John Nicholson Ireland (13 August 1879 – 12 June 1962)[1] was an English composer and teacher of music. The majority of his output consists of piano miniatures and of songs with piano. His best-known works include the short instrumental or orchestral work "The Holy Boy", a setting of the poem "Sea-Fever" byJohn Masefield, a formerly much-playedPiano Concerto, the hymn tuneLove Unknown and the choral motet "Greater Love Hath No Man".
John Ireland was born inBowdon, nearAltrincham, Cheshire, into a family of English and Scottish descent and some cultural distinction. His father,Alexander Ireland, a publisher and newspaper proprietor, was aged 69 at John's birth. John was the youngest of the five children from Alexander's second marriage (his first wife had died). His mother,Annie Elizabeth Nicholson Ireland, was a biographer and 30 years younger than Alexander. She died in October 1893, when John was 14, and Alexander died the following year, when John was 15.[2] John Ireland was described as "a self-critical, introspective man, haunted by memories of a sad childhood".[3]
Ireland began to make his name in the early 1900s as a composer of songs and chamber music. His Violin Sonata No. 1 of 1909 won first prize in theCobbett Competition. Even more successful was his Violin Sonata No. 2: completed in January 1917, he submitted this to a competition organised to assist musicians in wartime. The jury included the violinistAlbert Sammons and the pianistWilliam Murdoch, who together gave the work its first performance atAeolian Hall in New Bond Street on 6 March that year. As Ireland recalled, "It was probably the first and only occasion when a British composer was lifted from relative obscurity in a single night by a work cast in a chamber-music medium." The work was enthusiastically reviewed, and the publisher Winthrop Rogers offered immediate publication (the first edition was sold out even before it had been processed by the printers). A subsequent performance of the Violin Sonata by Ireland and the violinistDésiré Defauw drew a packed audience to theWigmore Hall in London.[6]
Ireland frequently visited theChannel Islands and was inspired by the landscape and the ambience. In 1912 he composed the piano pieceThe Island Spell (the first of the three pieces in his setDecorations) while staying in Jersey, and his set of three pieces for pianoSarnia: An Island Sequence was written while living in Guernsey in 1939 to 1940. He returned from Guernsey to Britain in 1940 just before the German invasion of the Channel Islands during World War II.
John Ireland was a lifelong bachelor, except for a brief interlude when, in quick succession, he married, separated, and divorced. On 17 December 1926, aged 47, he married a 17-year old pupil, Dorothy Phillips. This marriage was dissolved on 18 September 1928,[2] and it is believed not to have been consummated.[9] He took a similar interest in another young student,Helen Perkin, a pianist and composer, to whom he dedicated both thePiano Concerto in E-flat major and theLegend for piano and orchestra (which began life as a second concerto). She gave the premiere performance of both works,[2] but any thoughts he had for a deeper relationship with her came to nothing when she married George Mountford Adie, a disciple ofGeorge Gurdjieff, and she later moved with Adie to Australia.[10] Subsequently, Ireland withdrew the dedications. In 1947 Ireland acquired a personal assistant and companion, Mrs Norah Kirkby, who remained with him till his death.[2] Despite these associations with women, it is clear from his private papers that he was a closeted homosexual; several commentators support this view.[11][12]
John Ireland's grave in the churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin inShipley, West Sussex, 2014
On 10 September 1949, his 70th birthday was celebrated in a specialProm concert, at which his Piano Concerto was played byEileen Joyce,[13] who was also the first pianist to record the concerto, in 1942.
Ireland retired in 1953, settling in the hamlet ofRock inSussex, where he lived in a converted windmill,Rock Mill, Washington, for the rest of his life. It was there he met the young pianistAlan Rowlands who would be Ireland's choice to record his complete piano music.[14]
He died of heart failure aged 82 at Rock Mill[15] and is buried atSt. Mary the Virgin inShipley, near his home.[16][17] His epitaph reads "Many waters cannot quench love" and "One of God's noblest works lies here."
FromStanford, Ireland inherited a thorough knowledge of the music ofBeethoven,Brahms and other German classical composers, but as a young man he was also strongly influenced byDebussy andRavel as well as by the earlier works ofStravinsky andBartók.[18] From these influences, he developed his own brand of "EnglishImpressionism", related more closely to French and Russian models than to the folk-song style then prevailing in English music.
Like most other Impressionist composers, Ireland favoured small forms and wrote neither symphonies nor operas, although hisPiano Concerto is considered among the best composed by an Englishman.[18] His output includes some chamber music and a substantial body of piano works, including his best-known pieceThe Holy Boy, known in numerous arrangements. He wrote songs to poems byA. E. Housman,Thomas Hardy,Christina Rossetti,John Masefield,Rupert Brooke and others. Due to his job at St Luke's Church, he also wrote hymns, carols, and other sacred choral music; among choirs he is probably best known for the anthemGreater love hath no man, often sung in services that commemorate the victims of war. The hymn tuneLove Unknown is sung in churches throughout the English-speaking world, as is his Communion Service in C major.[19][20][21][failed verification]
His works have been recorded and performed by Choir of Westminster Abbey, The Choir of Wells Cathedral and many others.
Ireland wrote his only film score for the 1946 Australian filmThe Overlanders, from which an orchestral suite was extracted posthumously byCharles Mackerras. Some of his pieces, such as the popularA Downland Suite andThemes from Julius Caesar, were completed or re-transcribed after his death by his studentGeoffrey Bush.
^abcHugh Ottaway." Ireland, John (Nicholson)", Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, retrieved 6 June 2014(subscription required)
^Richards, Fiona. 'Helen Perkin: Pianist, Composer and Muse of John Ireland' (Chapter 11 of Foreman, Lewis (ed.),The John Ireland Companion (2011)
^George E. Haggerty (2000)"Ireland, John",Gay Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, p, 477, Garland Publishing Inc., New YorkISBN978-0-81531-880-4
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