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Where to start when talking about Lady Mary Dering?
She was the very first female composer in England to have her work published! Sadly three short songs were the only ones to survive. She was baptised in Croydon on 3 September 1629 and sent to Mrs Salmon's school in Hackney. She married her cousin, but it was without her father's consent and so quickly annulled. Her subsequent arranged marriage to Sir Edward Dering turned out much better, and together they produced seventeen children! Dering outlived her husband by twenty years, dying in February 1704; she also outlived her eldest son Sir Edward Dering, 3rd Baronet.
She studied music with Henry Lawes, the leading English songwriter of the mid 17th Century. Lawes dedicated his Second book of airs to her, declaring that she was "so good a Composer, that few of any sex have arriv’d to such perfection."
We're delighted to welcome back soprano Angela Hicks and Kristiina Watt on the theorbo. Here is the text of the first verse:
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