Vincent O’Brien remains best known as the first singing teacher of Irish celebrities John McCormack and Margaret Burke Sheridan; in fact, James Joyce was his pupil, too. In Irish musical history, however, he is better represented as the long-time organist of the catholic St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin (1902-1946) and conductor of the cathedral choir, one of the outstanding choirs in Ireland at the time. As McCormack’s first accompanist, he also travelled with the singer on his first world tour and appeared on McCormack’s early gramophone recordings from 1914. O’Brien was also the first music director of Radio Éireann (1926-1941) and conducted the first public concerts of the station’s orchestra in the 1930s. He was less important as a composer; he wrote the opera Hester (1893), some organ and choral music and a number of songs.
