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Alicia Adélaide Needham (née Montgomery; 31 October 1863 – 24 December 1945) was an Irish composer of songs and ballads. A committed
suffragette A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members ...
, she was the first woman to conduct at the Royal Albert Hall, London, and the first female president of the National
Eisteddfod In Welsh culture, an ''eisteddfod'' is an institution and festival with several ranked competitions, including in poetry and music. The term ''eisteddfod'', which is formed from the Welsh morphemes: , meaning 'sit', and , meaning 'be', means, a ...
of Wales (in 1906).


Life

Needham was born in Oldcastle, Co. Meath, daughter of John Wilson Montgomery (1834-1911), master of the
Bailieborough Bailieborough or Bailieboro (; ) is a town and Civil parishes in Ireland, civil parish in County Cavan, Ireland. As of the 2022 census of Ireland, 2022 census, the population was 2,974, up from 1,529 as of the 1996 census. Bailieborough's prox ...
Workhouse and a clerk to the
poor law In English and British history, poor relief refers to government and ecclesiastical action to relieve poverty. Over the centuries, various authorities have needed to decide whose poverty deserves relief and also who should bear the cost of hel ...
board of guardians; he was also an antiquarian, contributing to local newspapers on the subject, and produced some books of poetry, becoming known as the "Bard of Bailieborough". The family subsequently lived at
Downpatrick Downpatrick () is a town in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is on the Lecale peninsula, about south of Belfast. In the Middle Ages, it was the capital of the Dál Fiatach, the main ruling dynasty of Ulaid. Down Cathedral, Its cathedral is sai ...
in
County Down County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 552,261. It borders County Antrim to the ...
. She went to boarding school in
Derry Derry, officially Londonderry, is the second-largest City status in the United Kingdom, city in Northern Ireland, and the fifth-largest on the island of Ireland. Located in County Londonderry, the city now covers both banks of the River Fo ...
for four years and spent the following year in Castletown, Isle of Man. She studied at the
Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is one of the oldest music schools in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the firs ...
in London, first for one year only (most likely the academic year 1880–1): piano with the Irish pianist and composer Arthur O'Leary, harmony and counterpoint with Francis William Davenport and occasionally with
George Alexander Macfarren Sir George Alexander Macfarren (2 March 181331 October 1887) was an English composer and musicologist. Life George Alexander Macfarren was born in London on 2 March 1813 to George Macfarren, a dancing-master, dramatic author and journalist, wh ...
and Ebenezer Prout. It is not clear what she did in the intervening three years before she resumed her studies in 1884, but she then graduated in 1887 and became a Licentiate of the Academy in 1889. In 1893 she also passed the examinations to the Associateship of the
Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music (RCM) is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including pe ...
. In the meantime she had married the London-based physician Joseph Needham in 1892 and in 1900 gave birth to their only child, also called Joseph. Actively supported by her husband, who organised concerts for her and arranged her earliest publications, her musical career began in 1894 with a number of publications and piano and song recitals. Altogether she wrote some 700 compositions, most of which songs, but there are also some duets, trios and quartets for voices and piano, some piano music, some orchestrations of songs, choral hymns, marches for brass bands, and one church service. More than 200 published works can be found in the
British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...
, some of which are song cycles and similar collections with up to 12 pieces. She seems to have stopped composing before 1920 and little was heard of her henceforth. She died, largely unnoticed by the public, on Christmas Eve 1945 in London. Thanks to her son
Joseph Needham Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (; 9 December 1900 – 24 March 1995) was a British biochemist, historian of science and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science and technology, initia ...
's later fame as a highly distinguished biochemist and sinologist, the private belongings – including the papers of his mother – of him were archived, first at the University of Bath, and now in Cambridge. This includes published music, private and professional correspondence for the years 1877 to 1921, extensive diaries covering the years 1879 to 1924, photographs, notebooks, etc. The overview of the "Joseph Needham Papers" at Cambridge mentions that her extensive diaries reveal a very unhappy marriage, but there is no word about it in her typescript autobiography, which she had intended for publication. In this source she describes her early career from the mid-1890s thus: "For ten years, I might say twenty years and more, songs, piano soli, quartettes, trios, song cycles, hymns, all flowed from my happy pen. They were so prolific, these years, that I sometimes, if tired, feared to look at a poetry book lest a poem might strike me and set itself instantaneously to music in my head, and I should be inclined to run away and set it down.” An active member to and benefactress of the Pan-Celtic movement which existed from 1899 until c. 1910, and one of the attendants of the Pan-Celtic Congress of Caernarfon of 1904 (who was photographed there in Celtic revival dress and modern dress), she was made the first woman President of the National
Eisteddfod In Welsh culture, an ''eisteddfod'' is an institution and festival with several ranked competitions, including in poetry and music. The term ''eisteddfod'', which is formed from the Welsh morphemes: , meaning 'sit', and , meaning 'be', means, a ...
of Wales in 1906, with fellow presidents of the calibre like the Lord Mayor and the Bishop of London and two lords. A few years later she was also made a "Bardess of Wales", i.e. a member of the Welsh Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain, under the title "Harp of Ireland". She was the first woman to conduct at the
Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London, England. It has a seating capacity of 5,272. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres ...
. And in 1910 she was a V.I.P. at a banquet given in Dublin by Lord Aberdeen, the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to honour 'Irish Women of Letters'. Her biggest single commercial success was when she won the competition for the Prize Song for the coronation of
King Edward VII Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria and ...
in 1902. More than 300 composers sent in their contribution, and Alicia Needham went away with the £100 award for a song which she wrote in a last-minute fashion while she was accidentally staying in a room at Dublin's Shelbourne Hotel. The death of her husband in 1920 meant a serious change in Alicia Needham's course of life. She was forced to sell the house and furniture, paintings, books and china and had to move into a considerably smaller flat in a less fashionable district of the city. She writes in her autobiography (p. 67-8): " ..my music-room shelves left empty, and four tons of books sent away to storage, all the best things and treasures sold, I only keeping enough for a little flat!". She probably lived from the sales of the house and family possessions for a few years, but her decline is clearly visible in that she doesn't seem to have composed any more after 1920, her collection of correspondence ends in 1921, her diaries end in 1924, her autobiography in 1926. The "Joseph Needham Papers" in Cambridge reveal that she turned to astrology and occultism; she began to believe in the rebirthing of the dead and devoted time to so-called "spirit photography". Notices in the ''Irish Times'' and the ''British Medical Journal'' of 1933 reveal that by then she was in serious financial difficulty and had health problems, with a Dr. J.S. Crone of the Irish Literary Society organising a "testimonial". The last public notice about her is that she converted to the Catholic faith in December 1934.''The Irish Times'', 21 December 1934, p. 8.


