Astra Desmond
Encyclopedia
Astra Desmond CBE was a British
contralto
of the early and middle twentieth century.
, England
. She was educated at Notting Hill High School
and Westfield College
, where she was a classical scholar. She studied singing with Blanche Marchesi (as did her colleague Muriel Brunskill
) and Louise Trenton and in Berlin with Ernst Grezebach and Conrad von Bos.
described her as a new singer of great promise. At Sadler's Wells she sang Delilah
and Carmen
and at Covent Garden
, Ortrud
and Fricka
.
In recital, Desmond was noted for her performances of songs by Edvard Grieg
about which she wrote a 25-page article in Music and Letters in 1941, reprinted in Grieg. A Symposium, ed. Gerald Abraham. She also made a number of singing translations of Grieg's songs, published by Augener. For her work in this field she was awarded the Order of St. Olav by the Norwegian government. Her interpretation of Jean Sibelius
's songs was also admired.
On 5 October 1938 Desmond was one of the original 16 singers in Vaughan Williams
’s Serenade to Music
, the recording of which, made at EMI's Abbey Road studio shortly thereafter, has been transferred to compact disc by several companies. Earlier, in 1932, Vaughan Williams had dedicated to her his Magnificat (for contralto solo, women's choir, solo flute and orchestra. (Later, she received the contrasting tribute of having a variety of rose named after her.)
As well as the regular standard concert works including The Dream of Gerontius
(in which she frequently sang under the baton of the composer) and Messiah
, Desmond sang a wide repertoire, taking part in the first broadcast performance of Stravinsky
's Oedipus rex
in 1928 and a rare performance of Mahler
's Das Lied von der Erde
, with Peter Pears
, the London Philharmonic Orchestra
and Sir Adrian Boult
in 1942, and she was the first to introduce the songs of Yrjö Kilpinen
to British audiences.
of songs by Purcell
and Grieg; she can be also briefly heard singing with Elsie Suddaby and Isobel Baillie in "To Heart Ceasing", recorded by EMI live from a Royal Command Performance in the 1930s.
There also exist several 'off-air' recordings (home recordings from radio broadcasts) of Desmond. These include substantial excerpts of her "calm and serene" interpretation of the Angel in The Dream of Gerontius (a 1935 performance in Manchester under Malcolm Sargent, also featuring Heddle Nash), and a performance of Serenade to Music in the Royal Festival Hall, 1951, under the composer.
) from 1947 to 1963. but also wrote educational books on music, including one for the BBC Music Guides on Schumann
's Lieder which is still (2007) in print.
Desmond succeeded Liza Lehmann
, Cécile Chaminade
, Fanny Davies
, Rosa Newmarch
and Myra Hess
as president of the Society of Women Musicians in the UK, and also president of the Incorporated Society of Musicians.
(CBE) in 1949.
Desmond died at the age of eighty.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
of the early and middle twentieth century.
Early years
Astra Desmond was born Gwendolyn Mary Thompson, in TorquayTorquay
Torquay is a town in the unitary authority area of Torbay and ceremonial county of Devon, England. It lies south of Exeter along the A380 on the north of Torbay, north-east of Plymouth and adjoins the neighbouring town of Paignton on the west of the bay. Torquay’s population of 63,998 during the...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. She was educated at Notting Hill High School
Notting Hill & Ealing High School
Notting Hill and Ealing High School is an independent school for girls aged 4 - 18, located in West Ealing, a suburb of London. Founded in 1873 it is one of the 26 schools that make up the Girls' Day School Trust...
and Westfield College
Westfield College
Westfield College was a small college situated in Kidderpore Avenue, Hampstead, London, and was a constituent college of the University of London from 1882 to 1989. The college originally admitted only women as students and became coeducational in 1964. In 1989, Westfield College merged with Queen...
, where she was a classical scholar. She studied singing with Blanche Marchesi (as did her colleague Muriel Brunskill
Muriel Brunskill
Muriel Brunskill was an English contralto of the mid-twentieth century. Her career included concert, operatic and recital performance from the early 1920s until the 1950s...
) and Louise Trenton and in Berlin with Ernst Grezebach and Conrad von Bos.
Singing career
Desmond's career was mostly in concert and recital, but she made some operatic appearances. A 1916 review of the Carl Rosa Opera CompanyCarl Rosa Opera Company
The Carl Rosa Opera Company was founded in 1873 by Carl August Nicholas Rosa, a German-born musical impresario, to present opera in English in London and the British provinces. The company survived Rosa's death in 1889, and continued to present opera in English on tour until 1960, when it was...
described her as a new singer of great promise. At Sadler's Wells she sang Delilah
Samson and Delilah (opera)
Samson and Delilah , Op. 47, is a grand opera in three acts and four scenes by Camille Saint-Saëns to a French libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire...
and Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
and at Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Ortrud
Ortrud
Ortrud is a female character from Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin .-Role:In act I, Ortrud and her husband Friedrich von Telramund accuse Elsa von Brabant of murdering her brother Gottfried. Gottfried having disappeared, they claim the land of Brabant as Ortrud's...
and Fricka
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
.
