Alice Verne-Bredt

Alice Verne-Bredt
Alice Verne-Bredt around 1920.
Born	1864 Southampton
Died	1958 London
Nationality	English
Occupation	Pianist
Known for	Innovator of percussion bands for children in Great Britain.

Alice Barbara Verne-Bredt (née Wurm; 1864, Southampton — 1958, London) was an English piano teacher, violinist and composer. She was also an innovator of percussion bands for children in the United Kingdom.

The sixth of ten children, Alice was born in Southampton to Bavarian professional musicians who emigrated to England in the 1850s. Her father was a music teacher specialised in zither, violin, and piano who worked as an organist, and her mother a violinist who taught her the violin from a very early age,. Later in her childhood she moved to London, where she lived all her life, and there was taught piano by Robert and Clara Schumann's daughter, Marie.

Alice wanted to become a singer someday, but due to typhoid fever she had her voiced ruined for good. In 1893, her family anglicized their surname from Wurm to Verne, and Alice married William Brendt, an amateur musician and conductor. Both greatly contributed with success for the piano school set up in London by her sister Mathilde Verne (1865–1936) in 1909.

Alice took over the school’s junior department, where Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, had a wedding march written especially for her. She died in London in 1958.