Hedli Anderson Hedli Anderson Antoinette Millicent Hedley Anderson (1907–1990) was an English singer and actor. Known as Hedli Anderson, she studied singing in England and Germany before returning to London in 1934. Anderson joined the Group Theatre, and performed in cabaret and in the initial productions of plays by W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Louis MacNeice. She married MacNeice in 1942; the couple had one daughter. They separated in 1960. Among the composers and lyricists who wrote songs for her were Auden, MacNeice, Benjamin Britten, Elisabeth Lutyens and William Alwyn. Auden's "Funeral Blues" (also known as "Stop all the clocks", later
Funeral Blues for the correct reading "wood"; this error does not occur in any other edition. In Auden's "Collected Poetry" (1945) "Funeral Blues" is poem XXX in the section "Songs and Other Musical Pieces". In his "Collected Shorter Poems 1927–1957" (1966), it is poem IX in the section "Twelve Songs" in Part II, "1933–1938"; the same numbering appears in his posthumous "Collected Poems" (1976, 1991, 2007). Britten wrote a setting of the poem for chorus and instrumental group as part of his incidental music for the first production of "The Ascent of F6" in 1937, and later arranged it for solo voice