Join Electric Voice Theatre and music historian Oskar Jensen for an informal evening of songs, poetry and story-telling at Conway Hall’s historic Library, celebrating the music of Eliza Flower (1803–1846) in the context of her contemporaries, Franz Schubert and Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel. This is a unique opportunity to be among the first people to hear her work performed for at least 100 years. The performance will be accompanied by a display of rarely seen archival materials from Conway Hall.
Electric Voice Theatre and Oskar Jensen will introduce you to Flower’s fascinating life – her politics and her music – with some delightful songs for the seasons, dramatic hymns and powerful protest songs. Discover her interpretations of the works contemporary writers like Sir Walter Scott and her frequent collaborators, radical feminist Harriet Martineau, and her sister, the poet Sarah Flower Adams who is best known for penning the hymn Nearer My God To Thee.
Composer Eliza Flower was born on 19 April 1803 in Harlow in Essex where she is buried beside her sister, Sarah Flower Adams. They both worked and sang together at South Place Unitarian Chapel, the precursor to Conway Hall. Their contributions to cultural and political life have been preserved through their archive and portraits at Conway Hall to this day. Despite being lauded by many in her day including Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Browning, Flower’s music is now unknown, quite possibly because she fell out of favour when she took up an unusual living arrangement with clergyman William Johnson Fox.
“For me, I never had another feeling other than entire admiration for your music – entire admiration – I put it apart from all other English music I know, and fully believe in it as the music we all waited for.”
– A letter from Robert Browning to Eliza Flower
