How one man
helped shape
a tradition outpouring of memories of the Herr (Aloys
Snr) and the Prof (Aloys Jnr). But memory is
of essays edited by Ruth Fleischmann and
Joseph Cunningham on Aloys Senior and his
easy, and often misleading. Along with many wife Tilly, Aloys Fleischmann (1880-1954):
associates, what the family of Aloys Immigrant Musician in Ireland.
Fleischmann Jnr have now ensured is that "None of this was intended when we set out
these three lives are recorded, not merely to plan a celebration of our father," says Ruth
recalled. Assertions of the importance of their Fleischmann. Already her father's memorial-
presence in Ireland vary according to the -
ist and now working on his biography she -
MARYLELAND -
medium classical, ecclesiastical, traditional
but From the Sources, at the Glucksman
- was increasingly aware of the many different
facets of his life and while, as she says, "what
Aloys Fleischmann s life as a Gallery at UCC, is composer Mcl Mercier's he would most like in commemorative terms
assertion of "the dynamic cultural activism" of would be to have his music performed". This
'dynamic cultural activist' Prof Aloys Fleischmann. Head of the too is being accomplished. Assisted by her
shaped many aspects of the -
university's school of music inheritor of a
position Fleischmann inaugurated and held for
siblings, Anne, Maeve, Alan and Neil, she
worked on a list of past pupils, including
cultural life of Ireland and his -
46 years Mercier has created an installation
drawn from probably the most important of
Seamus de Barra at Notre Dame, Patrick Zuk
at Durham and Micheal 6 Suilleabhain in
centenary celebrations in Cork the Profs publications, Sources of Irish Limerick, as contributors to a programme of
mark the extraordinary impact -
Traditional Music c.1600 1855. Gathering events which expanded as it became more
100 contemporary traditional musicians all- widely known. The Fleischmann archive at
his family have had at home and -
graduates, students or tutors of UCC and
filming their performances of 1,000 airs
UCC contains nearly 200,000 items. "Dad
kept an awful lot," says Ruth, as she lists all
abroad collected in what was a life-long study (edited who helped explore, collate and organise the
IN
THE swirl of events marking the Aloys after the professor's death by Micheal O material. Not least among these is her mother,
Fleischmann centenary celebrations in Suilleabhain), Mercier is filling the art gallery Dr Anne Madden, who sustained Aloys Jnr
Cork and elsewhere, it's difficult to find with sound as well as vision. Even if the through what seems to have been a lifetime of
one still centre-point at the core of a enthusiasm with which they are presented refusals and rejections. "Although he and
programme that acknowledges the were discarded, the statistics of the Glucksman Mum had a ceremonial bonfire some years
impact on the cultural life of Ireland of not just event, opened on June 12th by Bill Whelan, are before her death, she never touched his study
Prof Fleischmann, but also his parents, Aloys impressive. From the Sources is based on 20 or any of the three rooms in which he stored
Snr and Tilly Fleischmann. hours of footage capturing nearly 1,000 all his stuff. He knew where everything was."
When retired Ddil deputy Mairin Quill performances edited for six simultaneous That was at The Glen House on Cork's
toasted the Fleischmann family at the projections, accompanied by an archive of all north side where the children grew up in a
centenary birthday party at the Crawford the recordings which will be made available household alive with music and debate,
Gallery in May, she introduced her toast to for public inspection. unaware that at one time the house itself had
"these immigrant musicians" with an Mcl Mercier's aim, and that of his been offered (though not accepted) as
invitation to John A Murphy to sing the final -
colleagues, in this venture which is
supported by the Arts Council and William
collateral for an overdraft for the Choral
verse of Clare's Dragoons. As his robust Festival, which he had founded. "He would
baritone filled the gallery, and to the rousing and Judith Bollinger as well as Cork City have considered that perfectly reasonable,"
"Vive La!" chorus, it seemed for a moment as -
Council is to reveal the treasure of the says Ruth, remembering that her father was
if this was Where things canfe together -this ' ' collection to future generations, in Ireland and professionally embattled all his life, driven also
was the song Aloys Fleischmann Jnr set to abroad. It is another legacy of the yearlong to make a musical education available to
music in 1945 for orchestra and chorus, with prograntme ' o/T4eiscJ^aiflt~events all-comers and to the discovery and fostering
war-pipes played by Joan Denise Moriarty, inaugurated in January by President Mary of talent among ordinary people. As Mairin
marching on stage in her saffron kilt. The McAleese and supported by €50,000 from the Quill, chair of the centenary committee, says,
Clare's Dragoons piece had been commiss- local authority. "He was extravagant in his ambitions, but he
ioned by Radio fiireann to commemorate the Also included is the digital imaging of all never saw obstacles, only possibilities."
