Frederick May - An Appreciation
An obituary of composer Frederick May written by Charles Acton and published in the Irish Times on 11 September 1985.
Copyright ©1985 The Irish Times Ltd. Reproduced by kind permission.
Complete Transcription
The title of one of his most beautiful works. Sunlight and Shadow, could be the title of the life of Frederick May, who died on Sunday, September 8th, but he suffered too much shadow and we received too little of the sunlight of his music. He had the potential to be Ireland's first composer of total world stature, but it was not to be.
He was born in 1911, the son of Frederick and Jeannie May, of Marlborough Road, Dublin. As a highly gifted musician he studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, then took his music degree at Trinity College, Dublin, and worked with Vaughan Williams and Gordon Jacob, at the Royal College of Music in London — his early works do show the influence of both composers.
The first shattering disappointment of his life was that when he had been accorded a travelling studentship to study with Alban Berg in Vienna in 1935, that great composer and teacher died. That was Fred's lifelong problem, that doors that seemed open were slammed in his face, and that, conversely, he did not recognise that other doors were open would he but push them.
Berg's death was, clearly, the biggest obvious disaster, even though he was able to work in Vienna with Berg's pupil, Egon Wellesz. From that period, 1933, dates his first surviving and important work, his Scherzo for Orchestra, which is still in the Irish orchestral repertoire and deservedly so.
Then followed the Symphonic Ballad first performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1937 and the very beautiful Spring Nocturne, first performed here in 1938, and the equally beautiful Lyric Movement for String Orchestra (first performed in the RDS by Madeleine Mooney's Dublin String Orchestra, led by Nande Loro and conducted by Terry O'Connor.
Vienna in the mid-thirties for a young Irishman led to what is perhaps his most important work, his setting of Ernst Toiler's heartbreaking Songs from Prison. Ireland in the Emergency years and the decade after was not the most encouraging for a composer, but Radio Eireann did offer performances to Irish composers of technical competence. Although this period saw his extremely beautiful string quartet (premiered in London in 1948 and in Dublin in 1949, when we had no Irish professional quartet) and put on record by Claddagh (and bless Claddagh for that and for half-publishing it!), he undoubtedly felt discouraged and rejected.
Thereafter he had serious personal problems in spite of RE [Radio Éireann], Martin McCullough and the MAI trying to give him encouragement. Worst of all came a form of tinnitus whereby he had to live his life with two different and persistent notes rinsing all the time in his head. That made musical creation impossible and forced him to spend his later years in Portrane Hospital.
Fred was a gentle, difficult, friendly, combative soul who might have been our Sibelius or Grieg if things had worked out differently. No work of his is unflawed, technically, just as Sean Ó Riada's works are flawed. If Berg had not died ... if Hitler had not started a war ... Fred might have been. Let us, however, be grateful for what he did for us.
His sister, Sheila, almost as talented as he was, was married to the late Professor David Greene, by whom she had a daughter Nicola. Those of us who were around in the Forties knew and loved her. She and Christopher Ferguson (National Secretary of the Workers' Union of Ireland) wrote a remarkably exciting political column in those days under the name of Akhnefton for The Irish Times. But Fred was our Sibelius manqué.
In 1830 there was inscribed on a memorial in Vienna: "The art of music here entombed a rich possession but even fairer hopes." Schubert was only 31 when he died, while Fred was 74, but Fred's hopes were as fair and we can only be grateful for what little we have.