Eva Ruth Spalding

Eva Ruth Spalding (December 19, 1883 - March 1969) was a British composer, violin and piano teacher who wrote six string quartets, solo piano music and songs.

Spalding was born in Blackheath, Kent, to Henry Spalding and his second wife Ellen. She was the youngest of eight children, with four half-siblings and three full siblings. Henry Spalding was a paper merchant.

Spalding studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where she passed the violin teacher exam in 1904. She also studied with Leopold Auer at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia. After returning to England, she taught piano and violin privately and at Bradfield College. From the 1940s she lived at Tyndrum, Pond Lane, Churt in Surrey, where she died in 1969.

She set texts by the following poets to music: Léon Bazalgette, William Blake, Phineas Fletcher, Paul Fort, Fernand Gregh, George Herbert, Ioannes Papadiamantopoulos (as Jean Moréas), Edmund Spenser, Charles van Lerberghe, Clara Walsh, and Walt Whitman.

Spalding composed six string quartets, the first in the early 1920s. No. 5 was performed by the Aleph String Quartet at the Wigmore Hall on Tuesday 25 April 1950, along with the Five Songs from Spencer's Amoretti, sung by tenor Frederick Fuller. Her music was published by Maurice Senart, with many of the song texts in both French and English versions.

Selected works

Piano

• Etude for the Left Hand (1919)
• Fantasie for piano (1958)
• Prelude (1919)

Songs

• Five Songs from Spencer's Amoretti (1950)
• 'Mort! le vent pleure autour du monde' (1925, text Paul Fort)
• 'Passing of the Spring' (1924, text Clara Walsh)
• 'Soupirs' (1920, text: Clara Walsh)
• Three Melodies for voice and piano or string quartet (1929)
  • 'The Lamb' (text: William Blake)
  • 'The Litany' (text: Phineus Fletcher)
  • 'Easter Words' (text: George Herbert)
• Three Melodies for voice and piano (1919, texts: Walt Whitman)
  • 'Youth, Day, Old Age and Night'
  • 'A Clear Midnight'
  • 'The Lost Invocation'
• 'Vers le soleil s'en vont ensemble' (1923, text: C.von Leberghe)

Chamber

• Poeme (violin and piano)  
• String Quartet No. 1 (1923)
• String Quartet No. 2 (1928)
• String Quartet No. 3
• String Quartet No. 4
• String Quartet No. 5 (1950)
• String Quartet No. 6
• Violin Sonata No. 1
• Violin Sonata No. 2 (1928)
• Violin Sonata No. 3 (1952)

Orchestral

• Music for Strings