centenary of the death of Thomas Davis, the Fleischmann manuscript scores held by Cork
City Library, a digital collection of 115 IT'S HARD NOW TO EXPLAIN the difference
song's writer. the Fleischmanns made except through a
This later moment, shared by student Fleischmann broadcasts retrieved from the
harpists from UCC's music depart- ment to RT£ sound archives, the typesetting and litany of names: from Arnold Bax to Scan 6
conversion to Sibelius Files (notation software) Riada, for example, from Pilib 6 Laoghaire to
indicate continuity, with a be- feathered Tomas 6 Canainn, from Daniel Corkery and
ballerina evoking the defunct Irish National of 40 compositions and the new Lyric FM CD
of four recordings of new performances by the Terence MacSwiney (who wrote texts for
Ballet as an indication of outrage, was compositions by Aloys Snr) to Scoil Ite, the
symbolic. It united music and the human voice National Symphony Orchestra conducted by
school run by the MacSwiney sisters where the
with images of aspiring or resilient nationhood Robert Houlihan. Prof was the first pupil and his daughter Ruth
in a manner typical of the Fleischmann family Added to this are the family's own
and especially of the work of Aloys Jnr. And it digitisation of 15,000 letters and 2,000 the last. From founding the Irish Music
was fun, another quality typifying the current photographs, many of which have been used in Teachers' Association in 1935 and the Cork
the current exhibitions as well as in the book Symphony Orchestra in 1938 (now conducted
by Keith Pascoe of the Vanbrugh String
Quartet), to the publication next year of Tilly
Fleischmann's Tradition and Craft in Piano
Playing at the Bavarian State Library in
Munich. This is a multi-media study based on
Tilly's own classes in Germany with former
pupils of Liszt, edited and illustrated by
Patrick Zuk.
So the list goes on, ancient and modern, and
as the photographs unroll from Ruth
Fleischmann's retrieved memorabilia their
creases seem to emit a mellow glow, a
once-upon-a-time mist of meetings, concerts,
campaigns evocative of all the associated
personalities. Seamus Murphy, Scan
O'Faolain, Gerald and Sheila Goldberg, Prof
Stockley and his wife Germaine, Darius
Milhaud, John Tavener, William Walton, Sir
John Barbirolli, Ninette de Valois. The
collaboration with Joan Denise Moriarty (who
included Aloys among the 18 composers
commissioned to write for her ballet company)
and which introduced what Louis Marcus has
described as "a whiff of the Bolshoi on the
Western Road".
Ruth is now retired as dean of studies at
Eielefeld University in Westphalia, where she
lives with her husband Reiner Wurgau (who
designed the companion study on the
Fleischmann family published by Cork City
Library for the centenary). Her biography of
her grandparents was launched by Niall
Toibin, a past chorister in the Herr's choir at
the North Cathedral. That story begins in
Dachau, the home of organist Aloys Snr,
whose own father had founded the Liedertafel
Dachau choir which sang Prof Fleischmann's
Song of the Provinces at the opening night of
the Choral Festival last May.
The story moves to Rome and Pius X, whose
1903 edict Motu Proprio declared that as
singers in church had a liturgical office,
women, being incapable of exercising such
office, could not be part of a church choir.
Tilly's father, Hans Conrad Swertz, was among
the late 19th-century influx of German
bandmasters and organists invited to Ireland
-
to improve Catholic church music and had a
fine mixed choir at the North Cathedral.
Rather than expel his female choristers, he left
for Philadelphia, where the edict was
interpreted less rigidly. By then Tilly was
married to Dachau's Aloys Fleischmann and
persuaded him to take up her father's position
in Cork. Which he did, beginning a
commitment which ended only with the death
of his son, Prof Aloys Fleischmann, in 1992.
■ From the Sources runs at the Glucksman
Gallery until October 24
■ Fleischmann Week in Dachau opens on
October 21
Main: At Stockley's home in
Cork 1929; (Ist row) Scan
O'Faolain, Prof Stockley, (2nd
row) Daniel Corkery, Tilly
Fleischmann, Fr Pat Macswiney,
(back) Germaine Stockley, Aloys
Fleischmann, Hans Marcus,
Clare Engel- mann, Dr Heider.
Clockwise above: Aloys
Fleischmann; Aloys
Fleischmann on becoming a
Freeman of the City of Cork;
Fleischmann Snr on St Patrick's
Bridge, 1946; Tilly Fleischmann
1929. Photographs: courtesy of
Cork City Library, Cork University
Press, Fleischman family