Marjorie Hayward

Marjorie Olive Hayward (14 August 1885 – 10 January 1953) was an English violinist and violin teacher, prominent during the first few decades of the 20th century.

Marjorie Hayward was born in Greenwich in 1885. An "infant prodigy", her violin studies were with Émile Sauret at the Royal Academy of Music in London (1897–1903), and Otakar Ševčík in Prague (1903–06). Her two years in Prague were paid for by the sale of the family home: Hayward later expressed her gratitude for this and other support from her musical mother.

She had early successes in the concerto repertoire, performing in Prague, Berlin (where she played Ethel Smyth's Concerto for Violin, Horn and Orchestra with Aubrey Brain), Paris, Amsterdam and the Hague, but later focussed mainly on chamber music.

She was the dedicatee of John Ireland's short 1911 piece for violin and piano titled Bagatelle. She and the composer premiered his Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor on 7 March 1913 at a Thomas Dunhill Chamber Concert at Steinway Hall.

She was also the dedicatee of her teacher Émile Sauret's 24 Etudes Caprices, Op. 64, and Thomas Dunhill's 3 Pieces for Violin and Piano, Op.17.

She led the English String Quartet (which included Frank Bridge on viola), and later the Virtuoso Quartet, the first chamber music group formed specifically for making recordings, with Edwin Virgo (2nd violin), Raymond Jeremy (viola) and its founder Cedric Sharpe (cello). The Quartet did not confine itself to recordings but also broadcast and toured frequently, its repertoire extending to quintets with artists such as Harriet Cohen, William Murdoch, Arnold Bax and Léon Goossens.

Marjorie Hayward also played in the Marie Dare String Quartet in the late 1930s, and created her own ensemble, the Marjorie Hayward String Quartet, with Irene Richards (2nd violin), Anatol Mines (viola) and May Mukle (cello). And there was the English Ensemble, with May Mukle, Rebecca Clarke (viola), and Kathleen Long (piano). Other groups in which she played a prominent role were the English Ensemble Piano Quartet and the Kamaran Trio. The latter was formed in 1937, with the cellist Antonia Butler and the pianist Kathleen Markwell.

Marjorie Hayward was a frequent face at The Proms, playing there 26 times between 1909 and 1944. At a Proms concert on 28 September 1920 she premiered the Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 33 by York Bowen. Other works she played at the Proms included: