Elisabetha ‘Liza’ Lehmann (1862-1918) was a prominent English singer and composer. Her mother, Amelia Chambers, a composer herself, taught Liza music at an early age. Liza would grow up, continuing her singing lessons with Alberto Randegger and Jenny Lind. She also took composition classes from Hamish MacCunn and briefly studied in Rome with Niels Raunkilde and Wiesbaden with Wilhelm Freudenberg. After a stellar 10-year career performing popular art songs, Lehmann pivoted towards composition in 1894. In her lifetime, she wrote over 350 solo and ensemble works, which were widely popular. Her compositional philosophy was that any song composer must be a singer themself to understand the breadth of emotional possibilities and accessible technique for exquisite musicality. Many of her early songs take inspiration from Clara Schumann and the German art song tradition, setting German text with rich texture, but the majority of her output celebrates the English parlor song with warm, lofting melodies and a touch of tongue-in-cheek humor, illuminated by clever text painting. For example, “The Swing” flutters up and down the octave in thrilling glissandos to mimic the joy of swinging through the air.

This audio recording contains excerpts from her popular song cycles for children, including The Daisy Chain (1893), More Daisies: New Songs of Childhood (1902), Bird Songs (1907), Nonsense Songs from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ (1908), and Four Cautionary Tales and a Moral (1909) with setting texts by Hilaire Belloc.

Score samples of Lehmann’s work, Nonsense Songs from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ (1908), are located at the Harry Ransom Center.