Tuesday, March 30, 2010

obscure composers

The young cellist in my family is currently playing pieces by two composers I had never heard of before, so I did a little research and found that neither of them has a Wikipedia entry - even though their music is in print, and obviously being played today. They are the New Zealander Arnold Trowell, and the Frenchman Benoit Guillemant.

Trowell, at least has a minor role in the wikipedia entry on Katherine Mansfield:

She became enamoured with a cellist, Arnold Trowell (Mansfield herself was an accomplished cellist, having received lessons from Trowell's father),[2] in 1902, although the feelings were largely unreciprocated.[4]
...
Back in London in 1908, Mansfield quickly fell into the bohemian way of life lived by many artists and writers of that era (although she only published one story and one poem during her first 15 months there).[3] Mansfield sought out the Trowell family for companionship, and whilst Arnold was involved with another woman, Mansfield embarked on a passionate affair with his brother, Garnet.[4] By early 1909, she had become impregnated with his child, though Trowell's parents disapproved of the relationship, and the two broke up. She hastily entered into a marriage, with a singing teacher 11 years her elder,[6] George Bowden, on March 2, but left him the same evening, having failed to consummate the marriage.[4] After a brief reunion with Garnet, Mansfield's mother, Annie Beauchamp, arrived in 1909. She blamed the breakdown of the marriage on a lesbian relationship between Mansfield and Ida Baker, and she quickly had her daughter despatched to a spa town, Bad Wörishofen, in Bavaria, Germany. Mansfield had miscarried the child after attempting to lift a suitcase on top of a cupboard, although it is not known whether her mother knew of this miscarriage when she left shortly after arriving in Germany (Mansfield was subsequently cut out of her mother's will).[4]


More about his career as a composer is here

About Guillemant, we only know that he worked as a flautist and composer in Paris, 1746-57. Nothing is known about his life before or after this period. That's quite remarkable - I have ancestors in the 18th century about whom we know more ...

Still, someone should have a heart and compose Wikipedia entries for obscure composers like these ...

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