Judy Tarling, a leading figure in the performance of baroque music, has died of cancer aged 78. As a violinist, orchestra leader, tutor, and author, she profoundly influenced how early music is played and understood.
Career and contributions
Tarling began her professional career in 1970 as a member of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, after studying violin and viola. After two years in Canada, where she developed an interest in early music, she returned to Britain and took up the baroque violin, forming her own group, Brighton Baroque. She also played viola with period-instrument ensembles such as the Academy of Ancient Music, the Hanover Band, and the London Handel Orchestra.
In 1981, she joined The Parley of Instruments, first as a viola player and later as its leader. Her playing is featured on many of the group's Hyperion recordings. She led the development of the Parley's consort of Renaissance violins, suited to 16th- and early 17th-century music.
Teaching and writing
Together with a colleague, Tarling developed baroque orchestral courses at Little Benslow Hills in Hitchin and later for the Cambridge Early Music Summer Schools, founded in 1993. She also led orchestras for the Suffolk Villages festival and Leeds Baroque, and taught at courses in Europe and the Americas.
An inspiring tutor, Tarling combined deep knowledge of baroque performance practice with classical rhetoric. This expertise is reflected in her five influential books, including Baroque String Playing for Ingenious Learners (2000) and The Weapons of Rhetoric: A Guide for Musicians and Performers (2004), which became essential reading worldwide.
Personal life
Born in Brighton, Tarling was the youngest child of William Tarling, a solicitor, and Beryl (née George), a homemaker. She studied at Brighton and Hove High School, Dartington College of Arts, and in London at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music.
In 1970, she married David Garside and moved with him to Toronto the following year; they returned to the UK in 1973 and divorced in 1982. An avid gardener, she later published Landscapes of Eloquence: Finding Rhetoric in the English Landscape Garden (2020). She married Peter Lay in 1985. He survives her, along with her children, Kathy and Thomas, her grandson Griffin, and her siblings Christine and John.
