John Ireland

John Ireland has a considerable reputation as a composer of chamber music, songs and piano works areas in which he was undeniably prolific but at the expense of the popularity of some marvellous orchestral works, the London Overture and the beautiful Piano Concerto: amongst works which receive so little concert exposure.

Essentially, it was in the chamber music writing that Ireland found his characteristic and indeed mature voice. Born near Manchester, Ireland spent most of his life in London with interludes in both Sussex and the Channel Islands. He was a pupil of Stanford at the Royal College of Music and, for most of his life, retained teaching connections with the institution: EJ Moeran, Britten and Geoffrey Bush all being amongst his more illustrious pupils.

He remained Organist at the church of St. Luke's, Chelsea for 22 years living for virtually all his London years nearby at his Gunter Grove studio. It was Moeran who found him '..a wise adviser and an astute critic... a firm believer in the value of the study of strict counterpoint.' Contemporary influences found in his music can be discerned in the 2nd Violin Sonata of 1917 - a piece with which Ireland gained overnight fame with its first performance - from the dreamy impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, the intensity and strictness of Stanford's Brahmsian inspired counterpoint or the folksong originality; but one has only to listen to the sensuous beauty of the melodic writing, the crafted development of harmonic intention - quintessentially English but - the inspired work of a composer possessed of consummate tools of his trade?

The 2nd Violin Sonata was premiered in London by the khaki-clad Albert Sammons and William Murdoch both of whom were then conscripted soldiers in the Grenadier Guards. Ireland recalled that a music publisher was on his doorstep 'before breakfast' to secure publication the morning after the concert. The piece became such a box office success that it was repeated nine times during that concert season. Edwin Evans remarked that the war years had yearned for a form of musical expression and many felt that Ireland had found it in this work. Emotionally, it struck a chord with those who looked for a sympathetic and articulate artistic voice.

The first movement is one of great tension and emotional weight opening with an arresting rhythmic idea forming the primary thematic idea. A number of lyrical themes follow, giving rise to the development material. For all the opening movement's darkness and passionate intensity, it is arguably the slow movement's glorious second subject tune which provides the emotional heart of the work. The finale, after a short and dramatic recitative-like introduction (which reappears after the elegiac central section) bounds off in folksong fashion with a tune of jocularity and no little urgency. The recapitulation of the opening episode leads to the breathless chase home!

John Ireland on Guild Music

• GMCD 7204 Organ Spectacular from St. Paul's Cathedral
• GMCD 7287 Love and Honour
• GMCD 7271 Portsmouth Remembers - Te Deum laudamus in F
• GMCD 7120 Violin Sonata No. 2 (1917)
• GMCD 7226 O Magnum Mysterium  - The Holy Boy

Page revised Thursday July 27 2006