| Biography | Lily Payling was an Australian dramatic contralto singer. She had a musical upbringing: her mother was an accomplished pianist and taught her to play and sing from an early age. She matured into a singer with a rich contralto voice capable of spanning three octaves.
In 1901 Lily married William Edmund Smith, adopting the surname Haffenden-Smith. They had two daughters, Laurie and Eileen, before tragedy struck in 1908 when William died of typhoid. In 1910 she remarried to Leonard Payling, who came from a Nottinghamshire farming family. They had a daughter, Noelle. Over the following years Leonard helped Lily with tours and publicity as she embarked on a professional singing career. Her reputation blossomed and she was widely applauded. The Paylings sailed to England with their family in 1919.
Lilys first concert was in the Royal Albert Hall on 21 April 1921. It was so successful it cemented a musical career in England that was to last forty years. In the 1920s and 1930s she appeared frequently at the Albert Hall and the Queen's Hall. Although she loved to perform, her driving force was to teach and to give up-and-coming artists a chance to perform before an audience. Her teaching placed emphasis on the importance of correct breathing; her students were forbidden to sing a note for weeks while she corrected their breathing and gave them exercises to strengthen the diaphragm. When mastery of this was achieved, the student would be advanced to scales, which were endlessly practised before graduation to songs. In 1924, Lily introduced scholarships to help those who could not afford tuition fees.
In 1922, Lily was invited by the Daily Mail to travel to The Hague to broadcast back to England as part of an hour-long concert, the first of its kind. This engendered huge public interest right across the country, and many shops and offices erected giant loudspeakers so that people might gather to listen. Reception turned out to be fragmented, mainly because of jamming by amateur radio operators trying to tune in. But some places reported good reception, and Lily Paylings strong and confident renditions were clearly heard. She had chosen to sing Una voce poco fa by Rossini and Elgars Land of Hope and Glory.
In 1923, the BBC set up a radio broadcast, when Lily, during an Albert Hall recital, was motored to studios in the Strand from where she broadcast back to the Hall, all the while accompanied by her pianist, still on stage. This was not an entire success as her voice was over-amplified from loudspeakers set up in the organ loft, which lost all nuance of tone and expression, but it was a further test in the radio story.
In 1925-26, Lily presented her first of many seasons of subscription concerts. A season ticket costing one guinea admitted the holder to eight separate concerts, comprising one season. She wanted to widen the concert-going public by offering a mix of music in the programme orchestral, instrumental and vocal with music that was more accessible to untrained ears than that of an exclusively classical content. Early misgivings about the Payling Pops gave way to widespread approval; the concept was a huge success and audiences at the Queens Hall and the Albert Hall, were enthusiastic . They gave Lily the opportunity to present new artists.
These years were full-on with performing, teaching, auditioning, promoting, touring the provinces and giving concerts in aid of charities. But the onset of World War II brought it almost to a close. Many students abandoned their singing lessons to join up or help the war effort.
In 1946 and 1947, Lily gave two farewell concerts; the first at the Albert Hall, the final one at the Davis Theatre, Croydon. And then, undaunted, she formed the Payling Musical Society and enjoyed another fourteen years of musical activity promoting concerts and artists and tapping into the mass of small amateur choirs who welcomed the chance to join together to perform in the Albert Hall. The last concert was given on 19th October 1960. |