Elizabeth Maconchy was one of the most prominent and successful composers of the twentieth century, a champion of contemporary music who composed chamber operas, choral music, orchestral works, a range of compositions and operas for children, and a highly-regarded series of string quartets. This collection explores her life and work, her Irishness and her formative years at the Royal College of Music. It examines her intersections with musical and cultural movements, and the persistent and insidious presence of sexism against which she presented a forceful, often humorous stance. There are chapters devoted to her important friendships with composers and teachers, interactions with broadcasters and festival organisers along with a focused section dedicated to the breadth and depth of Maconchy's compositions. The Irish-English composer is revealed a force to be reckoned with who frequently demonstrated a powerful instinct to thrive and survive, often against the odds.
Arvustused
'In these 33 meditations on Elizabeth Maconchy's extraordinary life and works, her music is given the space it has always deserved but has rarely been afforded. Her cultural, social, aesthetic, gendered, political, and medical environments are drawn upon in fascinating detail to shine a light on her iron will to be a composer against all the odds. This book forms an ideal introduction to Maconchy and her relevance then and most importantly now.' Annika Forkert, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester 'A brilliant documentation of Elizabeth Maconchy's exquisite artistry, balancing biographical angles with studies of a composer prolific in all genres - symphonic, operatic, chamber, and vocal. Assembling chapters from some two-dozen leading scholars, Vickers and Walker and their team of leading scholars have created an unusually wide-ranging portrait of a canonic figure in twentieth-century music.' Philip Rupprecht, Professor of Music, Duke University
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Explores the life and successful career of this prominent twentieth-century Irish-English composer, amidst a challenging, sexist, cultural and social landscape.
List of figures; List of tables; Permissions and publications; Notes on
contributors; Acknowledgements; List of bibliographic and in-text
abbreviations; Editors' preface; Part I. Environments:
1. 'Difficult for a
woman': the many twentieth-century contexts of Elizabeth Maconchy Justin
Vickers and Lucy Walker;
2. Elizabeth Maconchy personal recollections of my
mother Anna Dunlop;
3. Elizabeth Maconchy (19071994): a chronology Philip
Reed;
4. Ireland: revival and revolution Maria McHale;
5. 'Let us start
with our own': Maconchy as Irish composer and the negotiation of national
identity Laura Watson;
6. Teachers, colleagues, and friends: Maconchy's
'circle' and influential teachers while at the Royal College of Music
Rhiannon Mathias;
7. Studying in Prague and Europe in the 1930s Meredith C.
Graham;
8. Facing tuberculosis during the interwar years Michael Hutcheon,
M.D.;
9. The Composers' Guild of Great Britain Joanna Bullivant;
10.
Maconchy's predecessors Leah Broad;
11. A supportive sisterhood Lucy Walker;
Part II. Intersections:
12. The Mercury Theatre Philip Reed;
13. Members
only: Censorship and 'The Sofa' Lucy Walker;
14. 'I am writing to you on
behalf of my string quartets': Elizabeth Maconchy and the BBC Carola Darwin;
15. Maconchy, Vaughan Williams, and British pastoralism Eric Saylor;
16.
Irish and British music of the interwar era Thornton Miller;
17. Elizabeth
Maconchy and Béla Bartók: in search of a 'modern style' Christa Brüstle;
18.
Elizabeth Maconchy and European modernism Vicki P. Stroeher;
19. Gendered
reception Katy Hamilton;
20. Elizabeth Maconchy and changing festival
cultures Nicholas Clark;
21. Audiences and concertgoing Natasha Loges; Part
III. Works and Legacy:
22. Elizabeth Maconchy's genres in context Guido
Heldt;
23. 'Vital aspects of the complete composer': Elizabeth Maconchy's
commissioned works, 196082 Hilary Seraph Donaldson;
24. Place and genre in
Maconchy's choral music Meredith C. Graham;
25. Situating Maconchy's songs
and poetic tastes among her contemporaries Natalie Burch;
26. Operatic
transformations Daniele Sofer;
27. Elizabeth Maconchy's operas for children
Justin Vickers;
28. Counterpoints and arguments in Maconchy's string
quartets: developmental phases Rhiannon Mathias;
29. The orchestral music:
theme(s) and variations on European modernism Jonathan Clinch;
30. Maconchy's
chamber music Natasha Loges;
31. Feeling the fever: the archives of Elizabeth
Maconchy Oliver Mahony;
32. Curating my mother's legacy: Elizabeth Maconchy
since 1994 Nicola LeFanu; Coda:
33. 'We carry these legacies' Héloïse Werner;
Further reading; Index.
Justin Vickers is Distinguished Professor of Music at Illinois State University. He is the author of The Aldeburgh Festival: A History of the Britten and Pears Era, 19481986 (forthcoming), the co-editor of Childhood and the Operatic Imaginary since 1900 (2026) with Joy H. Calico, and Benjamin Britten in Context (2022) and Benjamin Britten Studies: Essays on An Inexplicit Art (2017), both with Vicki P. Stroeher. Lucy Walker is an independent scholar, speaker, and writer on classical music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her recent research activities have focussed on the cultural representation of all-female communities in a variety of historical contexts. Walker has written programme essays for the Salzburg Festival, London Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Opera, English National Opera, the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and the BBC Proms, among many more.
