Flowers of the Seasons – Holborn Community Centre
1.30pm 16th November 2023
The performance is free of charge but you must reserve a place by emailing herbie@electricvoicetheatre.co.uk with the heading – Reserve 1(or 2) seats at Holborn Community Centre Nov 16th. We will confirm your booking (NB Places are limited)
“Flowers of the Seasons – Politics, Power & Poverty”
A celebration of the music of Eliza Flower (1803–1846) – a local composer and campaigner for women’s and worker’s rights whose music was sung in church, at protest marches on the streets and in the drawing rooms of the wealthy. Help us tell her incredible story brimming with love, scarred by scandal and marked by genius. Together we will bring her music, once so popular, back to life.
Join us for a singing workshop and a performance of some delightful songs for the seasons, dramatic hymns, powerful protest songs, and settings of contemporary writers like Sir Walter Scott and her frequent collaborators, radical feminist Harriet Martineau, and her sister, the poet, Sarah Flower Adams who is best known for penning the hymn “Nearer My God To Thee”.
Presented by Electric Voice Theatre:
Frances M Lynch – Artistic Director, Soprano, Composer
Laurence Panter – Pianist, Tenor
Herbie Clarke – Production Manager
Composer Eliza Flower was born on the 19th April 1803 in Harlow in Essex where she is buried beside her sister. They both worked and sang together at South Place Unitarian Chapel, in Finsbury in London. Their contributions to cultural and political life were so important that when the chapel closed down, their portraits and archive were moved to Conway Hall in London.
Eliza was a prolific composer of vocal music for church services – including arrangements of tunes by Mozart, Bach, Handel and Beethoven – concerts, political events and soirees. Despite being one of the first composers published by the new publishing house of Novello and lauded by many in her day including Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Browning, Flower’s music is now unknown, quite possibly because she fell out of favour when she took up an unusual living arrangement with a clergyman!
“For me, I never had another feeling other than entire admiration for your music-entire admiration-I put it apart from all other English music I know, and fully believe in it as the music we all waited for.” A letter from Robert Browning to Eliza Flower
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