1843–1922 · United Kingdom · 20th century
Florence Ashton Marshall (1843-1922) was an English composer, conductor and author. She wrote songs for voice, part songs, educational pieces and operettas, and led the South Hampstead Orchestra for over thirty years. The site offers her song Ask Me No More, set to words by Tennyson.
Florence Thomas was born in Rome on 30 March 1843. Her father, Canon Thomas, was the vicar of All Hallows Barking by the Tower. She had two sisters: Frances Thomas, a clarinettist, and Bertha Thomas, a novelist who wrote The Violin Player (1880).
Florence became a student at the Royal Academy of Music when she was 30. She learned from G. A. Macfarren, John Goss and William Sterndale Bennett.
Florence married Julian Marshall on 7 October 1864. He was a businessman, writer and music collector. The couple had three daughters.
She took part in work on Grove's Dictionary, though her share was smaller than her husband's. In 1885 she published 70 solfège exercises. She headed the music department at Dulwich School, and later she helped to establish the Hampstead Conservatoire, a school of music.
The Philharmonic Society elected Florence as an associate. For more than three decades she conducted the South Hampstead Orchestra. It was a large ensemble: a Brahms symphony was played under her direction, and a Saint-Saëns violin concerto was played with Mischa Elman as soloist.
Together with her husband she was among the founding members of the Musical Association.
Under the name Mrs Julian Marshall, Florence published books. In 1883 her biography of Handel appeared in Hueffer's Great Musicians series, and in 1889 she published Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
Florence Marshall wrote songs for solo voice, part songs, pieces for teaching and operettas. Her selected works include a Symphony in B minor (its Andante was played in 1874) and songs to words by Tennyson: Sweet and Low (1877) and Ask Me No More (1880).
For the stage she wrote operettas. The Masked Shepherd (libretto by Edwin Simpson-Baikie) dates from 1879; the part song Behold the sun in gold descending is taken from it. Her most successful composition was Prince Sprite, an operetta for treble voices with a libretto by her sister Bertha, published by Novello.
Rest hath come, to words by Leyland Leigh, and To sea! the calm is o’er, to words by T. L. Beddoes, are part songs from 1884. For players, the site offers the song Ask Me No More for voice and piano, at the Advanced level.