Laura Wilson Barker

Laura Wilson Barker (6 March 1819 – 22 May 1905), was a composer, performer and artist, sometimes also referred to as Laura Barker, Laura W Taylor or "Mrs Tom Taylor".[1]

Career

She was born in Thirkleby, North Yorkshire, third daughter of a clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Barker.[2] She studied privately with Cipriani Potter and became an accomplished pianist and violinist.[3] As a young girl Barker performed with both Louis Spohr and Paganini.[4] She began composing in the mid-1830s - her Seven Romances for voice and guitar were published in 1837.[3] From around 1843 until 1855 she taught music at York School for the Blind.[5] During this period some of her compositions - including a symphony in manuscript, on 19 April 1845 - were performed at York Choral Society concerts.[6]

On 19 June 1855 she married the English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine Tom Taylor.[7] Barker contributed music to at least one of her husband's plays, an overture and entr'acte to Joan of Arc (1871),[8] and provided harmonisations as an appendix to his translation of Ballads and Songs of Brittany (1865).[9]

Her other works include the cantata Enone (1850), the violin sonata A Country Walk (1860), theatre music for As You Like It, (April 1880), Songs of Youth (1884),[10] string quartets, madrigals and solo songs.[5] Her choral setting of Keats's A Prophecy, composed in 1850, was performed for the first time 49 years later at the Hovingham Festival in 1899.[11] The composer was present.[12]

Several of Barker's paintings hang at Smallhythe Place in Kent, Ellen Terry's house.[13]

Personal life

Barker lived with her husband and family at 84 Lavender Sweep, Battersea. There were two children: the artist John Wycliffe Taylor (1859–1925), and Laura Lucy Arnold Taylor (1863–1940). The Sunday musical soirees at the house attracted many well-known attendees, including Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Henry Irving, Charles Reade, Alfred Tennyson, Ellen Terry and William Makepeace Thackeray.[3]

Tom Taylor died suddenly at his home in 1880 at the age of 62.[7] After his death, his widow retired to Porch House, Coleshill in Buckinghamshire, where she died on 22 May 1905, aged 86.[14]

Selected works
  • Seven Romances for voice and guitar (1836)
  • Ode to the Passions (text William Collins 1846)
  • Six Songs (1847)
  • Enone, cantata (1850)
  • A Prophesy, choir and orchestra (text Keats, 1850, fp. 1899)
  • Six Songs (1852)
  • Violin Sonata A Country Walk (1860)
  • Music to Shakespeare's As You Like It (fp. 14 April 1880)
  • Songs of Youth (1883)

References
  1. Brown, James Duff; Stratton, Stephen Samuel (1897). British Musical Biography: A Dictionary of Musical Artists, Authors, and Composers Born in Britain and Its Colonies. S.S. Stratton.
  2. "Laura Wilson Barker (1819–1905)", Royal Academy of Arts, accessed 19 February 2023
  3. Rathbone, Jeanne. "Laura Wilson Barker", Damesnet, accessed 18 February 2019
  4. "Nicolo Paganini: His Life and Work" (2022)
  5. Aaron C Cohen. International Encyclopedia of Women Composers (1981), p. 33
  6. David Griffiths. A History of Institutional Music-Making in York, University of York thesis (1990) p. 231
  7. Howes, Craig. "Taylor, Tom", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 3 January 2008 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  8. "Tom Taylor", The Magazine of Art, Vol. 4 (1881), p. 68
  9. Taylor, Tom (translator). Ballads and Songs of Brittany (1865), Internet Archive
  10. 'Songs of Youth', in The Musical Times, Vol. 25, No. 499 (September 1884), p. 533
  11. The Academy, Vol. 57, p. 90
  12. 'Hovingham Festival', in The Musical Times Vol. 40, No. 678 (August 1899), pp. 545-546
  13. "'Laura Wilson Barker", ArtUK, accessed 19 February 2023
  14. 'Porch House', Coleshill.org
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