The centenary of the birth of composer Aloys Fleischmann will be celebrated next year.

Cork City Council has set up a committee to coordinate the events planned to commemorate the Irish composer, scholar, campaigner, organiser, conductor, professor of music and Freeman of the City of Cork. The participation of fifty organisations is currently being negotiated: there will be concerts and recitals, exhibitions, dance performances, broadcasts, conferences, public lectures, and a number of publications. The town of Dachau in Bavaria, from which the Fleischmann family came to Cork 130 years ago, will also celebrate its emigrant musician family.

The Fleischmann family invites anybody who knew, studied or worked with Aloys Fleischmann to participate in the planning of his centenary. Some of you may have choirs or ensembles and might consider performing a Fleischmann work; those of you who are music teachers might perhaps set up a Fleischmann project in your school. We would be most grateful for ideas and suggestions.

During Aloys Fleischmann’s centenary in 2010, we hope to make many of his compositions freely available on the Internet. The process of creating computer typeset files from manuscript scores is laborious and therefore expensive. We appeal to anybody who is able to create Sibelius files to help us with this task or to sponsor the making of a file. You would be creating a monument to Fleischmann’s memory. The names of the file-maker or sponsor will be inscribed in the Sibelius file.

For more information, please see the Fleischmann Centenary web site of Cork City Music Library or contact Maeve Fleischmann, email maevefleischmann@eircom.net.

Posted: 28 March 2009