Caroline Reinagle (born Caroline Orger) (1 May 1817 – 11 March 1892) was an English classical composer, pianist, and writer. Only a few of her works have survived.

Life

Reinagle was born in London on 1 May 1817. Her father was Dr Thomas Orger and her mother was

Mary Ann Orger Mary Ann Orger born Mary Ann Ivers (25 February 1788 – 1 October 1849) was a leading actress in Scotland and Drury Lane. She was a playwright and the mother of composer Caroline Reinagle. Life Ives was born in London in 1788. Her father was a ...

who was a comic actress.Patrick Waddington, ‘Reinagle , Caroline (1817–1892)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 200
accessed 14 March 2015
/ref> In the 1840s she had several of her works published and performed, including a piano trio, premiered by 1842, 1842 Volume, with 14 search "hits" for Orger, including several for a publication of her piano concerto op. 2 - including a review in the May 19, 1842 issue on p. 155; and one for a performance of her trio. and a piano concerto, published 1842 and performed by her in 1843 at Hanover Square Rooms. Her mother was well read and her father, Dr Thomas Orger was a translator of Ovid and Anacreon, and he had written a book about Napoleon. He didn't object to her mother's acting and he become a founder member of the Swedenborg Society and the editor of ''Intellectual Repository''. Both her parents became members of the Swedenborgian church. In 1846 she married Alexander Robert Reinagle (1799-1877), organist at

St Peter-in-the-East, Oxford St Peter-in-the-East is a 12th-century church on Queen's Lane, north of the High Street in central Oxford, England. It is now deconsecrated and houses the college library of St Edmund Hall. The churchyard to the north is laid out as a garden an ...

, composer of the hymn tune St Peter, and son of

Joseph Reinagle Joseph Reinagle (1762 – 12 November 1825) was a music composer and popular cellist of the 18th century. He was a contemporary of Joseph Haydn, with whom he performed as principal cello. He also wrote a guide to playing the cello. Biography Jos ...

. She died in Tiverton, Devon, in 1892.

Compositions

Her only apparently surviving compositions are some songs, a tarantella in E minor and a sonata in A (the latter two works for piano). The last two have been republished by Vivace Press. Also surviving is a pair of articles in the 1862 ''Musical Times'' entitled ''A Few Words on Piano Playing''.See e.g. . Composed but possibly lost also were at least one piano quartet and a cello sonata in addition to the concerto and trio.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reinagle, Caroline 1817 births 1892 deaths English classical composers English classical pianists English women pianists Musicians from London Women classical composers 19th-century classical composers 19th-century classical pianists 19th-century English musicians 19th-century British composers 19th-century women composers 19th-century English women 19th-century women pianists