Elizabeth Maconchy: Intense But Disciplined

2007 marks the centenary of composer Elizabeth Maconchy’s birth. Born in England to Irish parents, she spent her childhood here and retained a strong sense of identification with Ireland all her life. In anticipation of the centenary, Anthony Burton surveys her considerable output.

This article was first published in The Full Score, the promotional magazine of the Music Sales Group of companies.

Copyright ©2005 Anthony Burton/Chester Music Ltd.

‘GIRL composer’s triumph’ was the headline in the Daily Telegraph when the 23-year old Elizabeth Maconchy’s suiteThe Land was first performed by Sir Henry Wood at the Proms in August 1930. The paper’s music critic, Herbert Hughes, declared it ‘a work of art that is in every way distinguished and masterly.’ In the same momentous week, Maconchy got married. Despite having to overcome a serious illness in the early 1930s, and even with the demands of raising a family (not that anyone ever considers that a problem for composers who are also fathers!), she persevered with her composing career for more than sixty years. By the time of her death in 1994, she was a Dame Commander of the British Empire, President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music, and a much respected leader of her profession.

In fact, the critics and headline writers in 1930 who highlighted Maconchy’s gender may have missed a more significant point about her unusual musical orientation. Although she studied at the Royal College of Music with Vaughan Williams, and they remained lifelong friends, she was never likely, having grown up in rural Ireland, to go along with his transcendent vision of Englishness. But neither, unlike some of her contemporaries, was she attracted to Sibelius’s symphonic Romanticism, Schoenberg’s strict serialism, or Stravinsky’s juggling of styles. Instead, she followed her instinct towards central European modernism, discovering the music of Bartók, Janácek and the undogmatic Berg, and furthering her studies with K B Jirák in Prague, then a buzzing centre of the avant-garde. Of course, her language developed over the years, the rhythms becoming more intricate and the harmonies more astringent, the forms always invented anew. But her approach remained constant, always reflecting her conception of music as ‘an intellectual art, a balanced and reasoned statement of ideas, an impassioned argument, an intense but disciplined expression of emotion.’

Maconchy used these words in explaining her attachment to the medium of the string quartet. And it is her outstanding sequence of thirteen quartets, spanning more than half a century, by which she is now best known -- thanks largely to Unicorn’s complete 1989 recording, now reissued on Regis. The complete cycle would grace any 2007 festival with a special commitment to chamber music; and quartets should note that many of these fine works are short enough to begin a lunchtime concert, or to help break up the rigid pattern of the three-item programme. Her catalogue of chamber and instrumental music also includes a string trio, oboe and clarinet quintets, a wind quintet, and many smaller pieces, all beautifully fashioned.

Conductors in search of orchestral music could well start withThe Land, which made a striking impression when revived for Maconchy’s eightieth birthday. There is much else to explore, including a warmly expressive Nocturne, the Proud ThamesOverture for Coronation Year, and a Sinfonietta and Little Symphony which were written for youth orchestras but show no signs of watering-down of their musical language. Maconchy wrote especially well for strings, for example in the rhythmically complex Symphony for double string orchestra, the substantialMusic for Strings for the 1983 Proms, and the compact Life Story for a smaller string group. And a whole string of works with soloists includes the Serenata Concertante for violin and full orchestra, a four-movement virtuoso concerto in all but name, as well as more lightly accompanied pieces for clarinet, bassoon, piano, violin, viola and cello, and the highly original Variazioni Concertanti for four wind instruments and strings.

Maconchy’s dramatic instincts found expression in a contrasting triptych of one-act operas, the farcical The Sofa, the dramatic The Three Strangers, after a Hardy short story, and the tragicThe Departure -- all modest in their orchestral and scenic demands. It is a pity that she never had the opportunity to write a full-scale opera; but the gap is to some extent filled by Héloïse and Abelard, an ambitious 75 minute dramatic cantata, based on historical sources and without any bogus mediaevalism, which an accomplished choral society would find challenging but satisfying.

For choirs, there is indeed a wide range of material, from miniatures for high voices and mixed-voice carols to the atmospheric Nocturnal, the light-hearted Creatures, and the taxing double-choir setting of Edith Sitwell’s wartime poem Still Falls the Rain. A Maconchy speciality was the combination of chorus and chamber ensemble: settings of Dylan Thomas and Gerard Manley Hopkins with brass groups are both imaginatively conceived for resonant cathedral acoustics; another Hopkins setting, The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo, makes euphonious use of a trio of alto flute, viola and harp; O Time Turn Back sets an anthology of English poetry for sixteen voices with wind quintet and cello.

The solo voice always brought out the lyrical side of Maconchy’s musical personality, and there are rewarding pieces for most voice-ranges. Sopranos are especially well served: with piano, there is among other things the beautiful Traherne cycle Sun, Moon and Stars; with chamber orchestra, another Hopkins cycle (in which tenor is an alternative) and a substantial cantata on Cecil Day Lewis’s poem Ariadne; and with chamber ensemble, the ravishing My Dark Heart, on J M Synge’s translations of Petrarch into Irish-tinged prose -- which Maconchy’s composer daughter Nicola LeFanu considers ‘perhaps the most haunting of all the late works.’

Plenty to discover, then: simply to browse along the shelf of Maconchy inspection scores in the Music Sales office is to come across work after work that one would love to hear again, or simply to hear once. And if anniversaries are to play a constructive part in the evolution of the repertoire, rather than simply provide an excuse for more recycling of already familiar Mozart or Shostakovich, then the centenary of Elizabeth Maconchy’s birth in 2007 should provide the ideal opportunity to make a start.

Anthony Burton is a freelance writer and broadcaster on music, with a special interest in the contemporary repertoire..

Further information on Elizabeth Maconchy’s music frompromotion@musicsales.co.uk

The views expressed in this interview are those of the persons concerned and are not necessarily those of the Contemporary Music Centre.