Click on arrow to hear the song performed by Derek B. Scott, Professor of Critical Musicology, University of Leeds, to his own piano accompaniment.
The composer was the daughter of a Scottish Member of Parliament and achieved fame for two reasons: she composed this immensely popular ballad, and she married Lord Arthur Hill. These two things are related, because Arthur Hill was determined to marry her as soon as he heard her song, and he did so in the same year as its publication. She continued to compose after her marriage, but never equaled the success of “In the Gloaming.” Meta Orred was also Scottish, but spent most of her life in England, and produced several books of poetry in the 1870s.
Bibliography
Scott, Derek B. The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour. 2nd ed. Aldershot, Hampshire; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001.
Created 20 May 2018