Kathleen Mary Ferrier (22 April 19128 October 1953) Kathleen Ferrier was born on 22 April 1912, in the Lancashire village of Higher Walton where her father William Ferrier (the fourth child of Thomas and Elizabeth, née Gorton) was the head of the village school. Although untrained musically, William was an enthusiastic member of the local operatic society and of several choirs, and his wife Alice (née Murray), whom he married in 1900, was a competent singer with a strong contralto voice. Kathleen was the third and youngest of the couple's children, following a sister and a brother; when she was two the family moved to Blackburn, after William was appointed headmaster of St Paul's School in the town. From an early age Kathleen showed promise as a pianist, and had lessons with Frances Walker, a noted North of England piano teacher who had been a pupil of Tobias Matthay. Kathleen's talent developed quickly; in 1924, she came fourth out of 43 entrants at the Lytham St Annes Festival piano competition, and in the following year at Lytham she achieved second place.

Telephonist and pianist

Because of William's impending retirement and the consequent fall in the family's income, Ferrier's hopes of attending a music college could not be realised. In August 1926, she left school to start work as a trainee at the GPO telephone exchange in Blackburn. She continued her piano studies under Frances Walker, and in November 1928 was the regional winner in a national contest for young pianists, organised by the Daily Express. Although unsuccessful in the London finals which followed, Ferrier won a Cramer upright piano as a prize.

thumb|upright=1|King George's Hall, Blackburn, where Ferrier made early appearances as an accompanist at "celebrity" concerts

On 10 March 1929, she made a well-received appearance as an accompanist in a concert at Blackburn's King George's Hall. After further piano competition successes, she was invited to perform a short radio recital at the Manchester studios of the BBC, and on 3 July 1930 made her first broadcast, playing works by Brahms and Percy Grainger.

In 1931, aged 19, Ferrier passed her Licentiate examinations at the Royal Academy of Music. In that year she started occasional singing lessons, and in December sang a small alto role in a church performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah. However, her voice was not thought to be exceptional; her musical life centred on the piano and on local concerts, at King George's Hall and elsewhere. Early in 1934 she transferred to the Blackpool telephone exchange and took lodgings nearby, to be close to her new boyfriend, a bank clerk named Albert Wilson. While at Blackpool she auditioned for the new "speaking clock" service which the GPO was preparing to introduce. In her excitement, Ferrier inserted an extra aspirate into her audition, and was not chosen for the final selection in London. Her decision in 1935 to marry Wilson meant the end of her employment with the telephone exchange, since at that time the GPO did not employ married women. Of Ferrier's career to this point, the music biographer Humphrey Burton wrote: "For more than a decade, when she should have been studying music with the best teachers, learning English literature and foreign languages, acquiring stage craft and movement skills, and travelling to London regularly to see opera, Miss Ferrier was actually answering the telephone, getting married to a bank manager and winning tinpot competitions for her piano-playing."

Marriage

Ferrier met Albert Wilson in 1933, probably through dancing, which they both loved. When she announced that they were to marry, her family and friends had strong reservations, on the grounds that she was young and inexperienced, and that she and Wilson shared few serious interests. Outward appearances were maintained for a few years, until Wilson's departure for military service in 1940 effectively ended the marriage. The couple divorced in 1947, though they remained on good terms. Wilson subsequently married a friend of Ferrier's, Wyn Hetherington; he died in 1969.

Early singing career

In 1937 Ferrier entered the Carlisle Festival open piano competition and, as a result of a small bet with her husband, also signed up for the singing contest. She won the piano trophy; in the singing finals she sang Roger Quilter's To Daisies, a performance which earned her the festival's top vocal award. Ferrier was awarded a special rose bowl as champion of the festival.

thumb|St Kentigern's Church at [[Aspatria, Cumbria, the scene of Ferrier's first professional singing engagement in 1937]]

After her Carlisle victories, Ferrier began to receive offers of singing engagements. Her first appearance as a professional vocalist, in autumn 1937, was at a harvest festival celebration in the village church at Aspatria. She was paid one guinea. The opera critic Rupert Christiansen, writing as the 50th anniversary of Ferrier's death approached, maintained that "no singer in this country has ever been more deeply loved, as much for the person she was as for the voice she uttered". Her death, he continued, "quite literally shattered the euphoria of the Coronation" (which had taken place on 2 June 1953). Among the many tributes from her colleagues, that of Bruno Walter has been highlighted by biographers: "The greatest thing in music in my life has been to have known Kathleen Ferrier and Gustav Mahler—in that order." Very few singers, Lord Harewood writes, "have earned so powerful a valedictory from so senior a colleague." Christiansen further suggests that, given the changes of style over the past 50 years, Ferrier might have been less successful in the 21st century world: "We dislike low-lying voices, for one thing—contraltos now sound freakish and headmistressy, and even the majority of mezzo-sopranos should more accurately be categorised as almost-sopranos".

As the result of a separate appeal, augmented by the sales proceeds of a memoir edited by Neville Cardus, the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship Fund was created to encourage young British and Commonwealth singers of either sex. The Fund, which has operated from 1956 under the auspices of the Royal Philharmonic Society, initially provided an annual award covering the cost of a year's study to a single prizewinner. With the advent of additional sponsors, the number and scope of awards has expanded considerably since that time; the list of winners of Ferrier Awards includes many singers of international repute, among them Felicity Palmer, Yvonne Kenny, Lesley Garrett and Bryn Terfel. The Kathleen Ferrier Society, founded in 1993 to promote interest in all aspects of the singer's life and work, has since 1996 awarded annual bursaries to students at Britain's major music colleges. In 2012, the Society organised a series of events to commemorate the centenary of Ferrier's birth and in February 2012 Ferrier was one of ten prominent Britons honoured by the Royal Mail in the "Britons of Distinction" stamps set. Another was Frederick Delius.

A biographic documentary film, Kathleen Ferrier, also known as ' was directed by Diane Perelsztejn and produced by ARTE France in 2012. It featured interviews with her near relatives, friends and colleagues to produce a fresh view of her life and contributions to the arts. Kathleen Ferrier Crescent, in Basildon, Essex, is named in her honour.

Recordings

Ferrier's discography consists of studio recordings originally made on the Columbia and Decca labels, and recordings taken from live performances which were later issued as discs. In the years since her death, many of her recordings have received multiple reissues on modern media; between 1992 and 1996, Decca issued the Kathleen Ferrier Edition, incorporating much of Ferrier's recorded repertoire, on 10 compact discs. The discographer Paul Campion has drawn attention to numerous works which she performed but did not record, or for which no complete recording has yet surfaced. For example, only one aria from Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, and none of her renderings of 20th century songs by Holst, Bax, Delius and others were recorded. Only a small part of her St John Passion was captured on disc.

The recording of the unaccompanied Northumbrian folk song "Blow the Wind Southerly", initially made by Decca in 1949, has been reissued many times and frequently played on radio in shows such as Desert Island Discs, Housewives' Choice and Your Hundred Best Tunes. Another signature aria, first recorded in 1944 and on numerous subsequent occasions, is "What is Life?" (Che farò) from Orfeo ed Euridice.

Notes and references

Notes

References

Sources

  • The Kathleen Ferrier Society (KFS)
  • "The Community, Voice and Passion of Kathleen Ferrier: A Critical Outlook on the Legendary English Contralto by Yakir Ariel, n.d. (2018?)
  • (In Dutch, with a synopsis in English, it includes an account of the preparation of the 1951 Holland Festival recording of Orfeo ed Euridice for release on record.)