Jane Joseph

1894-1929

Composer

Jane Joseph’s talent performing and writing music promised her a great artistic future. But she died from illness in her thirties, prompting her teacher and mentor, the English composer Gustav Holst, to recall her as “the best girl pupil I ever had”. Much of her work is now lost.

Jane Marian Joseph was the youngest of four children encouraged by their solicitor father George Joseph to learn instruments. At a pupil at St. Paul’s Girls’ School (SPGS) in Hammersmith where Holst was Director of Music, she played the double bass and French horn as well as piano.

In 1914 when Holst was writing The Planets, Jane acted as his scribe and wrote out the score for the Neptune movement. She was a key organiser of Holst’s music festivals and built a repertoire of music for special occasions, from pageants to village church festivals.

In 2020 the Cantamus choir of her old school performed Joseph’s Wassail Song at a concert paying tribute to the musical heritage of Willesden Cemetery. This unpublished work, like others Joseph wrote for the school, remains in the SPGS archive.

Jane Marian Joseph by Olive Edis
© NPG