Jane Roeckel

Jane Jackson Roeckel (19 October 1833 – 26 August 1907)[1] was a British composer, inventor, pianist, and philanthropist. She composed songs and works for piano[2] and piano rolls, including piano transcriptions of symphonies by composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn.[3][4] She sometimes published under the pseudonym[5] Jules de Sivrai.[6][7]

Biography

Roeckel was born in Clifton, England, into a family of artists and musicians. Her father was the Old Water Colour Society and Bristol School painter Samuel Jackson;[8] her brother Samuel Phillips Jackson was also a painter; her sister Ada Villiers was a musician; and her uncle was the Austrian composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel.[9] Roeckel studied piano and harmony first with her father, then with Jacques Blumenthal, Charles Halle, Bernhard Molique, Ernst Pauer, and Clara Schumann.[10] In 1864, she married Joseph Leopold Roeckel, who was also a composer.[11][12]

Roeckel invented the “Pamphonia,” a device used to learn the different clefs and staves.[13] It was a model of an eleven line stave with movable bars.[12] She composed works for piano rolls for the Aeolian Company,[14] the Melvin Clark Piano Company,[15] and the Wilcox & White Piano and Organ Company.[4]

Roeckel was a philanthropist who organized many charitable concerts for struggling artists, helped establish the Bristol Scholarship at the Royal College of Music, and founded the Teachers Provident Association in 1885. Her best known charitable work was bringing the violinist Marie Hall to the attention of Philip Napier Miles, who became Hall’s benefactor. He paid Hall's living expenses in London while she attended the Royal Academy of Music, and later enabled her to study with Czech violinist Otakar Ševčík in Prague for 18 months.[16][17]

Roeckel’s compositions were frequently performed by the pianist Arabella Goddard.[12] They  were published by Chappell & Company[18] and include:

Piano

Vocal

  • "Drifting On"[10]
  • Moxlyn (mixed chorus)[10]
  • Our King and Queen (soprano or tenor and vocal quartet)[10]
  • "Remember Me" (by Hugh Conway; arranged by Jules de Sivrai)[19]
  • "Village Story"[10]

References

  1. ^ "Jane Röckel, Composer - Biography on Operabase". Operabase. Retrieved 2024-05-18.
  2. ^ Elson, Arthur (1903). Women's Work in Music. Boston: L. C. Page & Company. p. 248.
  3. ^ a b Hyde, Derek (2018-12-20). New-found Voices: Women in Nineteenth-century English Music. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-82762-4.
  4. ^ a b Company, Wilcox & White (1905). Fifty-eight Note Music for All Styles of the Angelus: (either Interior Or Cabinet Form) and the Symphony, Styles 1000, 950, 558, 258 and 208. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  5. ^ Drone, Jeanette Marie (2007). Musical AKAs: assumed names and sobriquets of composers, songwriters, librettists, lyricists, hymnists, and writers on music. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press. p. 578. ISBN 978-0-8108-5739-1. OCLC 62858081.
  6. ^ Stewart-Green, Miriam (1980). Women composers: a checklist of works for the solo voice. A Reference publication in women's studies. Boston, Mass: G.K. Hall. p. 113. ISBN 978-0-8161-8498-9.
  7. ^ Stern, Susan (1978). Women composers: a handbook. Metuchen, N.J: Scarecrow Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-8108-1138-6.
  8. ^ "Man's world Lone woman among the worthies". Retrieved 2024-05-18 – via PressReader.
  9. ^ Laurence, Anya (1978). Women of Notes: 1,000 Women Composers Born Before 1900. New York: Richards Rosen Press Inc. p. 49.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h Cohen, Aaron I. (1987). International Encyclopedia of Women Composers. Books & Music (USA). p. 593. ISBN 978-0-9617485-0-0.
  11. ^ Grove, George (1908). Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. T. Presser.
  12. ^ a b c Strand Musical Magazine. 1895.
  13. ^ Wier, Albert E. (1938). The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians. New York: The Macmillan Company. p. 1564.
  14. ^ Catalog of Music for the Pianola, Pianola Piano and Aeriola. Aeolian Company. 1905.
  15. ^ Chicago, Melville Clark Piano Co (1905). Catalog of Music Rolls for the Apollo Piano: Apollo Concert Grand, Apollo and Apolloette Piano Players and the Orpheus, Self-playing Orchestrion.
  16. ^ The Musical Times. Novello. 1907.
  17. ^ NA, NA; Gillett, Paula (2000-07-07). Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: Encroaching on All Man's Privileges. Springer. ISBN 978-0-312-29934-7.
  18. ^ The Illustrated London News. Illustrated London News. 1871.
  19. ^ Scott, Clement; Capes, Bernard Edward Joseph; Eglington, Charles; Bright, Addison (1885). The Theatre. Wyman & Sons.