{{Short description|English composer, pianist and teacher}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2023}} '''Eleanor Clementine Rudall''' (26 April 1881 – 6 May 1960) was a composer and pianist, who after a promising start while a student at the Royal Academy of Music struggled to find more widespread recognition. She continued her career teaching piano, harmony and composition, and in 1927 became the second wife of composer Frederick Corder. She was a friend and collaborator of English composer and pianist Emma Lomax.<ref>''RAM Club Magazine'', No. 76, November 1926</ref>
==Education and early career== Rudall was born at 25 Upper Phillimore Place, Kensington (now Kensington High Street), the daughter of composer and author Henry Alexander Rudall (1837–1896) and Jane Sinclair Bails.<ref>[http://www.pennyghael.org.uk/Corder.pdf C.E.G. Peace. ''Descendants of Micah Corder'', (2021), p. 3]</ref> H.A. Rudall wrote a biography in the ''Great Composers'' series on Beethoven in 1890.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=GYhNAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22Rudall%22+%22%22Beethoven%22&pg=PA389 'A New Life of Beethoven'], in ''The Speaker'', Vol. 2 (1890), pp. 389–90</ref> She studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where she won the R.A.M. Club prize for composition in 1906.<ref>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/905150 ''The Musical Times''. Vol. 47, No. 758 (April 1, 1906), p. 271]</ref>
Her ''Introduction and Allegro'' for string octet was played at a Royal Academy concert in 1906.<ref>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/904243 'London Concerts'], in ''The Musical Times'', Vol. 47, No. 761 (July 1906), p. 488</ref> Four ''Orchestral Illustrations'' (inspired by the paintings of G F Watts), were performed at a Queen's Hall student concert on 25 June 1907.<ref>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/904646 'Royal Academy of Music'], in ''The Musical Times'', Vol. 48, No. 774 (August 1907), p. 541</ref> Rudall won the Charles Lucas Medal for composition in 1908 for her ''Suite of Three Movements'' for orchestra. Her orchestral ''Variations on an Irish Air'' was also performed that year.<ref>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/904041 'Royal Academy of Music'], in ''The Musical Times'', Vol. 49, No. 786 (August 1908), p. 532</ref> The ambitious operatic prelude ''The Rock of Aesjoen'' for soloists, chorus and orchestra was heard at another Queen's Hall student concert on 30 June 1909, conducted by Frederick Corder.<ref>''Monthly Musical Record'', Volume 39 (1909), p. 185</ref>
==Marriage and later career== On 7 November 1927 in Hampstead Rudall became Corder's second wife. By then aged 75, he had retired from the music profession three years earlier. They lived at his house, 13, Albion Road (now Harben Road), South Hampstead, where she continued to live after his death in 1932.<ref>Landon Ronald (ed.). ''Who's Who in Music'' (1935), p. 236</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=OYRoI9BerW8C&q=%22Frederick+Corder%22+%22Eleanor+Rudall%22 ''Who's Who'', Volume 84 (1923), p. 698]</ref>
By the mid-1930s Rudall was a professor of harmony and composition at the Royal Academy, while also teaching piano at the Tobias Matthay Piano School. On 9 November 1938 she organized a concert of her compositions at the Queen Mary Hall, Great Russell Street, including two String Quartets.<ref>''The Times'', 29 October 1938, p. 10</ref> She became involved in the running of the Society of Women Composers<ref>Sophie Fuller. ''Women Composers during the British Musical Renaissance, 1880–1918'', King's College London thesis, p. 136</ref> and this resulted in performances of her music at Society concerts, such as the ''Phantasie'' for violin and piano played in July 1934,<ref>'London Concerts', in ''The Musical Times'', Vol. 75, No. 1098 (August 1934), p. 746</ref> and a string trio in November 1950.<ref>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/933290 'Society of Women Musicians'], in ''The Musical Times'', Vol. 91, No. 1293 (November 1950), p. 445</ref> She died in May 1960, aged 79.
In her 1950 entry for ''Who's Who in Music'', Rudall listed more of her compositions, now all unknown, including three String Quartets, a Piano Quintet, a Cello Sonata, ''To a Passer By'' for chorus and orchestra, and ''Ballad of Summer Waters'', for female voices. There are published song settings of Robert Bridges' ''The Robin'' and Christina Rossetti's ''Spring Quiet'', and the ''Spring Pastoral'' for piano four hands.<ref>[https://www.prestomusic.com/sheet-music/products/7039951--e-rudall-rudall-e-spring-pastoral-2pf-4hnds Published by Bosworth]</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bright, Dora}} Category:1881 births Category:1960 deaths Category:English women classical composers Category:English classical pianists Category:Alumni of the Royal Academy of Music Category:20th-century English women composers Category:20th-century English women pianists Category:20th-century English classical composers