Ina Boyle: An Irish Composer’s Journey 

When I was invited to write the biography of the Irish composer Ina Boyle I had never heard of her or her music. 

Why did Ralph Vaughan Williams encourage her to follow the career path of music composition? 

How have her life and music become so important in my life? 

Music Education

I first learned about her sheltered childhood in Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, her home-schooling and her unusual musical talent. From an early age she composed songs and chamber music and had correspondence lessons in composition with Charles Wood, who was married to her cousin, Charlotte Wills-Sandford. She studied harmony and counterpoint privately with two English musicians who were living in Dublin at that time - Percy Buck and C.H. Kitson. 

When they returned to London she wrote to Vaughan Williams, who had been appointed part-time professor of composition at the Royal College of Music, requesting lessons from him when she next visited London.  From 1923 she travelled from Enniskerry to London by road, sea, and train for composition lessons with him.  She kept a total of 32 handwritten notes and postcards in a folder labelled ‘Letters from my beloved teacher, Dr Ralph Vaughan Williams O.M., from 1923 to 1938, with one from Mrs Ursula V.W. after his death’. The lessons were based on the compositions that she was working on at the time; some were conducted by correspondence.  They ranged from chamber, orchestral, choral, and vocal music, and included advice to her to go abroad to study, but this was impossible for her owing to family commitments as she cared for her mother and sister, who were in poor health. 

In 1913, at the age of 24, she received her first public acknowledgement when she was awarded first and second prizes for composition at Sligo Feis Ceoil, for the Elegy for cello and orchestra and her setting of the song, ‘The last invocation’, with text by Walt Whitman. In 1915 she composed two anthems which she paid to have published. She also wrote a setting for chorus and orchestra of Soldiers at peace, a poem by Captain Herbert Asquith, second son of the British Prime Minister, which was performed for the first time by Bray Choral Society on 6 February 1920 at Woodbrook, Bray, the residence of Sir Stanley Cochrane. A very favourable review appeared the next day on The Irish Times and she later described it as the happiest night of her life.

A Composer’s Career

Her career as a serious composer was launched when she entered some of her compositions for competitions. In 1920 her orchestral rhapsody, The magic harp (1919) was selected for publication by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. This led to headlines in London newspapers - ‘Sudden Fame for Irish Women Composer’- and to a performance of the work in 1923 at a Promenade Concert by the Queen’s Hall Orchestra, conducted by Sir Henry Wood. She was the only female composer to be honoured by the Trust. 

Meanwhile she continued to visit London for lessons as often as she could, until the outbreak of the second World War curtailed her travels. In addition to composition lessons in London, Ina Boyle had enjoyed concerts at the Royal College of Music, the Queen’s Hall and the Aeolian Hall, and had attended opera and ballet performances. She had visited the British Museum and had become familiar with the London literary and musical scene. 

She made friends with other women composers and after the war some of her works were performed at concerts by the Macnaghten New Music Group, of which Vaughan Williams was president. In 1958 she received a typed postcard from him inviting her to a rehearsal of his new symphony in St. Pancras Hall. In a Christmas letter to her friend and neighbour, Sheila Wingfield, she wrote of attending the rehearsal and meeting him there ‘but knew I never should do so again’. Vaughan Williams died three months after the premiere. It was the end of an era for Ina Boyle.  

After Vaughan Williams’ death Boyle continued to compose. although as a woman composer she faced many challenges from concert promoters and publishers. Her friend Elizabeth Maconchy provided safekeeping at Downton Castle for some of her scores, which could not be posted to Ireland during the war. In August 1967 Maconchy listed Boyle’s music in a small green notebook under four categories: ORCHESTRAL, CHORAL, CHAMBER MUSIC, OPERA. Her personal tribute, Ina Boyle: An Appreciation, with a Select List of her Music, was published for Trinity College by the Dolmen Press in 1974.   

Boyle left instructions in her will for her trustee to consult Elizabeth Maconchy ‘as to all matters relating to her music as she is the only person who is intimately acquainted with it and my wishes about it.’ In 1997 Maconchy’s daughter, Professor Nicola LeFanu, presented a collection of Boyle’s manuscripts, sketches and printed music dating from 1922 to 1966 to the Library of Trinity College Dublin. The Boyle archive, which can be accessed online on TCD Digital Collections, has proved invaluable for researchers and performers of her music.

Ina Boyle Society

A revival of interest in the music of Ina Boyle is underway largely due to the work of the Ina Boyle Society Ltd. set up in 2020. Its mission is to advance public education and appreciation of the works of Ina Boyle and other neglected Irish composers, particularly women, whose music deserves to be heard more widely. Their work has resulted in recordings, radio broadcasts and performances worldwide of this forgotten composer. 

Her life and music have become important to me because of her unusual musical talent, her rural upbringing, her imagination, courage and determination to continue composing, despite considerable obstacles. In 1917 Vaughan Williams wrote: ‘I think it is most courageous of you to go on with so little recognition. The only thing to say is that it does sometimes come finally’. Thanks to the important work of the Ina Boyle Society we can now discover and enjoy the wonderful musical legacy that she has left us.     

Ina Boyle, like her contemporaries, was disadvantaged socially and culturally from gaining the recognition she deserves. I feel sorry for her struggles to have her music performed during her lifetime and am glad that it can reach new audiences in many countries today.

Dr Ita Beausang, musicologist, emeritus lecturer, TU Dublin.

References

• James Camien McGuigan‘, Making The case for Ina Boyle’, The Journal of Music.

• Ita Beausang and Seamas de Barra, Ina Boyle 1889-1967 A Composer’s Life (Cork University Press, 2018)