MVO FOREGROUND COMPOSER 2023-2024: INA BOYLE
Planned in 2019 but delayed by the pandemic, the MVO Foreground Composer Series was launched in 2021. In 2018, when the MVO board developed a set of artistic commitments, Artistic Director Ho-Yin Kwok had already programmed George Walker’s Lyric for Strings and two dances from Elizabeth Maconchy’s Puck Fair for the following season. In the following season MVO performed works by Germaine Tailleferre and Ethel Smyth. The board wanted to do more and began discussing ways to pursue the most significant of the artistic commitments: “representation of diverse aspects of the human experience, such as culture, era, gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and religion.” Kwok proposed focusing on one underrepresented composer each season, playing their work throughout, pointing out that Beethoven’s work is beloved not only because it’s good but also because audiences have heard more of his work than one of his pieces played only once. The board couldn’t have been more enthusiastic, and the Foreground Composer Series was born. When it finally arrived, the inaugural season featured the work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and the next featured Ruth Gipps. MVO musicians and audiences alike get the irreplacable experience of becoming familiar with the composer’s sound over the course of the season. It is no small effort to carry out this commitment. Music scores and parts aren’t as accessible, for example. But there’s no question that it’s worth it. It is a privilege to be part of U.S. and regional premieres, and musicians have reported that they have recognized even pieces MVO didn’t perform as being by a Foreground Composer whose work they had never known before their inclusion in the series. Representation is what makes recognition possible.
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Ina Boyle - Selina Adelaide Phillipa Boyle, named after her mother—was one of the most prolific Irish composers of the twentieth century. Born in Enniskerry, County Wicklow in 1889, she took violin and cello lessons at home. Despite almost no other opportunity to hear classical music, she studied theory and harmony while still very young. Her orchestral rhapsody The Magic Harp was published when she was twenty- one, and she was the first Irish woman to write a symphony - and a concerto and a ballet. She studied composition with Ralph Vaughan Williams, who became a strong supporter of her work, but caregiving obligations significantly limited her studies abroad, and few of her works were performed during her lifetime. She was devoted to her home region, where, according to a friend, she “lived the sad, full, solitary, humorous life of a saint.” Composer Elizabeth Maconchy curated her works after her death in 1967.
This season, Mississippi Valley Orchestra will present four US premieres and one regional premiere of orchestral music by Ina Boyle. These performances are supported by the Ina Boyle Society. Click the link below to learn more about Ina Boyle from the Ina Boyle Society:
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