In recital, Desmond was noted for her performances of songs by Edvard Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...
about which she wrote a 25-page article in Music and Letters in 1941, reprinted in Grieg. A Symposium, ed. Gerald Abraham. She also made a number of singing translations of Grieg's songs, published by Augener. For her work in this field she was awarded the Order of St. Olav by the Norwegian government. Her interpretation of Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
's songs was also admired.
On 5 October 1938 Desmond was one of the original 16 singers in Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
’s Serenade to Music
Serenade to Music
Serenade to Music is a work by Ralph Vaughan Williams for 16 vocal soloists and orchestra, composed in 1938. The text is an adaptation of the discussion about music and the music of the spheres in Act V, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. Vaughan Williams later arranged...
, the recording of which, made at EMI's Abbey Road studio shortly thereafter, has been transferred to compact disc by several companies. Earlier, in 1932, Vaughan Williams had dedicated to her his Magnificat (for contralto solo, women's choir, solo flute and orchestra. (Later, she received the contrasting tribute of having a variety of rose named after her.)
As well as the regular standard concert works including The Dream of Gerontius
The Dream of Gerontius
The Dream of Gerontius, popularly called just Gerontius, is a work for voices and orchestra in two parts composed by Edward Elgar in 1900, to text from the poem by John Henry Newman. It relates the journey of a pious man's soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory...
(in which she frequently sang under the baton of the composer) and Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
, Desmond sang a wide repertoire, taking part in the first broadcast performance of Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's Oedipus rex
Oedipus rex (opera)
Oedipus rex is an "Opera-oratorio after Sophocles" by Igor Stravinsky, scored for orchestra, speaker, soloists, and male chorus. The libretto, based on Sophocles's tragedy, was written by Jean Cocteau in French and then translated by Abbé Jean Daniélou into Latin...
in 1928 and a rare performance of Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
's Das Lied von der Erde
Das Lied von der Erde
Das Lied von der Erde is a large-scale work for two vocal soloists and orchestra by the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler...
, with Peter Pears
Peter Pears
Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears CBE was an English tenor who was knighted in 1978. His career was closely associated with the composer Edward Benjamin Britten....
, the London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...
and Sir Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
in 1942, and she was the first to introduce the songs of Yrjö Kilpinen
Yrjö Kilpinen
Yrjö Henrik Kilpinen was a Finnish composer. He was born in Helsinki, and in 1907 he started his studies in the Helsingin Musiikkiopisto . In 1910 Kilpinen moved to Vienna to continue his studies and from 1913 to 1914 he studied in Berlin.Kilpinen is most famous for composing 790 works in the...
to British audiences.
Recordings
Desmond made few commercial recordings: they include the first recording of Serenade to Music, under the baton of Henry Wood, and a series of recordings for DeccaDecca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
of songs by Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
and Grieg; she can be also briefly heard singing with Elsie Suddaby and Isobel Baillie in "To Heart Ceasing", recorded by EMI live from a Royal Command Performance in the 1930s.
There also exist several 'off-air' recordings (home recordings from radio broadcasts) of Desmond. These include substantial excerpts of her "calm and serene" interpretation of the Angel in The Dream of Gerontius (a 1935 performance in Manchester under Malcolm Sargent, also featuring Heddle Nash), and a performance of Serenade to Music in the Royal Festival Hall, 1951, under the composer.
Later career
Like many singers Desmond took up teaching later in her career (becoming Professor of Singing at the Royal Academy of MusicRoyal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
) from 1947 to 1963. but also wrote educational books on music, including one for the BBC Music Guides on Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
's Lieder which is still (2007) in print.
Desmond succeeded Liza Lehmann
Liza Lehmann
Liza Lehmann was an English operatic soprano and composer, known for her vocal compositions.-Biography:She was born Elisabetha Nina Mary Frederica Lehmann in London. Her father was the German painter Rudolf Lehmann and her mother was Amelia Chambers, a music teacher, composer and arranger...
, Cécile Chaminade
Cécile Chaminade
Cécile Louise Stéphanie Chaminade was a French composer and pianist.-Biography:Born in Paris, she studied at first with her mother, then with Félix Le Couppey, Marie Gabriel Augustin Savard, Martin Pierre Marsick and Benjamin Godard, but not officially, since her father disapproved of her musical...
, Fanny Davies
Fanny Davies
Fanny Davies was an English pianist who was particularly admired in Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and the early schools, but was also a very early London performer of the works of Debussy and Scriabin...
, Rosa Newmarch
Rosa Newmarch
Rosa Newmarch was an English writer on music.-Biography:Rosa Harriet Jeaffreson was born in Leamington in 1857. She settled in London in 1880, when she began contributing articles to various literary journals. In 1883 she married Henry Charles Newmarch, thereafter using her married name in her...
and Myra Hess
Myra Hess
Dame Myra Hess DBE was a British pianist.She was born in London as Julia Myra Hess, but was best known by her middle name. At the age of five she began to study the piano and two years later entered the Guildhall School of Music, where she graduated as winner of the Gold Medal...
as president of the Society of Women Musicians in the UK, and also president of the Incorporated Society of Musicians.
Family
In 1920, Desmond married Sir Thomas Neame. They had three sons. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British EmpireOrder of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(CBE) in 1949.
Desmond died at the age of eighty.