Emma Lomax
Emma Lomax (1873–1963) was an English composer and pianist from Brighton. She was the daughter of the man who ran the Brighton Free Library and Museum.
She studied at the Brighton School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she learned clarinet and studied composition with Frederick Corder. She won the Goring Thomas Scholar award (1907–1910) and the Charles Lucas Medal in 1910 for her Theme and Variations for orchestra.
After finishing her studies, Lomax taught at the Royal Academy of Music from 1918 to 1938 and also taught at Brighton College. She was friends with Eleanor Rudall, another English composer and pianist.
Her music often had dramatic ideas, including recitations and sketches with supernatural themes, with orchestra or piano. The House of Shadows (performed at the Royal Academy in 1904) was described as a poetic play in two acts with electric lighting effects she devised. The Toy Overture (1915) was a humorous take on Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, performed by the Brighton Municipal Orchestra. Her opera The Marsh of Vervais was never fully staged, though the Prelude to Act 2 was performed in Bournemouth in 1927. She was a member of the Sussex Women's Musicians Club and the Society of Women Musicians.
She lived at 11 Park Crescent in Brighton. Later in life she became interested in toy theatre and ran the Early Victorian Theatre in Brighton. She died in Brighton in 1963 at age 90.
Her works include several part-songs and solo songs. She wrote the libretto for Bertram Walton O’Donnell's comic opera The Demon’s Bride (1909).
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 20:56 (CET).