[5] During this period some of her compositions - including a symphony in manuscript, on 19 April 1845 - were performed at York Choral Society concerts.
[6] On 19 June 1855 she married the English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine Tom Taylor.
[7] Barker contributed music to at least one of her husband's plays, an overture and entr'acte to Joan of Arc (1871),[8] and provided harmonisations as an appendix to his translation of Ballads and Songs of Brittany (1865).
[5] Her choral setting of Keats's A Prophecy, composed in 1850, was performed for the first time 49 years later at the Hovingham Festival in 1899.
The Sunday musical soirees at the house attracted many well-known attendees, including the Prince of Wales, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Henry Irving, Charles Reade, Alfred Tennyson, Clara Schuman, Ellen and Kate Terry and William Makepeace Thackeray.