A Strong Paternal Influence

Erminia (Mary), Lina (Madeline) and Emilie (Emily) Glover were steeped in music from early childhood. Their father John William (1815–99) was organist at St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral; professor of music at the Central Model Schools of the Board of National Education; founder of the Royal Choral Institute; lecturer on the history of Irish music; composer of cantatas, songs and instrumental pieces; and arranger of one hundred airs for Patrick Weston Joyce’s seminal collection Ancient Irish Music (1873). Glover, along with the German cellist Wilhelm Elsner, the violinist/conductor Richard M. Levey, and the conductor/composer/ lecturer Sir Robert Prescott Stewart, formed part of an elite group of musicians and intellectuals who dominated musical life in Dublin from the 1840s onwards. Several of John William’s children pursued successful careers as musicians, including his sons Ferdinand (1836–59) and William (d.1917). This chapter focuses on the lives and careers of his three daughters, namely Erminia (c.1838–83), Lina (c.1847–1929) and Emilie (c.1848–1917). It explores how they contributed to the vibrant music scene in Dublin and further afield in the latter half of the nineteenth century; it also traces how, through collaborations with their father, they enabled him to realise his personal, musical and patriotic vision.

John William was a devoted teacher to his children and, in addition to piano and voice lessons, he provided them with a strong foundation in the rudiments of compositional technique. Ferdinand, in particular, exhibited exceptional talent and musical ability from an early age. In his late teens, he decided to pursue a career in music and left Dublin to study composition, vocal technique, repertoire and performance in Naples. Following his critically acclaimed debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples in 1856, he was appointed principal baritone at that theatre until July 1857. He returned to London in August 1857 to join the Pyne and Harrison English Opera Company for performances at the Lyceum and Covent Garden theatres. He subsequently took principal roles in William Vincent Wallace’s Maritana, and Michael William Balfe’s The Rose of Castille. In October 1857, his first cantata, The Fire Worshippers, which was based on Thomas Moore’s orientalist romance Lallah Rookh, was premiered at the Royal Irish Institution in Dublin.