Madeleine Dringaus modern

Madeleine Dring (* 7 September 1923; † 26 March 1977) was an English composer, pianist, singer and actress.

Life

Madeleine Dring spent the first four years of her life at Raleigh Road, Harringay, before the family moved to Streatham. She showed talent at an early age and was accepted into the junior department of the Royal College of Music where she began on her tenth birthday. She was offered scholarships for violin and piano and chose violin. She studied piano as a secondary instrument, with RCM students guiding her studies for the first several years.

As part of their training, all of the students performed in the children’s theatre under the guidance of Angela Bull. Dring formally began composition studies at the junior department with Stanley Drummond Wolff in 1937, in 1938 with Leslie Fly, and the next two years worked with Sir Percy Buck. Near the end of her studies she was assigned Lilian Gaskell for piano studies. She continued at the Royal College for senior-level studies where her composition teacher was Herbert Howells. She had occasional lessons with Ralph Vaughan Williams (officially, a substitute for Howells). She dropped the study of violin after the death of her instructor, W.H. Reed, at the end of the first year. She focused on piano and composition but also studied mime, drama, and singing. Dring’s love of theatre and music co-mingled happily; many of her earliest professional creations were for the stage, radio, and television.

In 1947 she married Roger Lord who served as Principal Oboist with London Symphony Orchestra for over thirty years. She composed several works for Roger, including the highly regarded Dances for solo oboe. Soon after her marriage, her first pieces were published with Lengnick and with Oxford (1948). The Lords had one son in 1950.

Dring died in 1977 of a cerebral hemorrhage (brain aneurysm). Dring’s tombstone was recently uncovered (in situ) at Lambeth Cemetery in Streatham. Both Roger and their son, Jeremy, died in 2014. Roger died at age 90 and Jeremy died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

A book, Madeleine Dring: Her Music, Her Life, by Ro Hancock-Child, was published in 2000 (2nd edition 2009), and included cartoon illustrations from Dring’s own notebooks interpreted by Ro Hancock-Child. The biography was partially funded by Dring’s husband, Roger Lord, in order to disseminate information about his late wife’s compositions. Several articles, compact disc recordings, and inclusions of Dring’s biographical information in books about composers in the last decade have secured her name a place in the modern lexicon.

Another book, Madeleine Dring: Lady Composer by Wanda Brister and Jay Rosenblatt was published in 2020 by Clemson University Press and Liverpool University Press and is distributed by OUP. Over 100 pages of footnotes and references are included in this volume as well as complete works lists and document performances by Dring. It has received positive press from journals on singing, women in music, double reeds, and light music.

Both of these authors have also worked diligently to record and publish works by Dring.

Dring’s most recent posthumous honor was to have the Streatham & Clapham High School Dining Hall named after her. It is indeed an honour, since she did not attend this high school, but attended La Retraite Catholic Convent School in Clapham Park. It is geographically located in the middle of the neighborhood in which Dring spent most of her life.

Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Dring