Howell, Christopher & Elisabetta Paglia
Maude Valrie White: Isaotta Blanzesman, And Other Loves
White was born in Dieppe on 23 June 1855 to English parents. The family moved to the UK before she reached the age of one. Aged seven, she spent two years in Heidelberg with her German governess, returning in 1864. The following year she was sent to school in Paris for three years, during which period her father died. Back in London, in 1868, she stayed with George Rose-Innes, a trustee of the White family who became something of a father figure. Rose-Innes, from Chile, enabled her to add Spanish to her store of languages and also introduced her to Italian opera, a potent melodic counterbalance to the strictly classical diet of her piano lessons up till that time. White published her first song in 1974. In 1874-5 she was in Torquay, where she took lessons in harmony and counterpoint from W.S. Rockstro, and in 1876 was admitted to the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied composition with Sir George Macfarren. In 1879 she became the first woman to obtain the Mendelssohn scholarship. In 1881, however, her mother died and White, distraught, abandoned the scholarship and went to Chile for ten months, where her sister was staying with the Rose-Innes family. Her return to London in 1882 coincided with the death of George Rose-Innes and she took a room on her own - a bold step for a woman in Victorian society.