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Ruth Gipps
Ruth Dorothy Louisa ("Wid") Gipps MBE (21 February 1921 – 23 February 1999) was an English composer, oboist, pianist, conductor and educator. She composed music in a wide range of genres, including five symphonies, seven concertos and many chamber and choral works. She founded both the London Repertoire Orchestra and the Chanticleer Orchestra and served as conductor and music director for the City of Birmingham Choir. Later in her life she served as chairwoman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain.
She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1981 Birthday Honours for services to music.
Gipps was born at 14 Parkhurst Road, Bexhill-on-Sea, England in 1921 to (Gerard Cardew) Bryan Gipps (1877–1956), a businessman, English teacher in Germany, and later an official at the Board of Trade who was a trained violinist from a military family, and Hélène Bettina (née Johner), a piano teacher from Basel, Switzerland. They married in 1907, having met at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, where Hélène had trained and went on to teach, and where Bryan had gone against his family's wishes to study the violin.
Ruth Gipps had two elder siblings, Ernest Bryan (1910–2001), a violinist, and Laura (1908–1962), also a musician. The Gipps family had Kent roots, descending from the eighteenth-century apothecary, hop merchant, banker, and politician George Gipps; Sir George Gipps, Governor of New South Wales from 1838 to 1846, was a relative. At his marriage, Bryan Gipps had started a small business to allow his wife to focus on her music; after a few years, the business failed, and they moved to Germany, where he taught English. When they moved to Bexhill-on-Sea at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the family was in the then unusual position of a middle-class household's mother being the main provider, which along with Hélène's idiosyncrasies attracted some attention. The family home was the Bexhill School of Music, of which Hélène was principal. Eventually becoming an official at the Board of Trade, her father was also the senior heir, via his mother, Louisa Goulburn Thomas, to the Carmarthenshire and Kent property of Richard Thomas, of Hollingbourne, near Maidstone, Kent, and of Cystanog, High Sheriff of Carmarthenshire in 1788.
Ruth, a child prodigy, began studying piano with her mother from a very early age. Her first public performance was at Grotrian Hall in London at the age of four. She performed one of her first compositions at the age of eight in Brighton in 1929. A few years later, she won a concerto competition, performing the first movement of a Haydn with the Hastings Municipal Orchestra. She continued playing regularly throughout her teen years.
In 1937, at the age of 16, she entered the Royal College of Music,. While there, she studied oboe with Léon Goossens, piano with Arthur Alexander and composition with Gordon Jacob, and later with Ralph Vaughan Williams. Several of her works were first performed there, including her symphonic tone poem Knight in Armour, op. 8, which is based on Rembrandt's painting 'Young Warrior'. As a student, Ruth won much acclaim and prizes for her pieces, including her piano quartet Brocade (1941), op. 17. Her string quartet Sabrina (1940) won a Cobbett prize. It was premiered in 1946 by the Society for Women Musicians.
Continuing her studies at Durham University, she passed her final exams by writing a Quintet for oboe, clarinet, and string trio. She met her future husband, clarinetist Robert Baker, a musician in the premiere performance of her Quintet in 1941 at Wigmore Hall. At age 26, she became the youngest British woman to receive a doctorate in music, for her choral work The Cat .
Ruth Gipps was an accomplished well-rounded musician, as a soloist on both oboe and piano as well as a prolific composer. Her repertoire included works such as Arthur Bliss' Piano Concerto and Constant Lambert's The Rio Grande. When she was 33 a shoulder injury ended her performance career, and she decided to focus her energies on conducting and composition. Gipps claimed to know from a young age that her main interest lay in composing, stating,
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Ruth Gipps
Ruth Dorothy Louisa ("Wid") Gipps MBE (21 February 1921 – 23 February 1999) was an English composer, oboist, pianist, conductor and educator. She composed music in a wide range of genres, including five symphonies, seven concertos and many chamber and choral works. She founded both the London Repertoire Orchestra and the Chanticleer Orchestra and served as conductor and music director for the City of Birmingham Choir. Later in her life she served as chairwoman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain.
She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1981 Birthday Honours for services to music.
Gipps was born at 14 Parkhurst Road, Bexhill-on-Sea, England in 1921 to (Gerard Cardew) Bryan Gipps (1877–1956), a businessman, English teacher in Germany, and later an official at the Board of Trade who was a trained violinist from a military family, and Hélène Bettina (née Johner), a piano teacher from Basel, Switzerland. They married in 1907, having met at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, where Hélène had trained and went on to teach, and where Bryan had gone against his family's wishes to study the violin.
Ruth Gipps had two elder siblings, Ernest Bryan (1910–2001), a violinist, and Laura (1908–1962), also a musician. The Gipps family had Kent roots, descending from the eighteenth-century apothecary, hop merchant, banker, and politician George Gipps; Sir George Gipps, Governor of New South Wales from 1838 to 1846, was a relative. At his marriage, Bryan Gipps had started a small business to allow his wife to focus on her music; after a few years, the business failed, and they moved to Germany, where he taught English. When they moved to Bexhill-on-Sea at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the family was in the then unusual position of a middle-class household's mother being the main provider, which along with Hélène's idiosyncrasies attracted some attention. The family home was the Bexhill School of Music, of which Hélène was principal. Eventually becoming an official at the Board of Trade, her father was also the senior heir, via his mother, Louisa Goulburn Thomas, to the Carmarthenshire and Kent property of Richard Thomas, of Hollingbourne, near Maidstone, Kent, and of Cystanog, High Sheriff of Carmarthenshire in 1788.
Ruth, a child prodigy, began studying piano with her mother from a very early age. Her first public performance was at Grotrian Hall in London at the age of four. She performed one of her first compositions at the age of eight in Brighton in 1929. A few years later, she won a concerto competition, performing the first movement of a Haydn with the Hastings Municipal Orchestra. She continued playing regularly throughout her teen years.
In 1937, at the age of 16, she entered the Royal College of Music,. While there, she studied oboe with Léon Goossens, piano with Arthur Alexander and composition with Gordon Jacob, and later with Ralph Vaughan Williams. Several of her works were first performed there, including her symphonic tone poem Knight in Armour, op. 8, which is based on Rembrandt's painting 'Young Warrior'. As a student, Ruth won much acclaim and prizes for her pieces, including her piano quartet Brocade (1941), op. 17. Her string quartet Sabrina (1940) won a Cobbett prize. It was premiered in 1946 by the Society for Women Musicians.
Continuing her studies at Durham University, she passed her final exams by writing a Quintet for oboe, clarinet, and string trio. She met her future husband, clarinetist Robert Baker, a musician in the premiere performance of her Quintet in 1941 at Wigmore Hall. At age 26, she became the youngest British woman to receive a doctorate in music, for her choral work The Cat .
Ruth Gipps was an accomplished well-rounded musician, as a soloist on both oboe and piano as well as a prolific composer. Her repertoire included works such as Arthur Bliss' Piano Concerto and Constant Lambert's The Rio Grande. When she was 33 a shoulder injury ended her performance career, and she decided to focus her energies on conducting and composition. Gipps claimed to know from a young age that her main interest lay in composing, stating,