Aloys Fleischmann

Aloys Fleischmann was at the centre of music in Cork for over fifty years. He was a composer, professor of music, conductor, scholar, and provider of classical music for his city. An Irishman of German origin, he grew up in two cultures during a decisive period of the country's development: many friends of his musician parents such as the MacSwineys, MacCurtains, McDonnells of Bandon were directly involved in creating this new Ireland. He spent two years doing postgraduate studies in Germany in the early 1930s; his experience of the ominous political and the rich cultural life of Munich strengthened his desire to return to Ireland and to help create a more vigorous and specifically Irish cultural life in the small city he was brought up in. His life was governed by the desire to make classical and Irish traditional music available to as many people as possible in all walks of life. He campaigned to have the authorities give music a place in the school programme; he designed the course of studies in the Music department of the university to produce music teachers with a wide general and practical knowledge of their subject rather than specialists. He founded an orchestra to give amateurs an opportunity to perform the great works and the public a chance to hear them played live; he established the Orchestral Society to bring musicians of international repute to Cork. He set up the Choral Festival to give local choirs particularly in rural areas a forum in which to compete and to measure themselves against the best from at home and abroad. In this book about 160 people describe aspects of Fleischmann's work and the man as they knew him. The articles include assessments of his 30-year research project Sources of Irish Traditional Music, of his compositions, of his writings on music education; former members of the Cork Symphony Orchestra and the Cork Ballet Company, participants and organisers of the Cork Choral Festival write with humour and affection about the joys and crises involved in working with him; composers, performers, graduates, university colleagues, friends and family give accounts of the musician, the skilful campaigner, the gifted teacher, the troublesome employee, the often absent-minded, selfless, kindly and somewhat eccentric friend and relative.