In Search of Song: The Life and Times of Lucy Broadwood by Dorothy de Val (review)

This study of Lucy Broadwood (1858–1929) provides a striking panorama of English musical life in the last decades of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth centuries. Great-granddaughter of the founder of the famous piano manufacturing firm, Broadwood was an habitué of the London concert world, privy to trade secrets and “insider” information about some of Europe’s most famous pianists. Membership in genteel society brought regular access to the best musical salons of the capitol, where she witnessed the private performances of many of the foremost musicians of the day. A singer and pianist who also wrote songs, she received much recognition in these circles as a performer and arranger, though upper-class mores that insisted on music as a leisure pursuit ensured that her work in this area be kept to a minimum.

Broadwood was also one of the pioneers of the Folk Revival, the movement to collect and codify the artifacts of British traditional culture that had been gathering momentum since the mid-nineteenth century and that culminated in the establishment of the Folk-Lore (1878) and Folk-Song (1899) Societies. She was a founding member of the latter, serving as long-time board member and secretary, and eventually as president. She also edited many issues of the Society’s Journal, drawing on her expertise as co-editor, with J. A. Fuller Maitland, of the pathbreaking English County Songs (1893) as well as on her own collecting experiences in the field. Her wide reading in folklore and cultural anthropology brought an unusually keen and sympathetic intelligence to the study of traditional music, while her historical interests extended beyond folk song to include early music. She explored historical methods of performance practice with Arnold Dolmetsch, and published a number of arrangements of early English and continental works in her anthology Old World Songs (1895, also co-edited with Fuller Maitland). At the behest of William Barclay-Squire, Keeper of the Music Collection at the British Museum, she edited songs by Henry Purcell. In the last decade of her life, she contributed to the British ballad opera revival of the 1920s.

In short, Broadwood was both witness to and an important player in the musical life of her times. Dorothy de Val has been given the difficult task of conveying the richness of her subject in a mere 164 pages, especially as she has undertaken to write a true biography rather than a more specialized musical monograph. Thus in addition to Broadwood’s many important and varied musical pursuits, we learn about her frequent European travels, indifferent health and primitive medical treatments, relationships with family members and the family firm, politics, charity work, and explorations in comparative religion and mysticism. We also encounter her many friends and colleagues, including the pianist Fanny Davies, the baritone James Campbell McInnes (a possible lover), and the civil servant Sir Richmond Ritchie, among others, all of whom receive space and appraisal in relation to Broadwood’s life. If some figures and topics are somewhat slighted and the discussion occasionally seems to jump around—an impression not helped by a few chapter subheadings that seem mislabeled or misplaced—this is a perhaps inevitable consequence of Broadwood’s relatively low name recognition and the resulting need to keep the book short. Still, as the means by which we get to know her and place her work socially and emotionally, the diversity of topics emerges as a strength. The challenge of being an intelligent and curious single woman in an upper-class Victorian society where marriage was the norm is particularly well drawn, as we see Broadwood chafing under society’s strictures, battling depression and struggling internally about missed career opportunities. The corresponding benefits of independence are eloquently noted too—the freedom to travel, the time for sustained contemplative work and intellectual exploration, the delight in...