Emma Lomax

Louise Emily (Emma) Lomax (22 June 1873 – 29 August 1963) was an English composer and pianist. She was born in Brighton, daughter of the curator of Brighton Free Library and Museum. She studied at the Brighton School of Music and then at the Royal Academy of Music in London, studying composition with Frederick Corder and the clarinet. She was a Goring Thomas Scholar from 1907 to 1910 and won the Charles Lucas Medal in 1910, awarded for her Theme and Variations for orchestra.

After completing her studies, Lomax became a professor at the Royal Academy of Music (1918-38), and taught at Brighton College.  She was a friend and collaborator of English composer and pianist Eleanor Rudall.<ref>RAM Club Magazine, No. 76, November 1926</ref> Much of her music was dramatically inspired, including a series of recitations and dramatic sketches, some with supernatural themes and with orchestral or piano accompaniment. For instance, The House of Shadows, performed at the Royal Academy in 1904, was described as "a poetic play in two Acts [which] involved several remarkable electric lighting effects devised by [the composer]". The Toy Overture, a parody of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, was performed by The Brighton Municipal Orchestra in 1915. Her opera The Marsh of Vervais was never fully staged, though Dan Godfrey conducted the Prelude to Act 2 at a Bournemouth Winter Gardens concert in January 1927.

Lomax was a member of the Sussex Women's Musicians Club and the Society of Women Musicians. She lived at 11 Park Crescent in Brighton. In her later years she became interested in toy theatre, running the private Early Victorian Theatre in Brighton. She died in Brighton in 1963, aged 90.

Works
Selected works include:
 Bishop Hatto, recitation to music
 The Brownie and the Piano Tuner (1907), dramatic sketch with orchestral accompaniment
 Four Nursery Rhymes, recitation to music
 The House of Shadows (1904), dramatic sketch with orchestral accompaniment
 Ida's Flowers, for orchestra (1906), four illustrations to Hans Christian AndersonThe Marsh of Vervais, opera
 The Mother, recitation to music
 The Prince in Disguise, recitation to music (1908, revived at RAM Centenary, 1922)
 The Sisters, recitation to musicThe Storm Bird, cantata  for female voices (1902)
 Toy Overture (1915)
 Variations on a Quaint Theme (1910), for orchestra
 The Whirlpool, cantata  for female voices
 The Wolf (1906), dramatic sketch with piano accompaniment
 Variations on a Quaint Theme, for orchestra

There were also part-songs and solo songs. Lomax wrote the libretto for Bertram Walton O’Donnell's comic opera The Demon's Bride (1909). Her professional articles include:
"Dr Ebenezer Prout -- and Bach," Music in Education'', vol. 23 (July–August 1959), p. 76.

References

1873 births
1963 deaths
19th-century classical composers
20th-century classical composers
British women classical composers
English classical composers
Musicians from Brighton
Alumni of the Royal Academy of Music
Academics of the Royal Academy of Music
20th-century English composers
20th-century English women musicians
19th-century British composers
British music educators
British women music educators
20th-century women composers
19th-century women composers