Margaret More - Composer

A lifelong attachment to Wales and the work of Hans Andersen

This short but captivating film records scenes of Margaret More’s early life in Wales, her family life in the Midlands and her lifelong musical endeavours and successes. The soundtrack includes numerous renderings of her music, some played by herself almost fifty years ago, with vocal pieces performed by her hand-picked ensemble, The Hans Andersen Players.

Margaret More (1903-1966) lived mainly in Harlech, North Wales until her marriage in 1930 to Raymond, son of composer Granville Bantock. By then she had composed her first major work The Mermaid, an opera, with libretto by Claudine Currey, based on the Hans Andersen tale and performed in Birmingham in 1951.

Sir Thomas Beecham once remarked to Margaret More that good music enters the mind easily and leaves the heart with difficulty. More’s music is exactly that – immediately accessible, its melodies full of charm and vitality, remaining, once heard, long in the memory.

In spite of her enduring commitment to music, Margaret More was a devoted mother to six children. A fun-loving, witty and steadfast woman who inspired great affection and loyalty in others; at the best of times a woman of extraordinary charisma, energy and sense of duty and in times of tribulation, of fortitude and endurance – constantly bubbling up with humour and quaint turns of phrase, frank and full of common sense. She was indeed ‘original’, far more than a child of her time.

This film is available in VHS and DVD formats from Anton