music.wikisort.org - Composer

Oliveria Louisa Prescott (3 September 1842 – 9 September 1919) was an English writer and composer.[1]

Biography

Oliveria Prescott was born in London, the daughter of Frederick Joseph Prescott and Elizabeth Oliveria Russell.[2] She studied with Lindsay Sloper and then at the Royal Academy of Music under George Alexander Macfarren. She became Macfarren's amenuensis.[3]

She lectured in harmony and composition for Newnham College, Cambridge, and also taught harmony at the High School for Girls in Baker Street, London.[3] She died in London.

Works

Prescott composed several overtures, a piano concerto, shorter orchestral pieces, vocal and choral works and two symphonies.[4]

Selected works include:[1]

Stage

• Carrigraphuga, The Castle of the Fairies, musical comedy in three acts (1914), words by S. Phillips

Keyboard

• Concert Finale, pianoforte duet (1878)

Choral

• "A Border Ballad", four-part song (1844), words by Francis William Bourdillon
• Lord Ullin's Daughter, choral ballad (1869), after Lord Ullin's Daughter by Thomas Campbell
• "Song of Waterspirits" four-part song (1874), words by E. Evans
• The Righteous Life for Evermore, anthem for four voices (1876)
• "The Ballad of Young John and his True Sweetheart", part song (1878)
• "The Douglas Raid", four-part song (1883), words by J. Stewart
• "The Huntsman", four-part song (1883), words by J. Stewart
• "Equestrian Courtship", part song (1885), words by T. Hood
• "Say Not, the Struggle Nought Availeth", part song (1885), words by A. H. Clough

Song

• "There Is for Every Day a Bliss" (1873), words by J. W. H.
• "Ask Me No More", with violincello obbligato (1874), after The Princess by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• "Cheero!", marching song for whistlers and singing (1915), words by S. Phillips

References

Sophie Fuller, "Women musicians and professionalism in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries." In The Music Profession in Britain, 1780–1920, ed. Rosemary Golding (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 149–69.

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