Violet Gordon-Woodhouse

Violet Gordon-Woodhouse (23 April 1872 – 9 January 1948) was an acclaimed British harpsichordist and clavichordist, highly influential in bringing both instruments back into fashion. She was the first person to record the harpsichord, and the first to broadcast harpsichord music.

Violet Kate Eglinton Gwynne was born at 97 Harley Street, St Marylebone, London, into a wealthy family with an estate in Sussex, England. She was the second daughter and fourth of seven children of James Eglinton Anderson Gwynne (1832–1915), an engineer, inventor, and landowner, and Mary Earle Purvis (1841–1923). Her mother was a fine singer and a friend of the great soprano Adelina Patti. Violet became a pupil of the country's leading piano teacher, the German émigré Oscar Beringer, and by the age of sixteen she was one of his most promising pupils. Her maternal grandfather Royal Navy officer and merchant William Purvis (1796–1854) from Dalgety Bay, Scotland married in 1822 Cornelia Louisa Intveld (1808–1857), a noted fine soprano and beauty of her era. Upon glimpsing her across the auditorium at the opera in London, British King William IV sent his equerry to invite her to his box. When she refused, the King sent the equerry back just to ask her name. Cornelia Louisa Intveld was born in Padang where her father, who came from humble beginnings in Hellevoetsluis, South Holland, rose up through the Dutch East India Company to become the Dutch Resident of Padang. Her maternal grandmother was an Ono Niha ranee (a term that covered every rank from chieftain's daughter to princess) who married a prominent Dutch colonial official and merchant. This "foreign blood" caused opposition to Violet Gordon-Woodhouse's father's family to her parents marriage and so they eloped.

She was the sister of Rupert Gwynne, MP for Eastbourne from 1910 to 1924, and Roland Gwynne, Mayor of Eastbourne from 1929 to 1931, who is thought to have been the lover of suspected serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams. Among her nieces was the renowned cookery writer, Elizabeth David. Her first cousin Annie Oliphant Cornelia Purvis (1870–1947) is the great-great grandmother of Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada.

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