Elizabeth Maconchy

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Dame Elizabeth Maconchy DBE (b. March 19, 1907, Broxbourne, Hertfordshire - d. November 11, 1994) was an English composer, most noted for her cycle of thirteen string quartets.

[edit] Biography

She began to compose at the age of six. After the First World War, her family moved to Ireland. Here she took piano lessons, but was advised by her teacher to study at the Royal College of Music, London, which she duly did from the age of sixteen. Her teachers included Arthur Alexander (piano) and Charles Wood and Ralph Vaughan Williams (musical composition). Her music developed in a way that rapidly attracted the attention of the most distinguished musicians of the day, including Sir Henry Wood, Sir Donald Tovey and Gustav Holst.

Here she became interested in the contemporary music of Central Europe, particularly Bartók, Berg and Janáček. On the recommendation of Vaughan Williams, Maconchy undertook further study in Prague, where her piano concerto was premiered in 1930 on her 23rd birthday, by Erwin Schulhoff, the same year in which Henry Wood premiered her orchestral piece The Land, and in which she married William LeFanu (1904-1995).

In 1932 Maconchy developed tuberculosis. She moved to the country lived entirely outdoors and allegedly cured herself by will-power[1].

She received a CBE in 1977. The last of her celebrated string quartets, the thirteenth (subtitled Quartetto Corto) was written in 1984. Maconchy was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987. Known to her friends as Betty LeFanu she lived for many years in Boreham, Essex. Throughout her life she somehow managed to give full-time attention to both her composing and her family, and at the same time, pursue an active professional life in which she devoted herself to helping other composers. She was Chair of the Composers Guild and of SPNM (succeeding Benjamin Britten as President). In her old age and failing health many musicians wrote to her saying how she had inspired them: by her grace, her sense of fun, her courage and single-mindedness, but above all -- by her music.[2]

The composer Nicola LeFanu -- the second of Maconchy's two daughters with William LeFanu -- dedicated her String Quartet No 2 (1977) to the memory of her parents[3].

[edit] Works

In 1930 her piano concerto and her orchestral piece The Land were premiered.

In 1933 she wrote her first string quartet, perhaps the medium for which she was best known, and she composed 13 of these in all, spanning over 50 years.

In 1933 her quintet for oboe and strings won a prize in the London Daily Telegraph Chamber Music Competition, and was recorded by Helen Gaskel with the Griller Quartet soon afterwards on HMV Records.[4]

After the difficulties of the war years, Maconchy began to receive a large number of commissions, and composed much music for orchestra, chamber groups and voices. She wrote three one-act operas:

  • The Sofa (1957) - a comic opera
  • The Departure (1961)
  • The Three Strangers (1967).

Her other choral and vocal works include:

[edit] Notes & References

  1. ^ this and several other bio-details come from the Purcell Room Programme Notes 1 March 2007 by her daughter Nicola LeFanu
  2. ^ Programme notes op. cit.
  3. ^ Programme notes op. cit.
  4. ^ R.D. Darrell, The Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia of Recorded Music (New York 1936), 278.
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