Margaret Olive Hubicki

MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language Molal ...

(2 July 1915 – 3 January 2006) was an English composer and teacher of musical harmony, who invented the Colour-Staff method to help people with dyslexia to read music.

Life

Hubicki was born Margaret Mullins in Hampstead, London on 2 July 1915. Her mother was Scottish and her father English. She studied piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music with

Benjamin Dale Benjamin James Dale (17 July 188530 July 1943) was an English composer and academic who had a long association with the Royal Academy of Music. Dale showed compositional talent from an early age and went on to write a small but notable corpus of ...

, winning the gold medal of the

Worshipful Company of Musicians The Worshipful Company of Musicians is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. Its history dates back to at least 1350. Originally a specialist guild for musicians, its role became an anachronism in the 18th century, when the centre of ...

, and at her graduation recital in 1934 performed a sonata of her own composition. At the Academy she met fellow-student Bohdan Hubicki, a Canadian violinist of Ukrainian descent, and they married in July 1940. Three months later Bohdan died when their house was bombed; Peggy sustained severe injuries. Thereafter she devoted much of her life to music education. She did not remarry. Hubicki devised the Colour Staff method to help people with dyslexia to read music by using colour. "Its particularly distinctive characteristic is that it enables musical notation to be taught in a multi-sensory way". She was one of the founders of the

British Dyslexia Association British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

, and involved in the Council for Music in Hospitals. Hubicki was Professor of Harmony at the Royal Academy of Music until she retired in 1986; her students included composer Sir

John Tavener Sir John Kenneth Tavener (28 January 1944 – 12 November 2013) was an English composer, known for his extensive output of choral religious works. Among his best known works are '' The Lamb'' (1982), ''The Protecting Veil'' (1988), and '' Song ...

, flautist

James Galway Sir James Galway (born 8 December 1939) is an Irish virtuoso flute player from Belfast, nicknamed "The Man with the Golden Flute". He established an international career as a solo flute player. In 2005, he received the Brit Award for Outsta ...

, pianist

Jeremy Menuhin Jeremy Louis Eugene Menuhin (born 2 November 1951) is a composer and pianist and the son of violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Early life Menuhin was born in San Francisco, California, the fourth son of his father Yehudi Menuhin and the second of his mot ...

and singer Annie Lennox. She was also one of the first teachers, and a governor, of the

Yehudi Menuhin School The Yehudi Menuhin School is a specialist music school in Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey, England, founded in 1963 by violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin. The current director of music is the British classical pianist Ashley Wass. The school is on ...

. She was appointed

in December 1986 in recognition of her service to music in hospitals. An album of her compositions, ''Dedication in Time'', was released on the Chandos label in 2005 to celebrate her 90th birthday.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hubicki, Peggy 1915 births 2006 deaths Alumni of the Royal Academy of Music Academics of the Royal Academy of Music British women composers 20th-century women musicians British music educators British women music educators Dyslexia researchers