Muriel Herbert

Muriel Emily Herbert (1897 – 1 May 1984) was a British composer of the early 20th century. Much of her work is for solo voice and piano, with art song settings of texts by English and Irish poets such as Thomas Hardy, Robert Herrick, Ben Jonson, James Joyce, and W. B. Yeats. Early life Herbert was born in 1897, in Sheffield, and grew up in Liverpool, England. She was the youngest child and only daughter. Herbert grew up singing and playing music in her home, as her mother was the church choir director. Her older brother, Percy, was also a musician and encouraged Herbert to study music, for which she had a natural ability. Herbert began writing down songs for voice and piano at a young age. Her father died in 1909, and the Herbert family struggled with poverty. Hugh Farrie, a journalist for the Liverpool Post, encouraged Herbert to become a concert pianist, but her interest was in composition. Marriage and Paris In 1925, after marrying a young French academic, Emile Delavenay, Herbert traveled to Paris for her honeymoon. Here she was introduced to James Joyce by Emile’s friend, the Irish poet Tom McGreevey. Herbert played and sang her versions of Joyce’s poems, “I hear an army charg