Through the Centuries

Madeleine Dring was born in 1923 into a family of theatre people and was admitted to the Royal College of Music at the age of nine. She studied composition with Herbert Howells and also took lessons with Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams. She made a career in the theatre and gained a reputation for being able to compose catchy melodies in a short time. Unfortunately, she died at the age of 53 from a cerebral haemorrhage. The diversity of her musical legacy is often attributed to the inconsistency of her career; as a result, the revival of interest in her work has lagged behind that of her contemporaries Elizabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams and Ruth Gipps. Kitty Whately and pianist Julius Drake have chosen very different pieces by Dring and conclude with their version of Cole Porter's "In the Still of the Night".