Eliza Flower was famous across the UK in her lifetime at all strata of society. ELECTRIC VOICE THEATRE have created this site to celebrate her work and life, and to give free access to her music. You can listen to our recordings of her works, download her vocal scores, learn about her life, meet the composers inspired by her today and explore our Eliza Flower workshop and performance projects. Just click on the links below to find out more……..
Eliza Flower (1803 – 1846) grew up in Harlow, Essex, and became a famous organist, composer and choral conductor in London. Click here to find out more about her extraordinary life….
Click here for a list of scores available to download for free for use in performances, workshops and for study. You will find music for choirs, including acapella and for solo voice(s) with piano.
ELECTRIC VOICE THEATRE has been busy recording and performing music by Eliza Flower. Click here for videos, sound recordings, and photographs from events and archives.
Eliza Flower’s music is inspiring women composers today. Click here to find out more about the radical works based on her music and commissioned by ELECTRIC VOICE THEATRE.
Click here for the Flower Projects by ELECTRIC VOICE THEATRE including performances and workshops with schools, colleges, choirs, community groups and more.
Eliza Flower (1803 – 1846)
Composer Eliza Flower was born on 19th April 1803 and grew up in Harlow in Essex where she is buried beside her sister, the poet, Sarah Flower Adams, with whom she collaborated on many of her compositions. They both worked and sang together at South Place Unitarian Chapel, in Finsbury in London. Their contributions to cultural and political life were so important that when the chapel closed down their portraits and archive were moved to Conway Hall in London.
Eliza was a prolific composer of vocal music including dramatic hymns, powerful protest songs, delightful songs for the seasons, settings of contemporary writers like Sir Walter Scott and her frequent collaborator Harriet Martineau, and arrangements of tunes by Mozart, Bach, Handel and Beethoven. Her sister, Sarah Flower Adams, wrote the words of ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ but Eliza’s astonishing music for the hymn is now unknown, quite possibly because of the scandal that ensued when she set up a separate household with her married guardian.
Image:Tinted lithograph of a drawing by Mrs E Bridell Fox, 1898/99, Courtesy of Conway Hall Ethical Society
This website was created by ELECTRIC VOICE THEATRE (Registered charity no:1194881), an award-winning contemporary music-theatre acappella ensemble, commissioning, creating, researching and performing vocal music by women composers for theatrical performance, participating in creative multi-disciplinary collaborations, and delivering workshops connecting children and adults to their local creative and cultural environment. The site is supported by Conway Hall Ethical Society and BBC New Generation Thinker and music historian Dr Oskar Jensen, with funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, with special thanks to all National Lottery players.