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16 Facts About Miriam Hyde

1.

Miriam Hyde composed over 150 works for piano, 50 songs, other instrumental and orchestral works and performed as a concert pianist with eminent conductors including Sir Malcolm Sargent, Constant Lambert, Georg Schneevoigt, Sir Bernard Heinze and Geoffrey Simon.

2.

Miriam Hyde had books of poetry published, and wrote an autobiography.

3.

Miriam Hyde's teachers were R O Morris and Gordon Jacob for composition, and Howard Hadley and Arthur Benjamin for piano.

4.

Miriam Hyde won several composition prizes while at the college, including the Cobbett Prize.

5.

Miriam Hyde gave her first London recital at Holland Park in 1933, and in 1934 her Piano Concerto No 1 in E-flat minor was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Leslie Heward with her as soloist.

6.

Miriam Hyde saw many of the great musicians of the time, including Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Yehudi Menuhin and Elisabeth Schumann.

7.

Miriam Hyde returned to Adelaide in 1936 and soon after moved to Sydney, where she worked for several decades as a composer, recitalist, teacher, examiner and lecturer.

8.

Miriam Hyde wrote close to 500 poems, some of which she set to music.

9.

Miriam Hyde was awarded an honorary doctorate by Macquarie University in 1993, and in 2004 she received an award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music at the Australasian Performing Right Association and Australian Music Centre Classical Music Awards.

10.

Miriam Hyde was appointed Patron of the Music Teachers' Association of South Australia and established the Miriam Hyde Award for the Association.

11.

Miriam Hyde celebrated her 80th birthday in 1993 by giving a series of recitals throughout the country.

12.

Miriam Hyde died in 2005, a few days before her 92nd birthday.

13.

Miriam Hyde's compositions include works for orchestra, piano concertos, art songs, chamber music, many piano solos, flute solos and more.

14.

Miriam Hyde wrote in an early 20th-century pastoral style, achieving a highly effective combination of impressionism with post-romanticism.

15.

Miriam Hyde's husband died in 1995 and she ceased writing music at that time.

16.

Miriam Hyde wrote her autobiography, Complete Accord and donated the royalties to the Elder Scholarship that she won in 1931.