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Madeleine Winefride Isabelle Dring (September 7, 1923 – March 26, 1977) was an English composer and actress.

Life

Madeleine Dring was born into a musical family. Growing up in Raleigh Road, Harringay, she showed talent at an early age and took lessons in the junior division of the Royal College of Music from the age of nine. She attended on scholarship for violin, though her talent for the stage was also noticed, and she performed in the children's theatre. She continued at the Royal College for senior-level study in music, where her composition teachers included Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, and Gordon Jacob; she also studied mime and drama. Dring's two loves of theatre and music would coexist happily; many of her compositions were for the stage, upon which she often sang and played piano.

In 1947 she married Roger Lord, an oboist, for whom she composed several works, including the highly-regarded Dances for solo oboe. They had a son in 1950.

A book, Madeleine Dring: Her Music, Her Life, by Ro Hancock-Child, was published in 2000 (2nd edition 2009), with cartoon illustrations from Dring's own notebooks.^[1] Dring died in 1977 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Music

A student of Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams, Madeleine Dring's style is typically light and unpretentious. She admired the idiomatic and rhythmically vibrant writing of Francis Poulenc, which is echoed in her works. Her harmonizations are often jazzy; her writing has often been compared to that of George Gershwin. She wrote many of her songs for herself and as such made no particular effort to make them easy to sing, melodically, as she herself had perfect pitch.

As family responsibilities would keep her from completing large-scale works, most of Dring's output was in shorter forms; she wrote a good deal of solo piano and chamber music, as well as many pedagogical works. She did, however, complete a one-act opera, Cupboard Love, and a dance drama, The Fair Queen of Wu.

Works

(Dring often provided no dates for her compositions; many dates come from Alistair Fisher's treatise on her.)

Instrumental and vocal

• "Italian Dance" (1960) Oboe and Piano
• "Fantasy Sonata"(1938), piano and clarinet
• "3 Fantastic Variations on Lilliburlero"(1948), two pianos
• "Jig" (1948), piano
• "Prelude and Toccata" (1948), piano
• "Tarantelle" (1948), piano duet
• 3 Shakespeare Songs (1949)
• "Festival Scherzo" (1951), piano and string orchestra;
• Sonata for two pianos (1951)
• "Thank you, Lord" (1953), vocal, text L. Kyme
• "March: for the New Year" (1954), piano
• "Caribbean Dance (Tempo Tobago)" (1959), piano duet or solo
• "Dance Suite" (1961), piano
• "Polka" (1962), oboe and piano
• "Colour Suite" (1963), piano;
• The Pigtail (1963) vocal duet, text A. von Chamisso
• "Danza gaya" (1965), two pianos or oboe and piano
• Dedications (1967), vocal setting of 5 poems by R. Herrick
• 3 Dances (1968), piano
• Trio for Flute, Oboe, and Piano (1968)
• 4 Night Songs (1976), vocal, text M. Armstrong
• 5 Betjeman Songs (1976), vocal
• "Valse française" (1980), solo or duo piano
• 3 Pieces: WIB Waltz, Sarabande, Tango (1983), flute and piano
• "Waltz" (1983), oboe and piano
• Suite (1984), harmonica and piano (later arranged by Peter Lord for oboe)
• Trio for oboe, bassoon, and harpsichord (1986)

Theatre, drama, and television

Incidental music

• The Emperor and the Nightingale (1941)
• Tobias and the Angel (1946)
• Somebody’s Murdered Uncle (1947) for BBC radio
• The Buskers (1959)
• The Jackpot Question (1961), for Associated TV
• The Whisperers (1961), for Associated TV
• The Provok’d Wife (1963)
• The Lady and the Clerk (1964), for Associated TV
• I Can Walk Where I Like, Can’t I? (1964), for Associated TV
• When the Wind Blows (1965), for Associated TV
• Helen and Edward and Henry (1966), for Associated TV
• Variation on a Theme (1966), for Associated TV

Musical revues

• Airs on a Shoestring (1953)
• Pay the Piper (1954)
• From Here and There (1955)
• Fresh Airs (1955)
• Child’s Play (1958)
• Four to the Bar (1961)

Ballet

• Waiting for ITMA (1947), for BBC TV
• The Real Princess (1971), 2 pianos

Opera

• Cupboard Love

Other compositions

• The Wild Swans (1950), children's play
• The Fair Queen of Wu (1951), dance-drama for BBC TV
• The Marsh Kings’s Daughter (1951), children’s play
• Little Laura (1960) cartoon series music for BBC TV

References

Sources

• 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
• Davis, Richard, "Singer's Notes: Seven Shakespeare Songs of Madeleine Dring". South Central Music Bulletin, Volume III, no.1, Fall 2004.
• 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)

External links

• www.madeleinedring.com
• Madeleine Dring at the Internet Movie Database