Mary Lucas

Mary Lucas, (born Mary Anderson Juler, 24 May 1882–14 January 1952),¹ sometimes referred to as Mary Anderson Lucas, was an English composer and pianist.² She wrote several works for the clarinet, but admittedly, they are difficult to find. Most of her music exists in manuscript form only, and, although it has changed hands many times over the years, much of it can now be found in the British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogues.

Her Lament and Rhapsody for clarinet and piano appear to have been recorded by Octacros Records sometime between 1934 and 1937,¹⁵ however, these recordings do not appear to be commercially available today. Records of performances of her music for clarinet can be found in the concertprogrammes.org archives. Her Clarinet Sonata was revived in 2018 by Peter Ciglaris.

Lucas composed several works for orchestra and chamber ensemble including six string quartets.⁸ In 1934 and 1935 the Stratton String Quartet championed her music, performing her quartets at the London Music Club’s First Performance Society on 29 November 1934 at 22 Holland Park,⁹ and in January 1935 at the Blackheath Concert Halls.¹⁰ There was a BBC broadcast of the third quartet by the all female Macnaghten Quartet on 4 February 1936.¹¹

Lucas had a special affinity for the clarinet, and may have encouraged her niece Pauline Juler (1914-2003) to become a professional clarinetist.¹² Her Clarinet Sonata was written for Juler in 1938.^13,14 Around this time she was also performing duo recitals with the clarinetist Rudolph Dunbar, and a recording of them playing her Lament for clarinet and piano was issued by Octacros Records in the late-1930s.^[15] A performance of the impressionistic Circus Suite for orchestra, conducted by Henry Wood at the Royal Albert Hall on 4 July 1942, gave Lucus her Proms debut at the age of sixty.¹⁶

Recordings indicate that included in the collections housed in the British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogues are a woodwind quintet, a rhapsody for clarinet and piano, a Lament for clarinet and piano, the clarinet part only for “Variations,” with an apparent missing piano part. Locations of her duet for viola and her trio for viola and piano are currently unknown. Peter Ciglaris engraved a copy of her clarinet sonata for a performance held on April 18, 2019, and he can be contacted through his website or twitter.

Read her full biography at Wikipedia.org.