Ireland, John (13th August 1879-12th June 1962)

He was a composer and teacher born John Nicholson Ireland in Bowdon, Cheshire, England whose father was a newspaper proprietor and publisher and his mother was a biographer. He was the youngest of five children and lost his mother when he was fourteen years old and his father the following year.

He studied piano and organ from 1893 and composition from 1897 at the Royal College of Music where his teachers were the composer and organist Frederic Cliffe, the composer and organist William Parrott and the composer and teacher Charles Villers Stanford.

While still a student he was given the post of sub-organist at Holy Trinity in London in 1896 which led to him being the choirmaster and organist at Chelsea’s St. Luke’s Church from 1904 to 1926.

At the turn of the 20th century his chamber music and songs started to get him recognised in the early 1900s and in 1909 the Cobbett Competition awarded him first prize for his Violin Sonata No. 1. In 1912 he wrote the three-piece set Decorations while in Jersey in the Channel Islands, which he visited regularly.

Eight years after winning the Cobbett Competition he entered another competition in 1917 where his Violin Sonata No. 2 was so successful that it was performed by the pianist William Murdoch and the violinist Albert Sammons at the Aeolian Hall in London which virtually thrust him into the limelight overnight after it was met with enthusiasm. It was published straight away with the first edition selling out before the printers had processed it. It was performed again at the Wigmore Hall in London where he performed it with the violinist Desire Defauw.

During the 1920s he worked as a teacher and taught at the Royal College of Music from 1923 where his students included Richard Arnell, Benjamin Britten, Alan Bush, Ernest John Moeran and Percy Turnbull. He also taught the composer Geoffrey Bush who arranged and edited several of his works. He was briefly married in 1926 to Dorothy Philips who was thirty years his junior, but it ended in dissolution in 1928. He also took notice of the pianist and composer Helen Perkin and dedicated his Legend for piano and orchestra and Piano Concerto in E-flat major to her. She performed the premieres of them both.

He lived in Guernsey for a year from 1939 to 1940, just before the German invasion, and during that time he wrote his Sarnia: An Island Sequence which comprised three piano pieces. In 1846 he wrote the film score for the Australian film The Overlanders.

His works as a composer included many piano works, chamber pieces and songs. He also wrote choral music, hymns and carols and is remembered for his anthem “Greater Love Hath no Man”. He is also known for his composition “The Holy Boy” and several of his choral arrangements that include a version of the 15th century “Adam lay ybounden” along with many others.

There was a Prom concert to celebrate his 70th birthday in 1949 and four years later in 1953 he retired from London to a converted windmill in Rock Mill, Washington, West Sussex, remaining there for the rest of his life. At some point during his time at Rock Mill he became acquainted with the pianist Alan Rowlands who he chose to record his piano works.

The numerous recordings of his works include his own Fantasy-Sonata for Clarinet and Piano with Frederick Thurston, Cello Sonata with Antoni Sala (recorded in 1923) and several other posthumous recordings . Other artists and ensembles that have recorded his work include the the Choir of Wells Cathedral, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Choir of Westminster Abbey, Clare College Choir, James Galway, the Halle Orchestra, Aled Jones, King’s College Choir of Cambridge, John McCabe, Melos Ensemble, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Eric Parkin, St. John’s College Choir, St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir, The Sixteen, Julian Lloyd Webber and too many others to mention.

In June 1962 he died of heart failure at Rock Mill. He was 82 years old.

Sources:

Ireland, John (13th August 1879-12th June 1962)

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