Dame Elizabeth Violet Maconchy LeFanuDBE (/məˈkɒŋkiːˈlɛfænuː/; 19 March 1907 – 11 November 1994) was an English-Irishcomposer.[1][2][3] She is considered to be one of the finest composers Great Britain and Ireland have produced.
Elizabeth Violet Maconchy was born inBroxbourne,Hertfordshire, of Irish parents and grew up in England and Ireland.[4] Her family moved to Ireland in 1917, where they lived in Howth, on the east coast. The adolescent Maconchy began her musical studies in Dublin, studying piano with Edith Boxhill, and harmony and counterpoint withJohn Francis Larchet.[5] Those formative years in Ireland were important for Maconchy who considered herself Irish.[6] Throughout her career she was identified as an Irish composer, or as an English composer with Irish influences, by reviewers and commentators.[7]
In 1923, at the age of sixteen, she moved to London to enrol at theRoyal College of Music. At the RCM Maconchy studied underCharles Wood andRalph Vaughan Williams.[4][8] Her contemporaries at the college includedGrace Williams,Dorothy Gow, andIna Boyle. Early compositions such as the violin sonata and Piano Concertino of 1927 already show the influence of European composers, especiallyBéla Bartók.[9] As a student, Maconchy was awarded the Blumenthal Scholarship in 1927, and the Octavia Scholarship of 1930, which allowed her to continue her studies in Prague. Her first public recognition came in 19 March 1930 with a performance of her Piano Concerto, conducted by her teacher there,Karel Jirak.[10] This was followed on 30 August by aBBC Proms performance of her cantataThe Land, conducted byHenry Wood,[11] which was inspired by the long poem of the same name byVita Sackville-West.
In response to the scarce opportunities for young avant garde composers and for female composers, a group of women got together to organise regular concerts at the small Ballet Club theatre in Notting Hill, London, showcasing new work. It has been claimed that this venture "changed the face of music in London", and that it "prove[d] a lifeline for Elizabeth Maconchy through the 1930s".[12]
In 1930 Maconchy marriedWilliam LeFanu, with whom she had two daughters:[3][8] Elizabeth Anna LeFanu (born 1939) andNicola LeFanu (born 1947).[1]In 1932, Maconchy developedtuberculosis and she moved with her family from London to Kent.[1][4]She returned to Ireland in 1939, living in Dublin for a brief period, during which she composed her Fifth String Quartet, which some critics consider her greatest achievement,[13] and gave birth to a daughter.
Elizabeth Maconchy's plaque in Shottesbrook, Boreham
Maconchy did much to improve the conditions of composers, being elected Chair of the Composers Guild of Great Britain in 1959, a position she held for a number of years. She was also President of theSociety for the Promotion of New Music.[14] Maconchy was a socialist, and her activism extended to supporting the Democratic/Republican side in theSpanish Civil War, and other causes.[15]
Maconchy is considered to be "one of the finest composers the British Isles have produced".[16] Her work has been compared to that of Bartók, who was an acknowledged influence, and also toBeethoven andMozart, as well as (favourably) to contemporaries such asBenjamin Britten.[17] She produced over 200 works.[14] According to Ailie Blunnie, Maconchy was "a gestural composer, concerning herself with short musical fragments, as opposed to large-scale concepts or templates", at least in part because of her "ideology" as a composer, so that "she never planned anything out, musically speaking, in any great detail in advance of composition, [and by using shorter formats] she could afford to explore the possibilities implicit in the ideas themselves as they arose".[18]
In terms of style, Maconchy had "a predilection for intervallic composition", and, "profoundly influenced by the resonances produced by certain intervals, [she] tended to build works around one or a small number of intervals, which varied according to the work in question".[18] A favoured "harmonic device" was the "simultaneous use of major and minor sonorities", which "came to denote episodes of heightened emotion".[19] It has been argued that her work is often "driven by rhythm", which gives it its characteristic confluence of "energy, dynamism and imagination".[20]
Maconchy's cycle of thirteen string quartets, composed between 1932 and 1983, is regarded as the peak of her musical achievements.[21] Historian of music Anna Beer has contended that "Maconchy loved the quartet form because it represented a debate, a dialectic between four balanced, individual, impassioned voices."[22] She once declared that: "for me, the best music is an impassioned argument".[23]
She also wrote for voice. Maconchy wrote three one-act operas, including the erotic comic operaThe Sofa, based on an eighteenth century novel, and stylistically in "dialogue with Mozart",[24] which shocked the audience for its explicitness when it premiered in 1959. In 1943 she responded to war withThe Voice of the City, for women's chorus, about theBattle of Stalingrad.[25] There were many songs written throughout her career, but most of them were unpublished and remained little known.[26] In 1981 she set to music prose versions of some Petrarchan sonnets, by the Irish writerJ.M. Synge, grouped together as a song cycle,My Dark Heart.
In 1933, Maconchy'squintet for oboe and strings wonThe Daily Telegraph Chamber Music Competition, and was recorded by Helen Gaskel with theGriller Quartet soon afterwards onHis Master's Voice.[27] In 1948, she was awarded the Edwin Evans Prize for her String Quartet No. 5. In 1953, her "Proud Thames" overture won the London County Council Competition as Coronation Overture for the new Queen of the United Kingdom.
^abc"Maconchy, Dame Elizabeth (Dame Elizabeth LeFanu)".Who Was Who (online (December 2012), Oxford University Press ed.).A & C Black. November 2012. Retrieved27 December 2012.
^For more information on this period, see Ailie Blunnie,Passion and Intellect in the Music of Elizabeth Maconchy DBE (1907–1994), unpublished Thesis, NUI Maynooth, 2010.
^See Blunnie,Passion, op. cit., p. 2. See also Anna Beer, "Maconchy", inSounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music (London: One World, 2017), p. 318.
^Hugo Cole and Jennifer Doctor, "Maconchy, Dame Elizabeth", inThe New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited byStanley Sadie andJohn Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
Fuller, Sophie; Doctor, Jenny, eds. (2019).Music, Life, and Changing Times: Selected Correspondence Between British Composers Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams, 1927–77. London:Routledge.ISBN978-1-4094-2412-3.
