• Source: 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".




Career


She was born in Thirkleby, North Yorkshire, third daughter of a clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Barker. She studied privately with Cipriani Potter and became an accomplished pianist and violinist. As a young girl Barker performed with both Louis Spohr and Paganini. She began composing in the mid-1830s - her Seven Romances for voice and guitar were published in 1837. From around 1843 until 1855 she taught music at York School for the Blind. During this period some of her compositions - including a symphony in manuscript, on 19 April 1845 - were performed at York Choral Society concerts.
On 19 June 1855 she married the English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine Tom Taylor. Barker contributed music to at least one of her husband's plays, an overture and entr'acte to Joan of Arc (1871), and provided harmonisations as an appendix to his translation of Ballads and Songs of Brittany (1865).
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.
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), string quartets, madrigals and solo songs. 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. The composer was present.
Several of Barker's paintings hang at Smallhythe Place in Kent, Ellen Terry's house.




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 the Prince of Wales, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Henry Irving, Charles Reade, Alfred Tennyson, Clara Schuman, Ellen and Kate Terry and William Makepeace Thackeray.
Tom Taylor died suddenly at his home in 1880 at the age of 62. After his death, his widow retired to Porch House, Coleshill in Buckinghamshire, where she died on 22 May 1905, aged 86.




Selected works


Seven Romances for voice and guitar (1836)
The Sprite Polka (1844) for piano
Morceau Characteristique (1845), piano four hands
Four Studies (1846) for piano
Ode to the Passions (text William Collins 1846)
Six Songs (1847)
Dungeon Ghyll Force (1848), piano four hands
Piano Sonata No. 1 (1849)
Proteus: Fantasia (1849) for piano
Revolution Waltzes (1849) for piano
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






External links


'Laura Wilson Barker, Mrs Tom Taylor and her son John Wycliffe Taylor', National Trust Collection
Jeanne Rathbone. Laura Barker 1819-1905 composer
'The Tie of Golden Thread', music supplement from The Girl's Own Paper (1882)

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