Marie Dare

Marie Dare (1902–76) was born in Newport-on-Tay and studied at the Guildhall School of Music, where she was awarded the Gold Medal for instrumentalists and the Sir Landon Ronald and Guildhall composition prizes. Her teachers were Warwick Evans and W H Squire and (in composition) Benjamin Dale.

She was chosen as soloist in the Victory Concert at the Royal Albert Hall after the First World War.

She went on to study cello in Paris with Paul Bazelaire and composition with Benjamin Dale, winning a Society of Women Musicians composition prize with her piano trio.

She gave recitals in Vienna, Budapest and London, including one in the Aeolian Hall devoted to her own compositions.

After serving in the WRNS in the Second World War, she became principal cellist of the Reid Orchestra in Edinburgh, and was for many years a member of the Scottish Trio with Wight Henderson and Horace Fellows.

Most of her compositions are for small chamber forces, many featuring the cello. She also wrote several songs, and three ballet scores, including Thumbeline, for two pianos.

The Collection

Our collection consists of around 100 handwritten complete scores, with some miscellaneous, incomplete or draft compositions, plus nearly thirty sound recordings on vinyl, reel, cassette and CD. Nearly forty items have been digitised so far.

The Scottish Music Centre acquired the collection after the composer’s death in 1976, and may be consulted on the premises by appointment. Copies of most items can be supplied on request.

Critical Notices

Marie Dare, at her recital in Aeolian Hall on January 19, appeared in the three-fold role of composer, cellist and pianist. She did so with a quiet efficiency that was a testimony to her musicianship. She has ideas, expresses herself with charm, and writes chamber music that is genuinely suitable for whatever combination of instruments she is using, whether it be four string instruments – as in her Phantasy Quartet, 1933, and her new Quartet in G minor, 1934-37 – or for five, as in her Phantasy Quintet, 1933-34, with two cellos. In most of these, including the new Quartet, and three violin solos delightfully played by Marjorie Hayward, one noted alongside their charm a tendency to overwork one or two types of rhythm. This in turn narrowed the field for the melodic material. But in the Phantasy Quintet Marie Dare cut away boldly from these associations. The subject-matter is vigorous, the treatment imaginative, and the emotional effect warm and buoyant. The concert ended with her Three Highland Sketches.

M.M.S., Musical Times, February 1938.

Marie Dare’s Minuet, which she herself played with Audrey Innes, is indeed a trifle, which is how she described it. But it is an attractive piece that budding double-bass players are likely to take up.

Malcolm Rayment., Glasgow Herald, 18 December 1969.

Marie Dare’s quartet dates from 1933, and has much in common with those contemporary works that represent the final flowering of the romantic movement in Britain, although in idiom it is more conservative than the majority of such pieces. If to some extent it recalls John Ireland, the listener is also forcibly reminded of Schubert. […] Marie Dare was a cellist before she switched to the double bass. It is not surprising, therefore, that her string writing is exemplary. It is also varied, making good use of contrasted textural colouring.

Malcolm Rayment, Glasgow Herald, 2 February 1970.

The centre piece or filing in the sandwich of this concert was the Phantasy Quartet by the Edinburgh composer, Marie Dare. Written in 1933, it is an essay in the idiom of its time which bears the stamp of a gracious musical personality remembered with affection.

David Griffiths, Scotsman, 28 April 1978.