Dring, Madeleine

Music in Print

Musically precocious, Dring began playing the piano at an early age and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music Junior Department at the age of nine. There she began to write music for children’s plays and,for the rest of her life, she was powerfully attracted to writing for the theatre. Further scholarships enabled her to continue her studies at the Royal College with Herbert Howells.

She loved piano and composed much music for the instrument, including two piano works, which were fashionable in the 1950s. She composed at this time for revues and stage plays and, in the 1960s, for several television plays. Her more extended works include a one-act opera, Cupboard Love, and a dance-drama, The Fair Queen of Wu.

Family life prevented her from writing more extended works, but she did write a good deal of chamber and solo music.She also loved performing, particularly on the stage. Of her works, the charming Trio for flute,oboe and piano and the Five Betjeman Songs (of which the ‘Song of a Nightclub Proprietress’ is particularly popular) are still played frequently and the dances for solo piano and oboe feature regularly in examination lists.