Aloys Fleischmann

Aloys Fleischmann (13 April 1910 – 21 July 1992) was an Irish composer, musicologist, professor, 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, a MA in 1932, and a doctorate in music in 1963.

In 1932 he went to study composition, conducting and musicology at the Academy of Music and University of Munich under Joseph Haas. He returned to University College Cork in 1934 where he held the position of professor of music until 1980. In 1941 he and Anne Madden of Cork married; they had five children and six grandchildren.

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.

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