She was one of the group of women pianists who were the golden age of Tobias Matthay students - Myra Hess, Irene Scharrer, Harriet Cohen, Gertrude Peppercorn - women who studied with Matthay in the 1890s and early 1900s , many of whom went on to the Royal Academy of Music, and all of whom were lauded as high calibre musicians with the prospect of future golden careers. Evangeline Livens, too, was feted in her time at the Academy, only for ill health to cut her career short almost as soon as she left. Within a year all mention of her had dried up, and her name fell into oblivion, until a recent recording of one of her works has sparked a more public curiosity. She deserves more. Unfortunately, much of the history of the Livens family was lost in both the Blitz and in a house fire in 1957. However, we can piece together some of the narrative from the glimpses we have.
The family was a creative one. Evangeline’s older brother Leo would also become a pianist and composer; Their father Horace Livens (1862-1936) was an artist who studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp alongside Vincent Van Gogh. As is so often the case, little is known about their mother, Gertrude Evangeline Brock (1873-1950), but I often wonder if the musical genes came from her as well as the daughter’s name.
Evangeline was born in Croydon on 16 March 1898. We see her early life through the pictures of her father; he often drew the children, and seemed to have a particular fascination with his daughter. There is an air of determination about the small figure depicted in pastels and pencil. I am especially taken with the rotund toddler digging stolidly in the beach - for some reason, to me the day looks cold, windy even, but concentration emanates from every pore as she wields the rather overlong spade.
How long this initial carefree childhood would last we do not know. The pictures segue into portraits at the piano, reading, drawing. Still normal childhood pastimes, but now almost all within the bounds of the home at Hatch End. This would not be more than a passing observation, if we did not have another piece of the puzzle, provided by a relative. Gertrude suffered from bipolar disorder - not named as such in those days - and noise in particular was painful for her. The children had to tiptoe around the house in socks, and although they were permitted to practise the piano (who was it who insisted on this, one wonders?), apparently there was felt inserted between hammers and strings, to muffle the sound.
Nevertheless, despite this extra hurdle, both children succeeded in gaining places to study piano, first at the Tobias Matthay School, then at the Royal Academy of Music. Evangeline “graduated” from one to the other in 1912. She entered as one of four Ada Lewis Scholars, the other three being pianist Gwendda Davies, cellist Giovanni Barbirolli, and the unknown Arthur Phillips. Her teacher was Matthay himself at least to begin with, although Hedwig McEwen also taught her. She learned harmony with John McEwen, who would later be principal of the Academy, and Ethel Bilsland, then a vocal and composition student and sub-professor, who went on to teach singing at the Academy. Evangeline is pictured here at the Matthay School annual picnic in 1914, at the left of the front row.
It was not long before the accolades started to roll in. The reviews were warm and sincere in their praise, both of her pianism and of her composition. Evangeline was concertizing even before she arrived at the Academy. The earliest review is in May 1911, when those two words beloved of reviewers of women musicians are used to describe her: her playing is ‘clever’ and ‘neat’. Two months later, the praise is more fulsome, when she is touted as having ‘exceptional promise’. In June 1912, she is reported as playing at the Bechstein Hall, billed with the Woltmann Orchestra (a ladies’ orchestra who played frequently around London, including in the Duke’s Hall at the Academy), with whom she fairly frequently concertized: “Miss Evangeline Livens, a small pianist, played her own ‘Impromptu’.” This piece, according to The Times, had “quite up-to-date harmonisation arranged on an intelligible plan”. It was one of several appearances in the same program as the Woltmann Orchestra.
Evangeline not only took part in a large number of Academy concerts, as well as many London halls, but performed much further afield, turning up in reviews of concerts and competitions as far afield as Bristol, where in 1914 she took first prize at the Eisteddfod for her performance of Benjamin Dale’s Night Fancies. Sometimes these were solo appearances, sometimes she performed with her brother, Leo. One of these sibling concerts took place at the Goupil Gallery on Southampton St in 1913, one assumes as a soundtrack for an exhibition of works by their father; another at the Academy, where Evangeline was said to have played ‘with a genuinely musical tone and charming touch.’ She continued to feature in prize-givings at the Academy – she won the Nicholls Prize for piano in 1915, was highly commended in the Liszt Scholarship, and commended in the Hine Prize for the best English ballad. She played in charity concerts, lecture-recitals, and the Saturday Night ‘Pops’ at Central Hall.
Evangeline was clearly a busy composer, although many of her pieces are now lost. There is the Impromptu performed in the 1911 Woltmann concert. We are told of some violin pieces ‘of considerable merit’ played by Peggy Cochrane at a RAM concert in 1917, and mention is made of a two-piano suite, “The Tempest’, performed with Leo in the Duke’s Hall of the Academy in November 1913. Fortunately, The Three Sketches for Pianoforte were captured through publication by Joseph Williams in 1915, complete with dedication to one of Evangeline’s piano teachers, Hedwig McEwen, wife of her harmony teacher. The first piece, Gossamer, we are told in passing in a newspaper review, was composed at age 11. It had been performed by Evangeline as early as 1911, and the full set was also aired in recital, as this review demonstrates:
Three small piano solos by Miss Evangeline Livens were cleverly played for the first time by their youthful composer, who seems at the moment too much concerned with Debussyisms to allow her own undeniable talent a chance of asserting itself. The same pianist also took part in a careful performance of Bach’s Concerto in D for piano, flute and violin, the other solo parts being played by Miss Florence Moss and Mr Albert Fransella. The Woltmann Orchestra at Duke’s Hall, March 1914
Upon publication, the score is also reviewed favorably:
They are all clever and effective pieces, possessing an originality that produces freshness, and they should form a pleasant addition to the repertoire of the accomplished amateur.
Evangeline left the Academy in 1919, with the Sterndale Bennett Prize under her belt. She was represented by the famous agents Ibbs and Tillett in the 1919-20 season, but this is almost the last that we hear of her. From 1921, she vanishes. The next we know of her is from the records of Shenley Psychiatric Hospital in Middlesex, where Evangeline was admitted in 1932, with the same illness that had afflicted both her mother and her brother. She remained there for life and died there in 1983. The three pieces of hers that remain to us demonstrate what a loss this was to music.
Here is the score of the Three Pianoforte Sketches. The middle piece, Shadows, is included on Duncan Honeybourne’s CD, A Hundred Years of English Miniatures.