Ireland, John (1879-1962)

[Norfolk Born]

"These things shall be" is a work I simply love. As SA points out, it's every much in the Blest Pair of Sirens mould, but that's no bad thing. When I first heard it, I thought it must be a lost choral work by Elgar.

(I see the software is playing up. I only typed the word "thought" once.)

Or maybe you just thought thought you had had...

[EdgeleyRob]

I love the chamber music, especially the piano trios.

[salymap]

Is anyone buying the book though? I headed this as I did because it seemed to fall between several different stools. We still await a good biography I have been told.

[Serial_Apologist]

Is anyone buying the book though? I headed this as I did because it seemed to fall between several different stools. We still await a good biography I have been told.

I might well do, saly. 3 years ago I visited Brighton, and took my ex-girlfriend out in the car to see the windmill house where Ireland spent his later years. Unfortuinately I was unable to locate it, (I now know the whereabouts), but we visited Amberley, pulling off the lane to listen to my tape of Parkin playing "Amberley Wild Brooks".

This failed to rekindle our relationship, , but I would strongly recommend that you re-play your recording of the Violin Sonata No 2, which has a fantastic noble slow movement melody, (I said finale above ), and a funny little tune in the finale which makes me think of children singing in the playground.

Best wishes

S-A

[salymap]

S-A I intend to play some old Ireland LPs very soon. I knew that part of Sussex well years ago and holidayed nearby with friends. The mill is near the main road from Southwater to Worthing. Rock Mill, Washington was where my colleague used to visit Ireland. Chris Newman knows the area well and Igave him the Order of Service from Ireland's funeral, which my editor colleague gave me. I wish when I worked with him I had realisd that Aprahamian and Delius himself were also his friends. He loved to reminisce.

Best wishes, saly

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Or maybe you just thought thought you had had...

[Chris Newman]

S-A I intend to play some old Ireland LPs very soon. I knew that part of Sussex well years ago and holidayed nearby with friends. The mill is near the main road from Southwater to Worthing. Rock Mill, Washington was where my colleague used to visit Ireland. Chris Newman knows the area well and Igave him the Order of Service from Ireland's funeral, which my editor colleague gave me. I wish when I worked with him I had realisd that Aprahamian and Delius himself were also his friends. He loved to reminisce.

Best wishes, saly

S-A, Rock Mill is at TQ 128 137 in Rock near Washington on the Ordnance Survey Maps just off the A24 about half way between Horsham and Worthing.. It is now a private house and office and no longer open to the public on a private estate. John Ireland is buried a few miles up the road at Shipley in the little churchyard of St Mary the Virgin. The little Norman church stands next Shipley Windmill which was the home of poet Hilaire Belloc and featured in the detective series Jonathan Creek. Like Rock Mill it is no longer open to the public. JI's grave can be found if you keep walking straight from the main door of the church into the graveyard for about twenty yards. On your right by the fence you will find a large rough hewn black stone which marks the grave. salymap kindly gave me JI's Order of Service. My parents who lived locally never knew the composer but were buried a few years ago about 10 yards from him.

S-A, also if in your search you ended up in Amberley you still went to a place with other musical associations. The composer of Hiawatha, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (15 August 1875 – 1 September 1912) lived at Amberley Castle looking over the Wild Brooks (the flood plain of the River Arun between Amberley and Arundel. When I was young his daughter Avril tried to begin a music festival in the village which sadly never got anywhere.

[Serial_Apologist]

S-A, Rock Mill is at TQ 128 137 in Rock near Washington on the Ordnance Survey Maps just off the A24 about half way between Horsham and Worthing.. It is now a private house and office and no longer open to the public on a private estate. John Ireland is buried a few miles up the road at Shipley in the little churchyard of St Mary the Virgin. The little Norman church stands next Shipley Windmill which was the home of poet Hilaire Belloc and featured in the detective series Jonathan Creek. Like Rock Mill it is no longer open to the public. JI's grave can be found if you keep walking straight from the main door of the church into the graveyard for about twenty yards. On your right by the fence you will find a large rough hewn black stone which marks the grave. salymap kindly gave me JI's Order of Service. My parents who lived locally never knew the composer but were buried a few years ago about 10 yards from him.

