Ina Boyle

Irish composer Ina Boyle was born in Bushey Park in County Wicklow on 8 March 1889. She studied via correspondence course with Irish composer Charles Wood (who was a relative by marriage), then with English composer Percy Buck, then in Dublin with Charles Herbert Kitson and George Hewson and from 1923 with Ralph Vaughan Williams in London.

Two early works won prizes in 1913 and brought early recognition - the Elegy for cello and orchestra and her setting of Walt Whitman's The Last Invocation. During the 1920s and 1930s she received occasional first performamces in England, and organised a concert series with Elisabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams. In 1944, Arthur Duff organised an orchestral concert of her music. Her only work to receive a second performance during her lifetime was the short orchestral overture Wildgeese (1942).

She led an isolated life as a composer, spending much time looking after her family at home, but continued to compose throughout her life.

Ina Boyle died from cancer in Greystones, County Wicklow on 10 March 1967, aged seventy-eight, leaving much music including three symphonies, a Violin Concerto, a 1934 String Quartet in E minor, choral music and about sixty solo songs.

Further information: inaboyle.org

 

A selection of articles about Ina Boyle

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