Joseph O'Kelly

Joseph O'Kelly (29 January 1828 – 9 January 1885), composer, pianist and choral conductor, was the most prominent member of a family of Irish musicians in 19th- and early 20th-century France. He wrote nine operas, four cantatas, numerous piano pieces and songs as well as a limited amount of chamber music.

O'Kelly, the first child of the Dublin-born piano teacher Joseph Kelly (1804–1856) and his wife Marie Duval (1803–1889), was born as Joseph Toussaint Kelly on 29 January 1828 in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Of his four brothers, two also became notable musicians: the music publisher Auguste O'Kelly (1829–1900) and the composer and pianist George O'Kelly (1831–1914).

Around 1835 the family moved to Paris, where they lived at various addresses in the Faubourg Poissonnière area of the 9th arrondissement. Joseph received his early musical training from his father. As a foreign national he was not allowed to attend the Paris Conservatoire, instead he continued his education on the piano with George Alexander Osborne (1806–1893) (before 1844) and Frédéric Kalkbrenner (1785–1849) (mid-1840s) and in composition with Victor Dourlen (1780–1864) and Fromental Halévy (1799–1862). His earliest published compositions date from 1847. He has always used the name O'Kelly in his public appearances, although the official change of name from Kelly to O'Kelly did not occur before January 1859 when all brothers O'Kelly took this step simultaneously before a 'Tribunal Civil' in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Until 1855, his vocal output consisted exclusively of salon romances; after a break in vocal writing he returned in the 1860s with a series of settings of poems by Victor Hugo. In these considerably more ambitious pieces he dispenses with a strophic structure, employs more dramatic development and some technically advanced piano writing. His music for piano solo is altogether more ambitious and was influenced not only by his piano teachers Osborne and Kalbrenner, but also by Field, Berlioz and particularly Chopin, whom he greatly admired. With influences such as these, O'Kelly did not belong to the modernists in French music, which contributed to his early neglect. Nevertheless, his music is always tastefully written, technically demanding and rewarding for performers.

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