Ruth Gipps

Ruth Dorothy Louisa Gipps MBE (20 February 1921 – 23 February 1999) was an English composer, oboist, pianist and impresario. She was one of the most prolific composers in Britain at the time of her death.

Gipps was born in Bexhill-on-Sea, England in 1921. She was a child prodigy, winning performance competitions in which she was considerably younger than the rest of the field. After performing her first composition at the age of 8 in one of the numerous music festivals she entered, the work was bought by a publishing house for a guinea and a half. Winning a concerto competition with the Hastings Municipal Orchestra began her performance career in earnest.

In 1937 Gipps entered the Royal College of Music, where she studied theory, composition, piano, and eventually oboe, and where several works of hers were first performed. Continuing her studies at Durham University would lead her to teachers Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams, as well as her future husband, clarinettist Robert Baker.

She was an accomplished all-round musician, as a soloist on both oboe and piano as well as a prolific composer. Her repertoire include works such as Arthur Bliss's Piano Concerto and Constant Lambert's The Rio Grande. When she was 33 a hand injury ended her performance career, and she decided to focus her energies on conducting and composition.

A turning point in Gipps' career was the Symphony No. 2, Op. 30, first performed in 1946, which showed the beginnings of her mature style. Gipps' music is marked by a skilful use of instrumental colour, and often shows the influence of Vaughan Williams, rejecting the trends in avant-garde modern music such as serialism and twelve-tone music. She considered her orchestral works, her five symphonies in particular, as her greatest works. Two substantial piano concertos were also produced.

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