Jane Joseph

Jane Marian Joseph was an English composer, arranger and music teacher. She was a pupil and later associate of the composer Gustav Holst. Her early death at age 35, which prevented the full realisation of her talents, was considered by her contemporaries as a considerable loss to English music. Most of Joseph’s compositions were never published and are now considered lost.

About Jane Joseph in brief

Jane Marian Joseph was an English composer, arranger and music teacher. She was a pupil and later associate of the composer Gustav Holst. Holst first observed Joseph’s potential when he was teaching her composition at St Paul’s Girls’ School. Her early death at age 35, which prevented the full realisation of her talents, was considered by her contemporaries as a considerable loss to English music. Most of Joseph’s compositions were never published and are now considered lost. Two choral works, A Festival Venite and A Hymn for Whitsuntide, were admired during her lifetime, but never commercially recorded. Her carol, A Little Childe There is Ibore, was thought by Holst to be among the best of its kind. Two memorial prizes and scholarships were endowed in her name. She also taught music at a girls’ school, where Holst’s daughter Imogen was one of her pupils, and became a leading figure in the musical life of Morley College. Two early short orchestral pieces, Morris Dance and Bergamask won considerable critical praise, although neither became part of the general orchestrals repertory. She became an active member of the Society of Women Musicians, was the prime mover behind the first Kensington Musical Competition Festival, and helped to found the Kensington Choral Society. She had a deep interest in music, which he passed on to his children; two sons, Frank and Edwin, became competent string players, while Jane learned piano and later, double-bass.

In time, Frank’s musical children, with Jane and friends, formed the basis of a \”Josephs orchestra\” that performed concerts at Frank’s home for many years. Her father, George Solomon Joseph, a solicitor in his family’s firm, had married Henrietta, née Franklin in 1880. Jane was their fourth child; the youngest of her three brothers was seven years older than her. She died on 31 May 1894 at 23 Clanricarde Gardens, in the Notting Hill district of the Borough of Kensington, London, to a prosperous Jewish family. In 1909 Joseph won a scholarship to St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith. In 1914 she composed her first published work, a song setting, ‘The Carrion Crow’. In the autumn of 1913, Joseph adopted his own principles and adopted his principles as her own. She began to act as his amanuensis in 1914, when she was composing The Planets, her special responsibility being the preparation of the score for the ‘Neptune’ movement. She continued to assist Holst with transcriptions, arrangements and translations, and was his librettist for the choral ballet The Golden Goose. In 1903 Holst gave up his orcheral appointments to concentrate on composing, but found that he needed a regular income. He became a teacher at James Allen’s Dulwich School in 1905. He was first appointed on the basis to teach singing, later extended his activities to cover the wider music curriculum including conducting and composition.

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