Florence Atherton Spalding

She was born Florence A. Faxon in 1859, the daughter of Edward Faxon (1824–1886) [1] and Eliza Otis Pope (1824–1869), a musically gifted and prosperous family with connections, that descended from Myles Standish and other colonial figureheads. [2]

Spalding grew up in an environment that played a big emphasis on musical composition. Her father was a member of the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, and was an accomplished tenor singer, and later served as director. By profession, he was a dealer in the supplies of piano manufacture.[3] Since her father was a key member of the Handel and Haydn Society, she would have witnessed the preparations for the celebrations marking the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, followed by the societies golden jubilee in 1865, which consisted of a five-day festival of nine concerts, employing a chorus of 700. Two years later the New England Conservatory of Music was established.

At the age of nine her mother passed away. Her father remained in 1870 to Lucretia Eddy Holland. She focused her effort into writing music. When she was thirteen, in 1872, the World's Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival was taking place in Boston.

By 1881, at the age of twenty, she had been published by Oliver Ditson, founder of Oliver Ditson and Company, one of the major music publishing houses of the late 19th century. Under the name F. Atherton, she published some of her earliest compositions, such as “St. Botolph March”.[4]

She was now a prominent music teacher in Boston and an acclaimed composer of pieces for piano, organ and voice. She chose a professional name, which wasn’t her birth name. She continued to publish her works under the name of Florence Atherton.[5]

Atherton was her middle name, a legacy inherited from her maternal ancestors. During her formative years, Samuel Atherton (1815–1895) [6][7][8] was highly involved in the Stoughton Musical Society, the oldest in the country, which had been set up by a number of male singers in honor of her great grandfather William Billings. Samuel Atherton, like many of her family had moved from Stoughton, Massachusetts to Boston. He was instrumental in building up Boston reputation in the arts during this period, particularly once elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1867.

After Ditson’s death in 1888, she was published by another Boston house, Allan & Co., immediately followed in 1901 by C. W. Thompson & Co, a relationship which lasted the rest of her professional career. “The Reverie”, for the piano, became a lasting success.[9] It was arranged for orchestra and for the organ.

She later, upon marriage at the age of twenty six , published under the name of Florence Atherton Spalding .[10] Less than 12 months later her father died. As Mrs Spalding, she would have followed the inauguration of the Peabody Mason Concerts in 1891. Her composition “Liebestraum” was submitted, allegedly without her knowledge to the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, which was referred to at the time as the Chicago World‘s Fair. Her composition was well received and she was awarded a medal and a diploma. By 1901 she was widely known across the country, with the widening availability of parlor sheet music.[11]

One of her legacies has been as the composer of music to accompany words and poem by others, such as “Bewildering eyes”, words by Thomas Ball; “sing me a low sweet song”, a poem by Hildegarde Hawthorne; “Challenge of the Rose”, words by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and “Tipperary in the Spring”, a poem by Denis Aloysius McCarthy. All were first published in with musical compositions by Spalding between 1898 and 1905.

She gave a number of lectures on the life of Richard Wagner, in conjunction with Kate Wardell Buck, the wife of Benjamin Buck.[12][13]

Spalding later composed the music for a New York operetta called “Lady Nancy”, which ran during the 1904 season, although Lady Nancy had been performed as early as 1896 in the Maugus Club Theatricals.[14][15] Spalding continued to write and publish new compositions up to 1916.[16]

Her musical accompaniments in the form of a duet, with a reader and Spalding on the piano continued to be programmed events around a number of towns in Massachusetts.[17]

She married George Frederick Spalding (1859–1946) of Newton, Massachusetts at the age of twenty-six, in Lynn, Massachusetts on November 18, 1885. Her husband was a Harvard graduate of 1883, who commenced a shoe manufacturing business immediately after completing his studies and became a successful Boston merchant.

The couple had five children. They were Atherton Spalding (1887–1955), Margaret “Peggy” Spalding (1898–1917) who committed suicide; Rosamond Spalding (1891-1976), Robert E. Spalding (1893-1966) and the youngest, John Varnum Spalding (1897–1979), the associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1944 to 1971.[30]

She died on December 13, 1933 after a short illness, and was buried at Pine Grove Cemetery, Lynn, Massachusetts.[31]

Her musical ancestors included William Billings, a composer of marches during the revolutionary period. Her cousin was the renowned Boston composer, Percy Lee Atherton. Both had compositions at the turn of the 1900s which featured in the Boston Pops Orchestra.[20]

Many of Spalding’s compositions were initially published as “F. Atherton”, prior to being copyrighted by her as Florence Atherton Spalding. Her use of the Atherton name had caused some confusion for biographical researchers of the Philadelphia composer, Frank Peabody Atherton, the son of George W. Atherton.