Composers
In Search of Clara Ross
I first encountered Clara Ross in
London in 1983 in the John Alvey
Turner shop in Great Russell
Street near the British Museum.
In those days the little firstfloor music business was run by
amiable Doug Parry, and he still
possessed the last remnants of
the stock of printed music that
had been issued by the original
Victorian publisher, whose name
and business he had taken over
some years before. Few people
ever bought these faded old
editions of Turner’s mandolin
music and Doug wanted to use
the space for more productive
ends (his main business was
sale and repair of banjos), so he
was happy to sell me copies of
more than a hundred pieces by
the likes of Herbert J. Ellis and
his British contemporaries for
just a few pence each. So it was
that I staggered home from his
shop that afternoon, weighed
down by the sheer quantity of
what I hoped would prove to be a
musical treasure trove but feared
might turn out to be mostly
dross.
Over the next few weeks I played
through it all and found most of the
pieces (although possessed of certain
period charm) were of decidedly
modest musical attainment. With
one striking exception, because the
dozen pieces I had acquired by Clara
Ross were clearly of a quality and
sophistication that lay far beyond that
of her British contemporaries. I was
about to record a mandolin recital
(with piano accompaniment) for Radio
3, and included one of her pieces in
the broadcast, a beautiful and melodic
Sicilienne, ‘dedicated to the members
of Miss Clara Ross’ Ladies’ Mandoline
and Guitar Band’. I was intrigued by her
music and by the reference to her band,
but who was this pioneering mandolin
composer whose name was not even
mentioned in Philip J. Bone’s famous
book, nor given more than a passing
nod in any of the thousands of editions
of Victorian and Edwardian mandolin
magazines that I’d read during my
research into mandolin history? How
could a woman who had composed
so much beautiful and original music
for mandolin (at least fifty published
pieces) have apparently left no trace
of her life or career in any of the usual
sources for mandolin history, nor been
included in any reference books about
women composers?
That question kept niggling away
at me over the decades and a couple
of years ago I decided to try to find out
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who Clara was, and to track down as
much of her music as I could find. Since
then I’ve gradually been uncovering
the music of a neglected composer of
undeniable talent, whose life spanned a
century (and both sides of the Atlantic),
and also finding out about a forgotten
world of exclusively female musicmaking in Britain during late nineteenth
century. So far I have published two
articles based on this new research and
have performed a good deal of Clara’s
]\