Amanda Aldridge’s Moorish Pictures, I: Prayer Before Battle

This March, the Daily Classical Music Post will introduce you to some of the most wonderful music ever composed—and, yes, it will all be by women composers!

https://youtu.be/68sUH36DEzs

It’s not all that easy to find recordings of music by Amanda Aldridge (1866–1956), even when you know that she composed under the pseudonym of Montague Ring. Aldridge, the daughter of the African American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge, was best known as an opera singer. She studied voice with, among others, Jenny Lind at the Royal College of Music. Her singing career ended when she had a particularly bad bout of laryngitis, which permanently damaged her throat. She turned to teaching and composing. Most of her works were what was known as “parlour music,” which means that they were performed in people’s homes. Ray White points out that Aldridge inspired Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson: “Amanda Aldridge was able to inspire up-and-coming actor and singer Paul Robeson with the confidence and technique needed to complement his deep and powerful voice. Robeson carried his gifts and activism as he joined labor movements and civil rights protests throughout Britain and back home in America. . . . The same could be said for Aldridge’s other famous student, Marian Anderson, who not only wowed concert audiences but broke down barriers as America’s first great Black opera singer. Anderson too, found herself representing more than just music in the early days of desegregation.”

The only recording I could find online of any of Aldridge's works is the first movement of her Four Moorish Pictures, I: Prayer Before Battle. It seems to me that with the rise of “in home concerts,” which we certainly hope will return following the pandemic, this would be a perfect opportunity to rediscover Aldridge’s parlour music and celebrate her contribution to classical music.

My classical music post for today is Amanda Aldridge’s Moorish Pictures, I: Prayer Before Battle.

 


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