Caroline Reinagle (born Caroline Orger) (1 May 1817 – 11 March 1892) was an English classical composer, pianist, and writer. Only a few of her works have survived.
Life Reinagle was born in London on 1 May 1817. Her father was Dr Thomas Orger and her mother was Mary Ann Orger who was a comic actress.Patrick Waddington, ‘Reinagle, Caroline (1817–1892)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2007 accessed 14 March 2015 In the 1840s she had several of her works published and performed, including a piano trio, premiered by 1842, 1842 Volume, with 14 search "hits" for Orger, including several for a publication of her piano concerto op. 2 - including a review in the May 19, 1842 issue on p. 155; and one for a performance of her trio. and a piano concerto, published 1842 and performed by her in 1843 at Hanover Square Rooms. Her mother was well read and her father, Dr Thomas Orger was a translator of Ovid and Anacreon, and he had written a book about Napoleon. He didn't object to her mother's acting and he became a founding member of the Swedenborg Society and the editor of Intellectual Repository. Both her parents became members of the Swedenborgian church.
In 1846 she married Alexander Robert Reinagle (1799-1877), organist at St Peter-in-the-East, Oxford, composer of the hymn tune St Peter, and son of Joseph Reinagle. She died in Tiverton, Devon, in 1892.
Compositions Her only apparently surviving compositions are some songs, a tarantella in E minor and a sonata in A (the latter two works for piano). The last two have been republished by Vivace Press, and recorded by Hiroaki Takenouchi.Works for Solo Piano by British Women Composers, Artalinna ATL-A046 (2025) Also surviving is a pair of articles in the 1862 Musical Times entitled A Few Words on Piano Playing.See e.g. . Composed but possibly lost also were at least one piano quartet and a cello sonata in addition to the concerto and trio.
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