Arthur Duff was born in Dublin. He studied piano and organ at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and became assistant organist at Christ Church Cathedral at the age of fifteen. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1917 and completed a MusB degree in 1922. He was awarded a DMus degree from TCD in 1942. He was the first Irish-born bandmaster in the Army School of Music and joined the Irish Broadcasting Service in 1937, becoming Assistant Music Director in 1945.
Arthur Duff’s works are very much influenced by Vaughan Williams and Delius and include the ballet, The Drinking Horn, Music for Strings, and his evocation of eighteenth-century Dublin, Echoes of Georgian Dublin.
Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland