Alicia Adélaide Needham

Alicia Adélaide Needham (née Montgomery; 31 October 1863 – 24 December 1945) was an Irish composer of songs and ballads. A committed suffragette, she was the first woman to conduct at the Royal Albert Hall, London, and the first female president of the National Eisteddfod of Wales (in 1906). Life Needham was born in Oldcastle, Co. Meath, daughter of John Wilson Montgomery (1834-1911), master of the Bailieborough Workhouse and a clerk to the poor law board of guardians; he was also an antiquarian, contributing to local newspapers on the subject, and produced some books of poetry, becoming known as the "Bard of Bailieborough". The family subsequently lived at Downpatrick in County Down. She went to boarding school in Derry for four years and spent the following year in Castletown, Isle of Man. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, first for one year only (most likely the academic year 1880–1): piano with the Irish pianist and composer Arthur O'Leary, harmony and counterpoint with Francis William Davenport and occasionally with George Alexander Macfarren and Ebenezer Prout. It is not clear what she did in the intervening three years before she resumed her studies in 1884, but she then graduated in 1887 and became a Licentiate of the Academy in 1889. In 1893 she also passed the examinations to the Associateship of the Royal College of Music. In the meantime she had married the London-based physician Joseph Needham in 1892 and in 1900 gave birth to their only child, also called Joseph. Actively supported by her husband, who organised concerts for her and arranged her earliest publications, her musical career began in 1894 with a number of publications and piano and song recitals. Altogether she wrote some 700 compositions, most of which songs, but there are also some duets, trios and quartets for voices and piano, some piano music, some orchestrations of songs, choral hymns, marches for brass bands, and one church service.