S-A, also if in your search you ended up in Amberley you still went to a place with other musical associations. The composer of Hiawatha, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (15 August 1875 – 1 September 1912) lived at Amberley Castle looking over the Wild Brooks (the flood plain of the River Arun between Amberley and Arundel. When I was young his daughter Avril tried to begin a music festival in the village which sadly never got anywhere.

Very interesting, thanks, Chris. Shame I didn't have those details when I visited - although the visit was very interesting in other respects: we visited a Roman Villa nearby. From some biographical details I downloaded a year ago, I rather gathered that Ireland was something of a recluse in his later years.

On a slightly tangential subject, I've long been fascinated by musical and other parallels between John Ireland and Frank Bridge. Both were born in the same year; both studied under Stanford; both turned from late 19th century Continental influences in their early works to an English pastoral idiom around the time of the First World War, influenced by Vaughan Williams and by Ravel - Bridge wrote admiringly of Ireland's "Forgotten Rite" as path making a new direction in English music - and while Bridge advanced considerably in terms of expanding his harmonic pallette after 1924, some of his few later works - and here I'm thinking of "Phantasm", written within a year of Ireland's PC, but especially the overture "Rebus" - display harmonic traits markedly in common with Ireland's. For those with recordings of music by both composers, it is well worthwhile playing the music of both composers consecutively and in chronological order. I have no idea whatsoever if they were friends or acquaintances. Bridge, too, lived in Sussex, though several miles to the east of Ireland, near to Newhaven, and we managed to locate his cottage. My own view, fwiw, is that Bridge was the more resourceful of the two composers, wkith an in-depth "feel" for sonata-type deployment and development of materials - one which Ireland by no means lacked, if one hears the very early Brahmsian chamber works, and the violin and piano sonatas from 1917/20, but which he seems to have forsaken in his later years. I sometimes wonder of Ireland felt daunted by the direction taken by his contemporary, and felt "left behind".

Just thought I'd raise this as of possible interest.

S-A

[Pabmusic]

..I've long been fascinated by musical and other parallels between John Ireland and Frank Bridge...

And they both taught Britten composition, Bridge privately and Ireland at the RCM.

I'm no expert on this, but I do know that Ireland was a good friend of Bax; Bridge never seems to be mentioned. This is probably not too surprising as Bridge's composing was a much more private affair (he was primarily a professional violist and conductor, but in the 1920s acquired a wealthy American patron) than Ireland's, who was a professor at the RCM for much of his life. Bridge's later music seems to me to have a lot of Hindemith and Stravinsky in it.

[salymap]

A favourable review of this book in the Feb BBCMM, just arrived today but on general sale on 18th January.

[clive heath]

Ireland, John (1879-1962)

We have tickets for the RFH on the 20th January 2013 at 3.00 pm, Philharmonia with

conductor John Wilson
piano Leon McCawley

Walton: Portsmouth Point
Delius: ...Cuckoo......
Ireland: Piano Concerto
VW: Fantasia..............Tallis
Elgar: In the South (Alassio)

I got to know this work ( the Ireland) because I found myself with Eileen Joyce's recording on 78s and put it up on my website with her Shostakovitch First which must have been one of the first recordings of the latter work.The Ireland is definitely not as weird as some of his piano pieces and as far as one can tell from the recording is pretty imaginatively scored for full orchestra.

[antongould]

On one of the occasional threads demanded by Lady Sidcup - favourite PCs or some such - it "scored" very well if I recall. I think it is a fine work.

[Barbirollians]

I must admit to having been very unimpressed by it when it was in BAL a couple of years back but bought the Lenehan recording on Naxos which post dated the BAL and it has won me over . Nice to see it in concert and Leon McCawley is a very fine pianist IMO.

[salymap]

I love it. Lord Washington [Tyne & Wear] kindly sent me a CD of the Colin Horsley performance, a pianist I saw playing it years ago and a fine recording.

[Bax-of-Delights]

The Ireland Concerto was programmed with the Moeran 2nd Symphony just before Christmas at the Brighton Dome. I already knew it pretty well from the old Lyrita recording with Eric Parkin (Sir Adrian Boult conducting the London Phil) but it was delightful to hear it live and to judge from the comments of those who had never heard it before was much appreciated.