“INA BOYLE: an irish composer’s journey”

Dr Ita Beausang, Musicologist, Emeritus Lecturer, TU Dublin

When I was invited to write the biography of the Irish composer Ina Boyle, who had lived all her life in Ireland, I had never heard of her and had never heard her music. I soon learned about her sheltered childhood in Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, 15 miles from Dublin, and about her music education. She was home-schooled by governesses with her younger sister, Phyllis, and was taught the violin and cello by them; her unusual musical talent was inherited from her father, Rev. William Foster Boyle, curate of St Patrick’s Church, Powerscourt, who was an enthusiastic amateur musician and made violins as a hobby. 

She did not attend any formal classes but studied music privately with Samuel Myerscough, an English organist who came to Ireland in 1899 to teach music in Loreto Abbey and founded the Leinster School of Music in 1904. She composed songs and chamber music from an early age and had correspondence lessons in composition with Charles Wood, who was married to her cousin, Charlotte Wills-Sandford. She studied harmony and counterpoint with two other English musicians who were living in Dublin at that time - Percy Buck and C.H. Kitson. 

When they returned to England she needed to find a new teacher and wrote to Ralph Vaughan Williams, who had been appointed part-time professor of composition at the Royal College of Music in 1920, requesting lessons from him when she next visited London. From 1923 until 1938 she travelled from Enniskerry to London by road, sea, and train for composition lessons. 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 orchestral, choral, chamber and vocal music, and included advice to her to go abroad to study, but this was impossible for her owing to family commitments. 

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 the song, ‘The last invocation’, with text by Walt Whitman. In 1915 she composed two anthems which she paid to have published. She also composed 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 described it later as the happiest night of her life.

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 adulatory 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. Ina Boyle 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 women composers faced many challenges from concert promoters and publishers. Her friend Elizabeth Maconchy provided safekeeping at Downton Castle for some of Boyle’s scores which could not be posted to Ireland during the war, and acted as intermediary between her and publishers and other agencies. 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.

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. Ina Boyle, like her contemporaries, was disadvantaged  socially and culturally from gaining the recognition she deserved. 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.     

REVIEW OF THE MAGIC HARP, IRISH TIMES

Finghin Collins, NSO/Killian Farrell, National Concert Hall, Dublin by Michael Dervan

Irish Times, Monday 19 February 2024

“At 30, Boyle was a little over half Stanford’s age when she had her first success, through her 1919 rhapsody, The Magic Harp, being published by the Carnegie Trust. The title references the three strings of Eva Gore-Booth’s Durd Alba, “the iron string of sleep, the bronze string of laughter, and the silver string, the sound of which made all men weep”. The work even made it to the Proms in London in 1923.”

“Ina Boyle: Celebrating an Irish composer much forgotten”

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

February 2024

BSO celebrates Ina’s work and delves into her history. Ina had her greatest success with The Magic Harp, a piece which was in fact performed by Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under the BSO’s founder Sir Dan Godfrey in 1920. Follow the link to see the score which Ina sent to Sir Dan in 1922.

Biographical entry on Ina Boyle to Donne Women in Music

Dr Orla Shannon, Dublin City University and Royal Irish Academy

January 2024

Selina (Ina) Adelaide Philippa Boyle (1889–1967) was one of the most prolific composers in Ireland during the first half of the twentieth century. Her compositional career spanned the First and Second World Wars, the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), and the Irish Civil War (1922–23).

“Finding Glencree: the music of Ina Boyle”

Review on Ita Beausang’s Biography

Ina Boyle (1889-1967) A Composer's Life

“Ina Boyle: Rejection and Resilience”

New Music from Old Manuscripts: Three Medieval Latin Lyrics by Ina Boyle (1889–1967)

“A Celebration of Women in Music”

“Gentle Miss Ina Boyle’ (1889–1967) and gender (mis)representation in Ireland’s canon of twentieth-century art song”

Underrated, Underestimated: The Contributions of Ina Boyle (1889-1967) to Ireland’s Canon of 20th -Century Art Music.

Orla Shannon, School of Music at Dublin City University, funded by the Irish Research Council
4th September 2019, Prifysgol Bangor University, Wales. ‘The second International conference on women’s work in music’.

“From the seeds of earth, air, sea and liquid fire”: A Critical Edition of Ina Boyle’s ballet The Virgilian Suite (1930 – 31).

Emma O’Keeffe, Conservatory of Music & Drama, TU Dublin
Dundalk Institute of Technology, 10th January 2019. SMI & ICTM Postgraduate Conference.

Oblivious Oppression: Ina Boyle (1889-1967) and the Canon of Twentieth Century Irish Art Music.

The Forgotten Female: Twentieth Century Irish Art Music and the Cultural Politics of Revival.

INA BOYLE FIRST PERFORMANCES

A list of references for Ina Boyle’s first performances.