1762–1846 · United Kingdom · Romantic
Jane Mary Guest was an English pianist and composer who died in 1846. She studied with Johann Christian Bach, wrote keyboard sonatas and vocal works with keyboard accompaniment, and gave lessons to two princesses. The site offers two of her ballads for voice and piano.
Jane Mary Guest's father, Thomas Guest, was a tailor. Thomas Orpin and Thomas Linley taught her in Bath, and by the age of six she was giving performances.
From 1776 she studied in London with Johann Christian Bach, and Antonio Sacchini taught her as well. Another of her teachers, Venanzio Rauzzini, directed concerts in Bath at which she played.
Guest began appearing in London in 1779, and in 1783–1784 she held concerts there that were funded by subscription. Her style of playing was praised as expressive. At about this time she brought out her Six Sonatas, Op. 1; a great many subscribers signed up for them, royalty included.
The sonatas were also printed outside England, in Paris in 1784 and in Berlin in 1785.
Her wedding to the accountant Abram (or Abraham) Allen Miles took place in London on 29 August 1789. Later she was also known as Jane Mary Miles.
In the 1790s Guest taught and performed in Bath. One of the concerts there was a private one for Joseph Haydn, at which she improvised on a theme of his. She also wrote several concertos, but they were never published and seem not to have survived.
Guest began as piano teacher to Princess Amelia, George III's youngest daughter, in 1804. In 1806 Princess Charlotte of Wales, daughter of the Prince Regent, became her pupil too. Amelia died in 1810, following a long illness.
Charlotte's father dismissed her whole household staff in 1814. Guest taught Charlotte until then at the very least.
Guest's husband died in 1832. She herself died in Blackheath, London, on 20 March 1846, in the home she shared with her daughter Louisa. Her grave is next to her husband's, at the church of St Edmund, King and Martyr.
Some of her pieces stayed popular after she died, and «The Fairies' Dance» was reissued in 1863, «The Bonnie Wee Wife» in 1874.
Guest wrote keyboard sonatas, other keyboard pieces and vocal works with keyboard accompaniment. She began in the galante style. Her sonatas include the six sonatas of Op. 1 with a violin or flute part and a sonata of 1807 with a violin part.
Other keyboard pieces are an introduction and march drawn from Rossini's Ricciardo e Zoraide, «La Georgiana» (introduction and waltz, 1826) and «La Jeanette» (introduction and original air, 1828).
Her vocal works include the ballad «The Bonnie Wee Wife» (1823) to words by Robert Burns, the glee «Brignal Banks» (1825) to words by Walter Scott, the ballad «Come Buy My Garlands Gay» (1826) and «The Bonnie Lassie» to words by Burns.
Two of her ballads for voice and piano are available on the site. One is «Marion, or Will ye gang to the burn side» (upper intermediate level); the other is «The Bonnie Wee Wife» (advanced level).