Antoinette Kirkwood

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Antoinette Adell Mahoney Kirkwood (26 February 1930 - 28 January 2014) was an English composer born in London, with Irish family connections. [1]

Contents

Early life

Kirkwood studied music with Claud Biggs at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, and then piano and composition with Dorothy Howell and cello with Paul Tortelier at the Royal Academy of Music in Westminster. [2] She often accompanied her mother, the soprano Rome Lindsay. [3]

Career

Radio Éireann broadcast Kirkwood's Symphony, op. 8, composed in 1953. [2] This "very notable achievement", said one unidentified reviewer, established that Kirkwood "can write a memorable tune in a definite key and can hold the listener’s interest for a considerable time". [4] From 1957 until 1961, Kirkwood was the founder and conductor of the St Columba's Orchestra, associated with St Columba's Church, Pont Street.

On 28 April 1960 the conductor Kathleen Merritt organized and conducted a Wigmore Hall concert of 'Contemporary British Women Composers', featuring music of Kirkwood alongside some of that of Ina Boyle, Ruth Gipps, Dorothy Howell, Elizabeth Maconchy, and Grace Williams. [5]

For four years beginning in 1969, Kirkwood was a member of the executive committee of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain.

Works

Kirkwood composed orchestral concert works, theatre music and two ballet scores, as well as instrumental and chamber pieces (including a cello sonata and the Rapsodie for harp) and many songs. Marie Fitzpatrick identifies a development in her style from the three folksong based orchestral Fantasies (1958–61), through the six Intermezzos for piano of 1959, showing the influence of Bartok, and also including more technically demanding explorations, such as the Soliloquy for guitar (1985). [6] Her publishers are Curlew & Andresier and Bardic Edition. Selected works include:

Orchestral

Chamber and instrumental

Vocal

A few of her works have been recorded and issued on media, including:

Personal life

In 1961, at St Columba's, Kirkwood married the writer Richard Phibbs (1911-1986), the author of Buried in the Country (1947). [13] [14] Her marriage, three children and caring for her mother and husband through their terminal illnesses, led to a complete cessation in her composition activity between 1961 and the late 1980s. [1] During that period they were living at 56 Sutherland Street, London SW1. [15]

On her husband's death in 1986 she raised money to re-publish two of his books (Cockle Button, Cockle Ben, for children, and Harmony Hill, four short stories), as well as resuming her own career as a composer. [16] She died on 28 January 2014, aged 84. [17]

References

  1. 1 2 Halstead, Jill (June 1997). The woman composer: creativity and the gendered politics of music composition. Scolar Pr. p. 300. ISBN   1-85928-183-4. ISBN   978-1-85928-183-3
  2. 1 2 Contemporary Music Review, Vol. 11 Parts 1 and 2, pp. 177-8
  3. 1 2 Lazarus, Emma; Heine, Heinrich (1881). Antoinette Kirkwood biography. New York: Worthington/University of Massachusetts Amherst . Retrieved 2 February 2012.
  4. 1 2 3 "Antoinette Kirkwood". Bardic Music. Archived from the original on 3 March 2012. Retrieved 2 February 2012.
  5. ↑ 'London Concerts: Six Women Composers', in The Musical Times, Vol. 101, No. 1408, June 1960, pp. 373-374
  6. ↑ Marie Fitzpatrick . 'Kirkwood, Antoinette' in Grove Music Online (2001, rev. 2023)
  7. ↑ "Symphony no. 1". British Music Collection . 17 April 2009.
  8. ↑ 'Six Women Composers', The Musical Times, Vol. 101, No. 1408 (June 1960), pp. 373-4
  9. ↑ "Scores by Antoinette Kirkwood". The Collection. Arts Council England. Archived from the original on 19 July 2012. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
  10. ↑ Included on A Potpourri of Piano Music, Catherine Nardiello, piano, Cassette CN-105
  11. ↑ extract performed by Gemma Christine Connor
  12. ↑ Suite for Strings - Antoinette Kirkwood (Estreia Nacional Brasileira)
  13. ↑ Sadie, Julie Anne; Samuel, Rhian (1994). The Norton/Grove dictionary of women composers . New York: W.W. Norton. p.  250 . ISBN   0-393-03487-9.
  14. ↑ The Times 24 July 1961, p. 12
  15. ↑ Who's Who in Music, 5th ed. (1969), p. 173
  16. ↑ Helen Reid. 'For the Love of Richard', Western Daily Press, 1 August 1988, p. 8
  17. ↑ "Antoinette Kirkwood". Bardic Music. Archived from the original on 3 March 2012. Retrieved 24 December 2010.

Further reading

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