Joy Boughton

Who was Joy Boughton?

Christina Joyance Boughton was the daughter of English composer Rutland Boughton and artist Christina Walshe. She died in 1963 in tragic circumstances.

She was taught oboe by Léon Goossens and attended the Royal College of Music from 1929 to 1937 at which, for a short while before her death, she was a Professor of Oboe. It was to Joy that in 1951 the English composer Benjamin Britten dedicated his Six Metamorphoses after Ovid which she premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival in that year. She helped establish Britten's English Opera Group and together with John Francis and Millicent Silver became part of The Sylvan Trio.

In 1937, Joy gave the first performance of the Oboe Concerto written specially for her by Rutland Boughton at a concert in Oxford with the Boyd Neel String Orchestra. She was married to the theatre impresario Christopher Ede and they had two children, Robin and Penny. A concert in her memory was held at the RCM in April 1963.