Born in Dublin, Gerard Victory was educated at University College Dublin and Trinity College. In 1948 he joined RTE (Irish Radio and Television) where he subsequently held the post of Director of Music from 1967 until 1982. In more than forty years of composition he produced some 200 works, including four symphonies, eight operas (of which the best known are Chatterton, An Evening for Three and The Rendezvous); a large-scale cantata (Ultima Rerum, released on the Naxos/Marco Polo label in 1994); two piano concertos and a large volume of other compositions, many of them written for films, plays and celebratory occasions.
Gerard Victory was president of UNESCO’s International Rostrum of Composers (1981-83) and was a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy of creative artists. He was awarded the Order of Arts and Letters and the Order of Merit by the French and German Governments respectively.
I have been composing now in one form or another for about fifty years. The result, when listed in a catalogue, reads like some crowded landscape where plants of every kind imaginable rub shoulders uneasily. Whatever the work, I do believe I have always wanted to communicate with people at large. The greatest reward is to see one has touched even a single listener; it has happened sometimes and it has made the hard work seem worthwhile.