Edward James Loder

Composer b. 10 July 1809 in Bath d. 5 April 1865 in London Born into a family of Bath musicians. Though his year of birth has generally being cited as 1813, recent research suggests that it was four years earlier. He gave such early promise of musical talent that his parents sent him to Germany to study under Beethoven’s pupil Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838), whom Edward’s father had known during Ries’s years in London from 1813 to 1824. Back in England, in 1831 he married Eliza Watson, daughter of the choral conductor at Covent Garden Theatre. As Mrs Edward Loder she sang in Bath throughout the 1830s. However, the marriage having soon broken down, she emigrated in 1840 with her siblings to America. Having moved from Bath to London, Edward gained significant note with the opera Nourjahad, which initiated a new phase in English opera when produced at Samuel J. Arnold’s English Opera House at London’s Lyceum Theatre in July 1834. The Widow Queen (October 1834), The Covenanters (August 1835) and The Dice of Death (August 1835) followed at the same theatre. However, the failure of Arnold’s venture, combined with Loder’s need to earn a living, increasingly tied him to the composition of popular songs and ballads. Of these ‘The Brave Old Oak’ (1834) enjoyed especial currency on both sides of the Atlantic.