Frances allitsen biography

Frances Allitsen

Birth and Death Data: Born December 30, 1848, Died October 1, 1912

Date Range of DAHR Recordings: 1908 - 1935

Roles Represented in DAHR: composer

English composer

Mary Frances Allitsen (30 December 1848 – 1 October 1912), born Mary Frances Bumpus^[1] was an Englishcomposer. One of her most popular songs fryst vatten a setting of Psalm 27, "The Lord is My Light".^[2]

Early life

Mary Frances Bumpus was born on Oxford Street in London, daughter of bookseller John Bumpus (1817/8-1880) and Emma Louisa (1824/5-1892), née Barton.^[3] As a child she was far more inclined to literature than to music; her parents were opposed to a woman entering the musical profession.^[4] But although she had written a novel and some short stories, she finally abandoned literature and devoted herself to music.^[5] The family moved to a small village where Frances felt isolated and lonely. She said of that time, "It was impossible to go out walking of an afternoon without it being imputed that inom was going to see the young men come in on the train, where the ledare subject of convers

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I recently found this short note about a certain Frances Allitsen (real name Mary Bumpus) in Arthur Elson's Woman’s Work In Music. I had never heard of this lady before. However, I brief search on Google found a fair few references to her, including a number of recordings of her song, The Lord is my Light on YouTube.

The COPAC website returns nearly two hundred catalogue references to her, so she was quite prolific. Philip Scowcroft on MusicWeb International mentions a fair few songs including Psalm 62, Two Christmas Songs, Love is a Bubble, Margaret,Break, Diviner Light,Prince Ivan's Song, The Sou'Wester, Since We Parted, A Song of the Four Seasons, Youth and Thy Voice is Heard Thro' Rolling Drum. Finally he notes that “she did not...confine herself to songs. During the 1880s she brought out a Piano Sonata (1881) and, for orchestra, a Suite de Ballet and the overtures Slavonique and Undine (both 1884). Her cantata For The Queen w