Elsie Muriel Southgate (23 January 1880 – 5 May 1946) was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

ist and composer who toured England as a classical musician, played in

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which began in France in the middle of the 19th century. A ''vaudeville'' was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a drama ...

in the United States and Canada, and recorded commercially accompanied by her sister, organist and composer Dorothy Southgate (1889 - 1946). Southgate was born in London to Violet and Frank Sewell Southgate, a singing teacher. She married Charles Edward Pearse in 1904 and they had two daughters, Olga Odin-Pearse (1908) and actress Daphne Odin-Pearse (1909). Southgate studied violin at the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is one of the oldest music schools in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the firs ...

with

Émile Sauret Émile Sauret (22 May 1852 – 12 February 1920) was a French violinist and composer. Sauret wrote over 100 violin pieces, including a famous cadenza for the first movement of Niccolò Paganini's First Violin Concerto, and the "Gradus ad Parna ...

. She made her debut as a violin soloist in 1901, performing at the

Promenade Concerts The BBC Proms is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in central London. Robert Newman founded The Proms in 1895. Since 1927, the ...

in 1905 and throughout Europe in recitals. She played at Buckingham Palace and for the Shah of Iran and the King of Italy on her

Guarneri The Guarneri (, , ), often referred to in the Latinized form Guarnerius, is the family name of a group of distinguished luthiers from Cremona in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries, whose standing is considered comparable to those of the Amati ...

violin. Southgate stopped performing briefly after her marriage. When her husband died sometime before 1911, she resumed performing to support her two small daughters. In addition to playing classical violin music, she played in music halls and vaudeville theatres, touring the United States and Canada in 1926. Southgate made several commercial recordings on

Zonophone Zonophone (early on also rendered as Zon-O-Phone) was a record label founded in 1899 in Camden, New Jersey, by Frank Seaman. The Zonophone name was not that of the company but was applied to records and machines sold by Seaman's Universal Talk ...

records, often accompanied by her sister Dorothy on organ. Her compositions included: *Thanksgiving (violin and organ; with Dorothy Southgate) *Vale Egyptienne (violin and organ)

References

*Busby, Roy. ''British Music Hall: An Illustrated Who's Who from 1850 to the Present Day'' (p. 163) 1976,

External links

Recordings by Elsie Southgate via Youtube
English violinists British vaudeville performers 1880 births 1946 deaths 20th-century British violinists 20th-century English musicians British women violinists 20th-century English women musicians {{violinist-stub