Ina Boyle [1889-1967]
String Quartet in E minor [1934]
1.      Allegro moderato
2.      Adagio
3.      Allegro molto

Performed by the ConTempo Quartet
National Concert Hall, Dublin, 11th September 2022

Ina Boyle was a prolific composer of vocal, choral, chamber and orchestral music, but her works are rarely performed today and few were published. She lived all her life in the family home, Bushey Park, Enniskerry, in the shadow of the great Sugarloaf. Her first music lessons were with her father, Rev. William Foster Boyle, who was curate at St. Patrick’s Church, Powerscourt. With her younger sister, Phyllis, she was taught the violin and cello by their governess, and she started to compose at an early age.

She initially studied composition with several private teachers in Dublin as well as by correspondence with her cousin Charles Wood. She had her greatest success with her orchestral rhapsody, The Magic Harp, which was selected for publication in 1920 by the prestigious Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. She was the only female composer to be honoured by the scheme.

From 1923 she crossed the Irish Sea by steamship for lessons with Ralph Vaughan Williams, who thought highly of her music and encouraged her to have it performed. Unfortunately the outbreak of the Second World War ended her travels and cut her off from musical opportunities in London. She continued to compose throughout her life and never ceased to promote her music by sending scores to conductors and choir directors. Her friend Elizabeth Maconchy noted that as a result of her isolation she made few musical contacts and her music remained little known and almost unperformed.    

Ina Boyle’s Quartet was completed in 1934 and revised in 1937. It was written for Irish violinist Anne Macnaghten who both through her playing and through the long running Macnaghten Concerts in London, was a tireless champion of contemporary music. Trinity College and the Contemporary Music Centre hold a recording of the Macnaghten Quartet playing this work. Charles Wood and Charles Villiers Stanford had been prolific writers of string quartets over the turn of the century but the only other string quartets of note with an Irish connection from the 1930s were those of Elizabeth Maconchy and Frederick May. Maconchy wrote the first of her thirteen quartets in 1933 and May’s Quartet in C minor was written in 1936 following his return to Dublin from Vienna.