Rosalind Ellicott Recordings

Rosalind Ellicott showed musical precocity at an early age. Although her father, the Bishop of Gloucester, had little interest in music, her mother supported and encouraged her engagement with music. First taking lessons from the cathedral organist Samuel Wesley at the age of twelve, she then studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music under the guidance of Frederick Westlake. It was around this time that she also began singing, subsequently making appearances as a soprano at various events, including the Three Choirs Festival.

Although she had attempted her first compositions at the age of thirteen, Ellicott studied composition under Thomas Wingham (who had been a student of William Sterndale Bennett) for seven years from 1885, during which time she gained success with works such as the Dramatic Overture (1886) and the cantata Elysium (1889). Performances of her work were fairly regular in this period. However, gradually Ellicott’s focus turned from orchestral works to chamber music. Amongst her chamber music compositions are a Piano Quartet, a sonata each for violin and cello, various smaller works and a dozen or so songs. It seems that her compositional output diminished as the new century approached, and her works started to disappear from concert programmes around 1900. Moving to the south of England after World War One, she died in Kent in 1924, and is buried at Birchington-on-Sea.