Aloys Fleischmann

Irish composer

Aloys Fleischmann (13 April 1910 – 21 July 1992) was an Irish composer, musicologist, professor and conductor.

Fleischmann was born in Munich to Ireland based German parents. Both were musicians, both graduates of the Royal Academy of Music in Munich. His father, Aloys Fleischmann senior of Dachau, organist and choirmaster at the Cathedral of St. Mary and St Anne, Cork and his mother, Tilly Fleischmann née Swertz (1882–1967), born in Cork to German parents, pianist and piano teacher. Fleischmann was educated in Scoil Íte, the school founded by Terence MacSwiney's sisters in 1916, in Christian Brothers College, Cork, and in St Finbarr's College, Farranferris. He graduated from University College Cork with a BA in 1930, was awarded the BMus in 1931, an MA in 1932, and a doctorate in music (DMus) from the National University of Ireland in 1963. In 1932, he went to study composition, conducting and musicology at the Academy of Music and University of Munich under Joseph Haas.

Fleischmann returned to University College Cork in 1934; he held the position of professor of music there until 1980. When Fleischmann took up his post in 1934, the condition of music in Ireland was lamentable. Music was rarely taught in schools, there were hardly any music students, and no professional ensembles in the country except one radio orchestra in Dublin consisting of seven players. He set out on a series of campaigns which he pursued throughout his career to establish music as part of people's lives both in education and in the community. A fluent speaker of Irish and a scholar of Irish folk music, Fleischmann sought in his compositions to create a specifically Irish form of art music as previous generations had done for literature and painting. In this he was influenced by his parents’ friends Carl Hardebeck, Arnold Bax, Herbert Hughes, Daniel Corkery. As conductor of the Cork Symphony and Radio Éireann Orchestras he performed works by contemporary Irish composers as often as possible and introduced the commissioning of new works for the Cork International Choral Festival by Irish and foreign composers. In his honour The Fleischmann Choir was given its name, their first performance was a programme of his music at the 40th anniversary of the festival in 1993. He spent over forty years doing research for his magnum opus Sources of Irish Traditional Music. He was assisted by Seán Ó Riada and later by Micheál Ó Súilleabháin of the University of Limerick, who did the final editing. The work was published posthumously in 1998 by Garland in New York and launched in University College Cork on 8 January 1999 by President McAleese. An e book version of the Sources was published by Routledge on 5 December 2016.

In 1941, Fleischmann and Anne Madden of Cork married; they had five children and six grandchildren.

In 2010 the centenary of Fleischmann's birth was commemorated. The celebrations took place under the auspices of Cork City Council, a committee chaired by Dr Máirín Quill organising the celebrations. Patrons were Micheál Martin, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr Michael Murphy, President of University College Cork, and Joseph Gavin, City Manager. The year was opened by the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. 145 organisations put on 225 events in the four provinces of Ireland and in five countries outside: Britain, France, Germany, China, and the United States.

Fleischmann received many honours for his service to his art, among them the Honorary Doctorate of Music from Trinity College Dublin (1964), the Order of Merit of the German government (1966), the Silver Medal of the Irish American Cultural Institute (1976), and the Freedom of the City of Cork (1978). He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Irish Academy of Music in 1991, and in the same year was awarded Honorary Life Membership of the Royal Dublin Society.