Kate Loder
English composer and pianist (1825–1904)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kate Fanny Loder, later Lady Thompson, (21 August 1825 – 30 August 1904) was an English composer and pianist.[1]
Biography
Ancestry
Kate Loder was born on 21 August 1825,[1] on Bathwick Street, Bathwick,[2] within Bath, Somerset where the Loder family were prominent musicians. Her father was the flautist George Loder. According to Grove, her mother was a piano teacher born Fanny Philpot, who was the sister of the pianist Lucy Anderson.[3] However, genealogical research suggests Kate's mother was Frances Elizabeth Mary Kirkham (1802–50),[4] daughter of Thomas Bulman Kirkham (1778–1845) and Marianne Beville Moore (c.1781 – 1810).[2] Frances Kirkham's step-mother was Jane Harriett Philpot (1802–63), second wife to Thomas Bulman Kirkham and sister of the Lucy Philpot who married the violinist George Frederick Anderson, becoming Lucy Anderson.[5][6][7] Kate was also the sister of conductor and composer George Loder,[1] and the cousin of composer Edward Loder.[8]
Royal Academy of Music
Kate Loder studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Her performance of Mendelssohn's G minor piano concerto at the Hanover-square Rooms on 27 May 1843, when she was aged 17, may have been her public debut.[9] The following year, in 1844, aged just 18, she became the first female professor of harmony at the Royal Academy.[10][11][12]
Marriage
On 16 December 1851 at St Marylebone Church, Westminster, she married the eminent surgeon Henry Thompson (Kt. 1867. Bt. 1899, 'of Wimpole Street').[13] After her marriage she gradually gave up her public performing career, the last public appearance being in March 1854.[14] However, she remained active in music as a composer and professor at the Royal Academy of Music. Among here many pupils was Sarah Louisa Kilpack[15] who nowadays is better known as an artist.
Kate Loder had three children from her marriage:[16]
- Kate Mary Margaret Thompson (1856–1942), author of Handbook to the Public Picture Galleries of Europe (1877); married Rev. Henry William Watkins.
- Henry Francis Herbert Thompson (1859–1944), a barrister and later an Egyptologist lecturing at University College, London.
- Helen Edith Thompson (1860–1930), married the Rev. Henry de Candole.
From 1871 onwards she suffered increasing Infirmity, described as paralysis.[17]
Death
Kate Loder died on 30 August 1904 at Headley Rectory,[18] Headley, Surrey.[1]
The Brahms Requiem
On 10 July 1871,[19] the first British performance of the German Requiem of Johannes Brahms took place privately at Loder's home, 35 Wimpole Street, London. It was performed using a version for piano duet accompaniment which became known as the "London Version" (German: Londoner Fassnung) of the Requiem.[20] Brahms based it on an 1866 arrangement for piano of his first, six-movement version of the Requiem.[21] The pianists were Kate Loder and Cipriani Potter (who was then 79 years old; he died that September).[19]
Works
Selected works include:[8][22][23]
Chamber
- String quartet in G minor (1846)
- Sonata for violin and piano (1847)
- String quartet in E minor (1847)
- Piano trio (1886)
Opera
- L'elisir d'amore (1855)
Orchestral
- Overture (1844)
Organ
Piano
- Twelve studies (1852)
- Three romances (1853)
- Pensée fugitive (1854)
- En Avant galop (1863)
- Three Duets (1869)
- Mazurka in A minor (1899)[26]
- Scherzo (1899)
