A rather obscure connection to the brass band world was severed last week with the news of the death of Lady Bliss, aged 104, the wife of the composer Sir Arthur Bliss (1891-1975), Master of the Queen's Musick from 1953 to 1975.

Bliss wrote ‘The Belmont Variations’ in 1963 for the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain, won on the day by the great CWS (Manchester) Band under Alex Mortimer.

Inspiration

It took its inspiration from the birthplace of his wife in Belmont, Massachusetts, where the then Gertrude Hoffmann was born on April 2nd 1904, the youngest child of a New England family of teachers and doctors.

Her father, Ralph Hoffmann, was a distinguished naturalist from whom she gained a love and knowledge of botany and birds.

Bliss wrote ‘The Belmont Variations’ in 1963 for the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain, won on the day by the great CWS (Manchester) Band under Alex Mortimer4BR

Commemorated

59 years later Bliss commemorated her in music with his set of free style variations and finale, which rather mirrored the characteristics of her New England ancestry: a high-minded ethos, an inquiring mind, determination and practicality.

Studied

After she married Bliss, in order to understand more about his profession she studied music theory at the Royal College of Music with RO Morris and also took singing lessons.

Another link to our brass banding past, although rather tenuous, has been broken.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3497984/Lady-Bliss.html