John Ireland

Apologies for the radio silence, I took a few days off!! Another favourite today - John Ireland. Pupil of Stanford, teacher of Benjamin Britten and with a significant compositional repertoire, his music ranges through choral, orchestral, chamber, song, organ and piano genres, with over 200 published pieces and around 400 CDs already made representing his work.

Biography
John Ireland was born August 13, 1879, in Bowdon, Cheshire. His father, Alexander Ireland, was a publisher and newspaper proprietor, John was the youngest of five children from Alexander's second marriage, and Alexander was already aged 69 at John's birth. John's mother died when he was 14, and his father a year later, leaving the young John with sufficient means to study music at the Royal College of Music.

Initially Ireland enrolled at the RCM as a piano student, but his talents as a composer were soon recognised and he achieved overnight fame with the premiere of his second violin sonata. In March, 1917 he gained a scholarship and was taught by Stanford, and later returned (in 1923) as the college’s Professor of Composition. He was a talented organist and held posts in several London churches.

Ireland died of heart failure aged 82 in Washington, Sussex, on June 12, 1962 and is buried at St. Mary the Virgin in Shipley, near his home. His epitaph reads "Many waters cannot quench love" and "One of God's noblest works lies here."

Music
From Stanford, Ireland inherited a thorough knowledge of the music of Beethoven, Brahms and other German classical composers, but as a young man he was also influenced by Debussy and Ravel as well as by the earlier works of Stravinsky and Bartók. Ireland is viewed as an "Impressionaist composer", rejecting the style then prevailing in English music and focussing instead of mood and atmosphere. Ireland favoured small forms and wrote neither symphonies nor operas, although his Piano Concerto is considered among his best works. He wrote songs to poems by A. E. Housman, Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti, John Masefield, Rupert Brooke and others. Due to his job at St Luke's Church, he also wrote hymns, carols, and other sacred choral music; among choirs he is probably best known for the anthem "Greater love hath no man", often sung in services that commemorate the victims of war. The hymn tune "Love Unknown" is sung in churches throughout the English-speaking world and has always been a favourite of mine, as is his Communion Service in C major which I only came across late last year.

Gloria from Communion Service in C (ignore the album cover title)



Ireland's Te Deum in F is particularly uplifting. The the Deum is a latin Christian hymn written in 387 A.D. following the outline of the Apostles' Creed, mixing a poetic vision of the heavenly liturgy with its declaration of faith. Tradition suggests it was composed by St Ambrose, but this is unlikely. It was introduced into the Benedictine order in the 6th Century A.D. and is now used with the standard canticles in the Anglican Morning Prayer service (Matins) and also in thanksgiving to God as a special blessing.