Rosamund Strode has died aged 82.  She was Benjamin Britten's music assistant from 1964 until his death in 1976, and subsequently Keeper of Manuscripts at the Britten-Pears Library until her retirement in 1992. A familiar and essential part of Aldeburgh, her rosy cheeks and ready smile concealed a seriousness of purpose which might take people by surprise. Her dedication to Britten meant that she could not tolerate slipshod scholarship or a lack of accuracy in what people wrote or said about him; but her admonitions were always made with perception and good humour.

Retirement for her was notional: she remained central to Aldeburgh and Britten affairs, and she was able to find more time for writing, although her studied attention to detail meant that writing always proceeded slowly - even letters to friends were the work of a perfectionist, and the margins of her letters were invariably filled with extra detail.  But she contributed  significantly to Britten studies; and in 2007, the biographical study of Imogen Holst that she had long been working on was published as a major part of Christopher Grogan's Imogen Holst, A Life in Music.

She was born in 1927; at the age of five she recalled her mother holding her up to a window to see Gustav Holst, for many years director of music at St Paul's Girls' School, at work in his sound proofed studio there. She was educated at St Mary's, Calne, and subsequently studied viola and singing at the Royal College of Music, where she had composition lessons from Vaughan Williams. In 1948 she was introduced to Holst's daughter Imogen who was then teaching at Dartington Hall, and was immediately recruited by her as an assistant. It was at Dartington that she first met Britten, playing viola alongside him at an orchestral rehearsal.

Imogen was to become Rosamund's mentor and inspiration: after her death in 1984 she continued the dedicated work that Imogen had undertaken on behalf of her father, and was active as chair of the Holst Foundation for many years. In 1952 she joined Imogen's newly formed Purcell Singers. A fine, light soprano, she performed frequently at Aldeburgh where Imogen had become resident as assistant to Britten, taking the solo part in the first performance of an early choral work of Britten's which he revised for the 1955 Aldeburgh Festival.

She became a part-time assistant to the Festival, and as her work for Britten increased, eventually came to work full-time for him when Imogen decided that she must devote more time to her own interests. One of Rosamund's first tasks was to order and catalogue the huge range of Britten's childhood music, which gave her an unparalleled insight into the composer's working methods.

An incomparable editor, she worked at Britten's scores  in an office in the courtyard of The Red House which had been converted from a stable, and her tiny room was always piled high with music, often obscuring her from sight. Her many tasks included page-turning for Britten as pianist and general factotum during the intensive period of the Aldeburgh Festival : but there were very few times when working for Britten was anything less than intensive.

Rosamund was an unforgettable character. She had a passion for the Suffolk countryside which she regularly explored by car, and was devoted to Aldeburgh Parish Church, alongside which she had lived  since 1977.  She had a delight in facts which would reveal itself in unexpected ways - there were few topics on which she could not speak at length and in detail. Her death deprives us all of so many things, but her memory will long survive in the minds of those who knew and loved her.

Colin Matthews

Photo: Nigel Luckhurst.

Date: 01/04/10