Selected works

* ''An Album of Hush Songs'' (1897) * ''The Seventh English Edward'' (1902) * ''A Bunch of Shamrocks: Irish Song Cycle for Four Solo Voices'' (1904) * ''Twelve Small Songs for Small People'' (1904) * ''Four Songs for Women Suffragists'' (1908) * ''A Bunch of Heather: Scottish Song Cycle'' (1910) * ''Army and Navy Songcycle'' (1912)


Bibliography

* Annie Patterson: "Alicia Adelaide Needham", in: ''Weekly Irish Times'', 9 June 1900 * Eithne Nic Pheadair Annie Patterson "Alicia Adelaide Needham", in: ''The Leader'' 23 (1916) 14, pp. 227–8 * Jennifer O'Connor & Axel Klein: "Needham, Alicia Adelaide", in: ''The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland'', ed. H. White & B. Boydell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013) * Oxford DNB


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Needham, Alicia Adelaide 1863 births 1945 deaths 20th-century Irish classical composers 20th-century Irish women composers Alumni of the Royal Academy of Music Alumni of the Royal College of Music Irish classical composers Irish women classical composers Irish suffragists Presidents of the National Eisteddfod of Wales People from Oldcastle, County Meath Musicians from County Meath 1890s in Irish music 1900s in Irish music 1910s in Irish music