Betty Roe was born in 1930 in North Kensington, London, England. Her father was a fishmonger, and her mother was a butcher’s bookkeeper. After discovering Betty playing the piano at a very early age, her parents encouraged her to take piano lessons from the age of six with the local teacher. She made rapid progress, despite being firmly discouraged from playing by ear.
Betty was not a strong academic scholar, but at the age of twelve, she auditioned at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM). Her excerpional performance in aural tests sedured her a place. As a Junior Exhibitioner, she studied piano with Fiona Addie, Muriel Dale, and Sadie MacCormack, and cello with Alison Dalrymple. She left school in 1947, took a job as a filing clerk at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, and continued piano lessons with Mrs. Read at Mary Datchelor School in Camberwell.
In 1949, she went to the Royal Academy as a senior student. Her professors were York Bowen (piano), Alison Dalrymple (cello), and Jean McKenzie-Grieve (singing). After leaving, she continued singing lessons with Clive Carey, Roy Hickman, Peter van der Stolk, and Margaret FieldHyde. She studied composition with Lennox Berkeley for a short time. In the 1940s and 1950s, she gained considerable practical experience with local churches, both singing and playing the organ.
After leaving the RAM, she held several church music posts as organist and choirmaster. From 1968 to 1978, she was the Director of Music at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and worked extensively as a session singer with leading London groups and ensembles. On the other side, she worked with celebrities including Cliff Richard, Harry Secombe, Cilla Black, The Two Ronnies, and appeared on Top of the Pops. She has conducted various choirs and
groups, including the NorthKen Chorale (as Musical Director of NorthKen Concerts) since 1980.
As a composer, Betty is best known for her solo songs, church and choral music, revue songs, musicals, and music for schools. She spended most of her time composing, adjudicating, conducting, staffing summer schools, music weekends, and workshops with groups of all ages and abilities, as well as presenting her one-woman shows. In 1970, Betty founded Thames Publishing with her late husband, John Bishop. In addition to her own extensive list of works, Thames has published many English composers of both contemporary and historical interest. She has two daughters, both musicians, and a son who is a sound recordist. Betty Roe is considered one of Britain’s finest composers of English Song. She has composed over 200 songs, but the majority, particularly those composed since 1990, have remained unrecorded. Betty Roe developed an interest in the classical guitar during a time when the instrument was in the public spotlight, thanks to prominent figures like the british guitarist Julian Bream.
As she said in an interview with Classical Guitar magazine in February 1987, “ I loved the delicacy of the sound of the guitar, I didn’t like loud noises and big noisy orchestras; I liked jazz, but not too loud. The guitar was a sound I seemed to understand.“ Her first guitar piece (Larcombe’s Fancy, 1964, her best-known guitar work) was written leisurely for a friend and was taken up by guitarist John W. Duarte, who got Novello & Company Limited to publish it. Betty Roe wrote pieces for the guitarist Lance Bosman and worked closely with the guitarist Gilbert Biberian, for whom she wrote Omega Suite for four guitars.In the 1987 interview, she said, „For me, there is something special about the guitar when it’s well used. In summer schools with guitar classes and groups, I find even the most elementary things extremely moving. I love to hear lots of guitars playing all at once, very simple things arranged by the person running the course to be played on open strings or with simple fingering. This is where I think that one day I might play myself – in one of those groups.“
She did not, however, agree with the view that when writing for the guitar in combination with other instruments, composers should draft the guitar part less difficult in relation to the other instruments. „I think it should be evened out. I know quite a lot about the handling of most instruments, and I always check my writing on the guitar when I’m doing it. I make sure that everything is physically possible, and if I can get my fingers around it, then I reckon a guitarist must be able to. I really don’t think one should write a guitar part ‘down‘. Every instrument has its own hazards. Why should the guitar be treated as an exception?“
Betty Roe worked with three leading guitarists to compose the repertoire for this instrument: Gerald Garcia, Ian Gammie, and Gilbert Biberian. I was able to contact the first two and had an email correspondence, while Biberian, unfortunately, passed away. All of them met and collaborated with Roe during a summer school called „Summer Music“ in which she participated from 1970 to 1980. This took place in the UK every year and included choir and voice workshops. Andrew Parrott was the choral conductor, and Betty used to create a collaborative piece with the guitarists, who were taught by Gilbert Biberian. Gerald Garcia, a very active guitarist and composer, met Betty Roe on this occasion, and they worked together on Temperaments for flute and guitar. Ian Gammie is primarily known as a viola da gamba specialist but is also a very good guitarist who worked with Roe on editing the Sonatina (1977), which was commissioned by the Zwolle International Guitar Weeks in 1977 and dedicated to the guitarist Peter van der Staak.
The guitar catalogue on Betty Roe’s website includes 10 compositions, but it does not list Temperaments for flute and guitar. It features 5 pieces for solo guitar, 2 pieces for 2 guitars, 1 piece for 4 guitars, and one piece arranged for 2 recorders and guitar. Larcombe’s Fancy (1964) and Short Sonata (1977) share a similar form: both are divided into 5 short movements, each characterized by a specific rhythmic, timbral, and tempo-related quality. The wide range of dynamics that Roe employs allows the performer to further distinguish each section of the piece.
Betty Roe’s very simple and accessible writing, even for relatively young guitarists, supports what she stated in the interview mentioned above: she prefers to use an easy style and immediately check whether what she has composed can be executed without difficulty. The result is a guitar repertoire of quite short, well-composed pieces that are accessible to many. Her compositional style, which may seem free-flowing upon listening, is actually structured with great precision; there is also a significant influence of jazz music in her compositions.
List of works for guitar (taken from her website):
Larcombe’s Fancy – 5 pieces (solo guitar), Thames Publishing THA978190
Omega Suite (4 guitars of which 1 sop range), Thames Publishing THA978016
Ready Steady Go (2 guitars), Chanterelle (in One Plus One Graded Duos Vol 2)
Sad Song (2 guitars), Chanterelle (in One Plus One Graded Duos Vol 1)
Seven Tunes from the Cecil Sharp Collection (recorder, guitar), Thames Publishing THA978301
Short Sonata (solo guitar), Thames Publishing THA978409
Sonatina (solo guitar), Thames Publishing THA978410
Sonatina Dolorosa (solo guitar), Thames Publishing THA978410
Further Sources:
“Classical Guitar” magazine, February 1987, Betty Roe’s interview by Jack Withfield (page 39, 40)