Patricia Blomfield Holt (15 September 1910 – 5 June 2003) was a Canadian

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

and

music educator Music education is a field of practice in which educators are trained for careers as elementary or secondary music teachers, school or music conservatory ensemble directors. Music education is also a research area in which scholars do original ...

. An associate of the

Canadian Music Centre The Canadian Music Centre was founded in 1959 by a group of Canadian composers who saw a need to create a repository for Canadian music. It now holds Canada's largest collection of Canadian concert music, and works to promote the music of its As ...

and a member of the Association of Canadian Women Composers, her compositions have been performed by notable musical ensembles throughout North America and Europe.

Life

Born Patricia Blomfield in

Lindsay, Ontario Lindsay is a community of 22 367 people (2021 Canadian Census, 2021 census) on the Scugog River in the Kawartha Lakes (Ontario), Kawartha Lakes region of south-eastern Ontario, Canada. It is approximately west of Peterborough, Ontario, Peterboro ...

, Blomfield Holt began her career in her teenage years as a largely self-taught composer and pianist. She studied with Norah de Kresz privately before she entered

The Royal Conservatory of Music The Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM), branded as The Royal Conservatory, is a non-profit music education institution and performance venue headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1886 by Edward Fisher as The Toronto Con ...

at the age of 19 in 1928. She studied and taught concurrently for the next ten years. She was a pupil there of Norman Wilks, Hayunga Carman, Leo Smith, Ernest MacMillan and

Healey Willan James Healey Willan (12 October 1880 – 16 February 1968) was an Anglo-Canadian organist and composer. He composed more than 800 works including operas, symphonies, chamber music, a concerto, and pieces for band, orchestra, organ, and ...

. She was a self-taught composer until she began studying with Willan in 1936. In 1938 she won the Vogt Society Award for the best music composition for her ''Suite No. 1 for Violin and Piano''. Her ''Suite No. 2'' was described by London's Musical Times: "The language is frankly of the 19th century, and the forms are reminiscent of Schumann, but the material is handled with certainty and a nice sense of texture". After marrying in 1939, she subsequently turned down a scholarship to Juilliard. She also left her teaching position at

and did not return until 1954. Blomfield Holt taught music history,

music theory Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the "rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (ke ...

, composition and piano performance until she retired from the faculty in 1985.

Musical style

Blomfield Holt's music has been described as "tonally conservative and well crafted".Jones, G. Blomfield Holt, Patricia. ''Grove Music Online''. Ed. Retrieved 2 Sep. 2018, from http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0002019935 . The majority of her output consists of chamber and vocal works. Her ''Lyric Piece No. 2'' was recorded by

Jeremy Findlay Jeremy Findlay is a Canadian cellist who has had an active international performance career in both the concert and chamber music repertoire since the mid-1980s. Since 1994 he has performed and recorded many works with pianist Elena Braslavsky ...

and Elena Braslavsky in 2002. Her orchestral work, ''Legend of the North Woods'' is "an evocation of a lake depicted in Canadian painter J.R. Seauvy’s picture of an unspoilt early Indian scene in the lake country" and was recorded by the University of Calgary Orchestra.

Selected works

Incidental Music

* Sister Beatrice (1936)

Orchestral

* Pastorale (1940) * Short Sketch on a Theme (1940) * Legend of the North Woods (1985) * To the Distant Shore (1988)

Chamber

* Pastorale and Finale, violin and piano (1935) * Suite no.1, violin and piano (1936) * Lyric Pieces nos.1-2, cello and piano (1937) * String Quartet No. 1 (1937 rev 1939) * Suite No. 2, violin or viola and piano (1939) * String Quartet no. 2 (1956 rev 1985, 1987) * Metamorphosis, viola and piano (1985) * Set of Two, flute and piano (1987) * Cello Sonata (1987) * Invocations for flute, cello and harp (1989)

Vocal

* Songs of Early Canada for baritone, harp, horn, strings (1950) * Songs of My Country for baritone or alto, harp, horn and strings with words by Duncan Campbell Scott,

Susanna Moodie Susanna Moodie (born Strickland; 6 December 1803 – 8 April 1885) was an English-born Canadian author who wrote about her experiences as a settler in Canada, which was a British colony at the time. Biography Susanna Moodie was born in Bungay, ...

Marjorie Pickthall Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall (14 September 1883, in Gunnersbury, London – 22 April 1922, in Vancouver), was a Canadian writer who was born in England but lived in Canada from the time she was seven.Barbara Godard,Pickthall, Marjorie Lowry ...

(1950) * 3 Songs of Contemplation for voice and piano with words by

E. J. Pratt Edwin John Dove Pratt (February 4, 1882 – April 26, 1964), who published as E. J. Pratt, was "the leading Canadian poet of his time."

, M. Adeney, A. Lowell (1970) * The Birds, voice and piano with words by

Hilaire Belloc Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (, ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. H ...

(1971) * A Lake Memory for low voice and piano with words by

William Wilfred Campbell William Wilfred Campbell (1 June ca. 1860 – 1 January 1918) was a Canadian poet. He is often classed as one of the country's Confederation Poets, a group that included fellow Canadians Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, an ...

(1979) * Magnificat for SATB (1986) * Polar Chrysalis: 10 Haiku Poems for mezzo-soprano, piano, horn, cello and percussion (1988) * Who Knows Not Grief for SATB (1991) * Let the Nations Rejoice for 9 voices (1995)

Piano

* Scherzo - Riding a Bicycle (1962) * Two Piano Pieces (1974) * Three Short Pieces (1974) * Hardy's Ground (1982 rev 1995) * Two Short Pieces (1999) * Moments in Time (2002)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blomfield Holt, Patricia 1910 births 2003 deaths Canadian classical pianists Canadian women pianists Canadian composers Canadian music educators Canadian women music educators The Royal Conservatory of Music alumni Academic staff of The Royal Conservatory of Music 20th-century classical pianists 20th-century Canadian pianists 20th-century Canadian women musicians Women classical pianists Canadian women composers People from Kawartha Lakes Musicians from Ontario 20th-century women pianists