The Life and Music of Elizabeth Maconchy
by Erica Siegel
334pp. Hardback
Published 2023
ISBN: 9781837650514
Boydell & Brewer
My introduction to Irish-English composer Elizabeth Maconchy came several years ago when a friend of mine introduced me to her string quartets. She composed a total of thirteen in all between the years 1932 and 1983, and they’re considered the pinnacle of her compositional career. Together with the quartet cycle by Robert Simpson, they stand aloft as one of the most notable cycles by a British composer. For those of us who enjoy the quartets of Bartók and Shostakovich, Maconchy’s contributions to the genre fit the bill just fine. The quartets provide a thread running throughout this splendid biography by Erica Siegel, where they’re discussed in detail and adorned with musical examples. They also open a window into the evolution of Maconchy as a composer, from the second quartet’s final forays into tonality to the more demanding dissonance of her later works.
She was born in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire in 1907. Her parents were Irish, and aged ten the family moved to the east coast of Ireland. Her first musical studies were in Dublin, where she was tutored by Edith Boxhill on piano and John Francis Larchet in harmony and counterpoint. Aged sixteen she enrolled at the Royal College of Music in London, where her teachers were Charles Wood and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Her contemporaries were Grace Williams, Dorothy Gow, and Ina Boyle, with whom she became lifelong friends. In 1927 she was awarded the Blumenthal Scholarship, which enabled her to study in Prague with Karel Jirák. It was here, in 1930, that she gained her first public recognition performing her own Piano concerto under the baton of Jirák. That same year she married William LeFanu. The couple had two daughters: Elizabeth Anna LeFanu (born 1939) and Nicola LeFanu (born 1947).
The importance of Vaughan Williams to Maconchy’s career is explored in great detail. It was Christmas term 1925 that Maconchy started studying with the composer. He thought very highly of her, and she found him inspiring. Siegel remarks that his young student “found [his] approach to be haphazard”, directing his students to work from music rather than from textbooks. Yet, he helped her strive for the highest artistic peaks. Both Vaughan Williams and Bela Bartók became abiding influences on her music. Of the latter, a “fateful visit to Chester’s lending library” resulted in her encountering a copy of Bartók’s Suite for Piano, Op. 14. It was a lightbulb moment for her, opening up “a new world of rhythm, harmony, everything….”.
Vaughan Williams was an ardent champion of women composers, and young composers in general. He was instrumental in aiding two of his other female students, Dorothy Gow and Grace Williams, to win the RCM Octavia Travelling Scholarships to study with Egon Wellesz in Vienna, in addition to Maconchy gaining a scholarship to study with Karel Jirák in Prague.
The book discusses at length the prejudice Maconchy faced as a female composer. In her twenties she emerged as a voice of notable standing with her suite for orchestra The Land. The work is based on a poem by Vita Sackville-West, and clearly shows the influence of Vaughan Williams. It gained much success after its initial performance and “seemed destined to catapult Maconchy to stardom, [yet] what she encountered was quite the opposite”. Disappointingly, what didn’t follow were further commissions, interviews or further performances. She came to the hard realisation that prejudice against women was still widespread. Publishers helped fuel this prejudice; Leslie Boosey, of Boosey and Hawkes, said “he couldn’t take anything except little songs from women”. Later, it was colleagues like Grace Williams and Vaughan Williams who lobbied to get her music performed when her ” idiom made her case a challenge to plead….”.
In the 1960s, Maconchy immersed herself in administration, working to promote young composers. This involved trips to Canada and Russia. She was elected Chair of the Composers Guild of Great Britain in 1959, a position she held for a number of years. Another role was as President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music. She sought better conditions for composers regarding fees and rights. On the political front she was a socialist, and supported the Democratic/Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
This authoritative and intriguing book is both well-researched and generously illustrated. Erica Siegel writes with passion in an engaging, fluent and readable style. The value of this book is that it’s the first full-length biographical study of the composer. I must commend the publisher for its flawless production standards in terms of printing, superb photographic reproductions and the inclusion of pertinent musical examples. One advantage of the book is having detailed footnotes at the bottom of each page rather than listed at the end, which can prove burdensome. The back of the book includes a chronological list of works and a select bibliography. I also welcome the birth and death dates of colleagues and composers etc. mentioned throughout the text. It does positively add context.
The book will appeal to lovers of Maconchy’s music, devotees of English music and those with an interest in female composers. It’s an intellectually rewarding book, both absorbing and enlightening and it gets my whole-hearted recommendation.
Stephen Greenbank
Help us financially by purchasing from
