1929) was outstanding amongst Holst’s pupils at St. Paul’s Girls' School and subsequently pursued her own musical career, including as a composer. For Holst she was amanuensis, adviser, copyist, arranger, and trusty "right hand" in organizing such events as Whitsun Festivals and Purcell revivals. A number of her compositions were published but, sadly, many others have disappeared. No doubt the bombing of Morley College in 1940 accounted for some of them, while many were probably mislaid after her early demise or that of her mother in 1938, although listed by Holst in his article on her life and music in the Monthly Musical Record for April 1931. "We lost an artist before her powers were fully developed" he wrote, with more than a hint of how personal to himself that loss had been.
Mirage survives in the RCM Library as MS 5558a among the André Mangeot papers, which suggests that it was submitted to him as a possibility for his Music Society concerts. The cycle would have fitted in nicely to a programme such as that of 11 November 1930, when John Goss sang songs by Warlock and Austin with quartet and quintet respectively, and Kathleen Long premiered Holst’s Nocturne for Imogen. But I have found no evidence that it was ever performed, although two of her songs with quartet (unspecified by name) were featured posthumously by the Kendall Quartet with (probably) Eleanor Marshall as the singer at a concert on 11 July 1931: and Steuart Wilson, no less, sang three songs to words by Walter de la Mare, with quartet, on a similar occasion on 18 December 1920 (these not listed by Holst). She was fond of Christina Rossetti, author of the poems in Mirage, and her other settings include the Seven Two-Part Songs published in 1921, charming and effective. Two songs with piano which were performed on 17 January 1920, Song and Echo, may well be earlier versions of Mirage I and V: one is reminded that some of Warlock’s songs exist in two forms, with piano or chamber ensemble. Alan Gibbs
