Madeleine Dring

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.[1] 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.

Dring's favourite composer in her youth was Rachmaninov and she owned much piano and vocal sheet music by Rachmaninov, which is now in the possession of Ro Hancock-Child. Dring studied with Herbert Howells but her own work shows no debt to his musical style. Occasionally she was taught by Ralph Vaughan Williams but again there is little obvious influence, and her music does not reflect the English folk song tradition, although she studied this genre as a singer. She sometimes set a text she had encountered in a solo or choral work, leaving her mark on it. She looked further afield.

Dring particularly enjoyed (and imitated) the mannerisms of Poulenc, for instance in the accompaniment to her song I Feed A Flame. As observed by Ro Hancock-Child, Dring preferred jazzy idioms, Gershwin, Cole Porter and the sunny style of Arthur Benjamin. Having heard the calypso in London, she responded with her own Caribbean Dance and West Indian Dance, for piano.

Dring deliberately did not repeat her musical material from piece to piece, always finding a fresh approach to harmony and rhythm. If her vocal music has ever been compared to Roger Quilter (possibly because of similar text choices) it is a mistaken comparison. Quilter was solidly Victorian in outlook, and his songs are deeply melodic and contrapuntal. By contrast, Dring looked to the future, and thrived on novelty and surprise, hoping that what she wrote might gently shock or make you smile. Her vocal melodies arise from the underlying harmonies and can be difficult to pitch: the chords come first, as Ro Hancock-Child observes. Dring wrote most of her songs for her own use: she had a high quality soprano voice with a wide range, and perfect pitch. Several informal and informative recordings exist of Dring singing and playing her own compositions.

Dring's cabaret songs and West End Revue material sometimes featured her own lyrics and are full of clever writing, both musically and textually. They have recently been recorded and published by several dedicated artists.

Dring chose not to compose large-scale works, therefore most of her output was in shorter forms. She wrote pieces for solo piano, piano duets, songs with piano, and some chamber music, including pieces for piano duo, flute, oboe, harmonica, recorder, and clarinet, a small number of which are pedagogical works. Her works for television and radio are all within a 45-minute time frame or shorter. She completed a one-act opera, Cupboard Love with her friend D.F. Aitken (never performed during her lifetime, but it was published in 2017 and received its stage premiere in the United States in April 2018 at Florida State University and its European premiere in Scotland in June 2019). A dance drama entitled The Fair Queen of Wu which was broadcast on BBC Television in 1951. The ballet called for a full company of soloists who were off camera. She was commissioned to write music for "The Real Princess," a ballet and for several stage plays in London given from 1946 to 1971. She often collaborated with Felicity Gray, choreographer, and D.F. Aitken, librettist.

Dring rarely provided dates for her compositions; many dates come from Alistair Fisher's treatise on her songs. Publication dates have been provided, many of which are posthumously published by her husband, Roger Lord. Some dates have more recently been re-established using dates of first performances and other information as confirmed in Dring's personal papers as well as in archival newspaper reviews. In 2018 three volumes of songs were engraved and published as well as four volumes of cabaret and musical revue numbers. Duets and ensembles were also published.

• Banfield, Stephen, "Madeleine Dring". Grove Music online. (subscription access)
• Barnett, Rob, "Madeleine Dring: her life and Music by Ro Hancock-Child" (review of 2000 edition), MusicWeb International, April 2000
• Berg, Gregory,"The Listeners Gallery: Songs of Madeleine Dring" Journal of Singing, Sept/Oct 2014, Vol 71, No 1, pp. 128–131.
• Berg, Gregory,"The Listeners Gallery: Cabaret Songs of Madeleine Dring" Journal of Singing, May/June 2019, Vol 75, No 5, pp. 621–625.
• Brister, Wanda, CD: Courtney Kenny, Nuala Willis, Matt Cooksey, "Madeleine Dring: Lady Composer," Cambria Music, 2022 liner notes. 30 vocal selections. Selections from stage, revues, radio, and song.
• Brister, Wanda and Jay Rosenblatt, "Madeleine Dring: Lady Composer," Clemson University Press 2020 (full academic biography) 356 pages.
• Brister, Wanda, The Songs of Madeleine Dring: Organizing a Posthumous Legacy, DMA dissertation, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2004. (Biography, overview of works, examination of art songs.)
• Brister, Wanda, "The Songs of Madeleine Dring," Journal of Singing: The Official Journal of the National Association of Teachers of Singing Vol 64 No 5, pp. 565–578. (Biographical sketch and discussion of all published art songs by 2004.)
• Brister, Wanda, CD: "The Songs of Madeleine Dring," Cambria Music, 2013 liner notes. 40 vocal selections.
• Brister, Wanda, CD: Courtney Kenny, Nuala Willis, "The Cabaret Songs of Madeleine Dring," Cambria Music, 2018 liner notes. 17 vocal selections.
• Brister, Wanda,"Madeleine Dring" (biographical notes), inside each volume of Previously Unpublished Vocal Works, Classical Vocal Reprints, Fayetteville, AR. (c) Wanda Brister.
• Davis, Richard, "The Published Songs of Madeleine Dring. Journal of Singing. March/April 2007. Vol.63. Nr. 4. pp. 393-403.
• Fisher, Alistair, The Songs of Madeleine Dring and the Evolution of Her Compositional Style", Bachelor's thesis, University of Hull, 2000
• Hancock-Child, Ro, Madeleine Dring: Her Music, Her Life 2nd edition, Micropress 2009 (biography and full catalogue of works)
• Kimball, Carol, "Madeleine Dring," article in Song: A Guide to Art Song Style and Literature, Rev ed, Hal Leonard 2006, pp 401–403. (biographical sketch, short look at vocal works, includes bibliography.)
• Lord, Roger, biographical notes, Thames/Elkins volumes of songs.
• Roland-Silverstein, Kathleen, "Past Treasures and New Discoveries," Journal of Singing, Nov/Dec 2018, Vol 75, No. 2, pp. 227–230. Review of newly published works.

• Madeleine Dring at IMDb