Arabella Goddard

Who was Arabella Goddard?

Arabella Goddard was an English pianist of great renown in the middle to late 19th century.

She was born and died in France. Her parents, Thomas Goddard, an heir to a Salisbury cutlery firm, and Arabella née Ingles, were part of an English community of expatriates living in Saint-Servan near Saint-Malo, Brittany. She remained very proud of her French background all her life, and spiced her conversation with French phrases . She had an older sister, Ann.

At age six she was sent to Paris to study with Friedrich Kalkbrenner. She was feted as a child prodigy, and played for the French Royal Family, and Frédéric Chopin and George Sand. Her family suffered financial distress during the 1848 Revolution and had to return to England; there, Arabella had further lessons with Lucy Anderson and Sigismond Thalberg. She first appeared in public in 1850, under the conductor Michael William Balfe, at a Grand National Concert at Her Majesty's Theatre.

Thalberg sent her to be tutored by James William Davison, the influential but staunchly conservative chief music critic for The Times. She made her formal debut on 14 April 1853, in Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata, the first time the work had been performed in England. She spent 1854 and 1855 in Germany and Italy. She played at a concert at the Leipzig Gewandhaus and was very favourably received by the German critics.