Elizabeth Maconchy – Nocturne for Orchestra | Conducted by Sinead Hayes

To mark International Women’s Day 2022, Ulster Orchestra presents performances from our season concerts of works by women composers.

Elizabeth Maconchy’s composing life began at the age of 6 at her parent’s piano. She studied under Vaughan Williams, who stated in her final report he had taught her everything he could and had no more to offer her that she did not already know. Although her earlier compositional works were heralded in Europe, World War II seemed to catalyse a change in style for her musical creation that was not as well received in these circles. However, Maconchy herself felt she had found her true musical voice. Clearly favouring chamber music composition, out of the over 200 works she wrote during her lifetime, Machonchy said of her thirteen string quartets composed between 1933 and 1984 were “my best and most deeply-felt works”.

A passionate socialist, according to academics, Maconchy favoured the quartet form as her idea of a musical debate between four balanced, individual, impassioned voices. Healthy debate was perhaps something Maconchy longed for in a world ravaged by war, a world where women still did not have a voice thought to be worth listening to. Maconchy certainly knew her musical voice, and held firm in her impassioned decision to raise that voice in a musical space still so dominated by her male counterparts. This struggle, she felt, was worth it, for she stated herself “I cannot imagine a life without being engaged in musical composition.”. Her correspondences with fellow woman composer, Grace Williams, point to a determination to develop a network of women composers helping each other overcome the challenges of this environment.

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