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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] CareerShe 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] Barker wrote several sonatas and a great many other pieces for the piano - including the Four Studies (1846) and Revolution Waltzes (1849) - which are now in the collection of her great great grandson, Rupert Stutchbury. There are also some variations for organ and other music.[10] Other pieces 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),[11] 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.[12] The composer was present.[13] Several of Barker's paintings hang at Smallhythe Place in Kent, Ellen Terry's house.[14] Personal lifeBarker 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 the Prince of Wales, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Henry Irving, Charles Reade, Alfred Tennyson, Clara Schuman, Ellen and Kate 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.[15] Selected works
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