Happy New Year! & Radical Songs of the Seasons
2025 brings some exciting Minerva Scientifica projects ranging from Alzheimer’s to Carcinology and loads of music making and origami!
PLUS
We’ve just released the first ever recording of Eliza Flower’s radical song cycle “Free Trade Songs” for the League Bazaar 1845
“Free Trade Songs” for the League Bazaar 1845
Eliza Flower (1803–1846)
performed by
Frances M Lynch – Soprano
Laurence Panter – Piano
Recorded on August 16th 2024 at Conway Hall, London by Herbie Clarke for Electric Voice Theatre.
This radical song cycle was created in collaboration with the composer’s sister, the poet Sarah Flower Adams (1805 – 1848) for the Anti Corn Law League Bazaar at Covent Garden in 1845. It confronts the listener with the realities of life for the poor workers on the land, taking their message into the parlours and music rooms of middle and upper-class homes.
Not sure what that bizarre Bazaar at Covent Garden in 1845 was all about? Me neither – so here’s what our wonderful music historian Dr Oskar Jensen had to say about it during our performances last year: –
And yes, that sounds like a bizarre thing indeed. You may have heard of the Corn Laws: a protectionist system in place from 1815 to 1846 that effectively blocked the importation of cheap corn and kept prices artificially high for the sake of British farmers – and the aristocrats who owned the farm land. The result, rather predictably, was poverty and famine.
In 1845, the League formed to protest it held an enormous charity bazaar. But rather than book a church hall, they decided to take a three-week lease on Covent Garden Theatre. The whole place was decked out like a proto-Great Exhibition – theatre boxes were converted into stalls, with fabrics and curtains for sale running down to the auditorium like Rapunzel’s tresses.
Also on sale were a series of songs: the Flower sisters’ ‘Free Trade Songs’ of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Their words rooted in the soil of agriculture, their music rising to the heights. Their message one of optimism amidst struggle. We could do with some of that spirit today.
The League won, by the way: the Corn Laws were abolished the next year.
We are delighted to announce that the oil painting (above) “Garden of Heavenly and Earthly Nature” is now on loan to Conway Hall and will be shown in their “Flower Room”.
It was commissioned from composer and artist Elspeth Manders by ELECTRIC VOICE THEATRE for the Eliza Flower Project in January 2024 with funds from the National Lottery Heritage Fund
Eliza Flower’s “Free Trade Songs”
inspired a radical new song cycle
Commissioned by
ELECTRIC VOICE THEATRE
with funds from
The National Lottery Heritage Fund & Hinrichsen Foundation
Composed by
Frances M Lynch, Anna Appleby, Lilly Vadaneaux, Amanda Johnson
“Seasons of Change” (2023)
These were also recorded at Conway Hall and will be released in succession every Wednesday in January – 8th for Spring, 15th for Summer, 22nd Autumn and 30th for Winter. Keep an eye on our EVENTS CALENDAR
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We are busy practicing our origami for a primary school project with our partners at Sussex University – a new strand in our Misfolding Project.
And
Don’t forget you can now hear the complete year of Flower’s “Songs of the Months” on YOUTUBE – it starts with January after all!
Eliza Flower’s “Songs of the Months” 1834
The Complete Year on YOUTUBE
To listen to all 12 songs just click play above
We’re off to the north of Scotland on a quest to sing and sign and share the incredible story of carcinologist Dr Isabella Gordon and her work at the Natural History Museum in London. So excited to be working with her successor, Miranda Lowe, Principal Curator, Crustacea at The Natural History Museum. More news on this later – but in the meantime here’s some music already written about her……
