Eva Ruth Spalding (December 19, 1883 - March 1969) was a British composer, violin and piano teacher who wrote six string quartets, solo piano music and songs.[1][2]
Spalding was born in Blackheath, Kent, to Henry Spalding and his second wife Ellen. She was the youngest of eight children, with four half-siblings and three full siblings. Henry Spalding was a paper merchant.[1]
Spalding studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where she passed the violin teacher exam in 1904.[3] She also studied with Leopold Auer at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia.[4] After returning to England, she taught piano and violin privately and at Bradfield College.[5] From the 1940s she lived at Tyndrum, Pond Lane, Churt in Surrey, where she died in 1969.[6][7]
She set texts by the following poets to music: Léon Bazalgette, William Blake, Phineas Fletcher, Paul Fort, Fernand Gregh, George Herbert, Ioannes Papadiamantopoulos (as Jean Moréas), Edmund Spenser, Charles van Lerberghe, Clara Walsh, and Walt Whitman.[5][8][9][10][11]
Spalding composed six string quartets, the first in the early 1920s. No. 5 was performed by the Aleph String Quartet at the Wigmore Hall on Tuesday 25 April 1950, along with the Five Songs from Spencer's Amoretti, sung by tenor Frederick Fuller.[12] Her music was published by Maurice Senart, with many of the song texts in both French and English versions.[1]
Piano
Songs
Chamber
Orchestral