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1934–41: A LIFE FOR MUSIC WITH HIS WIFE AND ADULT SON Father and son co-operation in music education In June 1934, twenty-eight years after Fleischmann had come to Cork to take up his post at the Catholic cathedral , his son returned from two years of postgraduate studies in Munich to take up the temporary post of acting professor of music at the university. Like his father, Aloys Óg was facing many tests and ordeals, but he was not venturing into a strange country: he was coming home. So it was not Mozart’s Magic Flute that rang in the young man’s ears as he stood on deck while the liner sailed up the estuary of the River Lee, but the passage from Wagner’s Tristan: ‘The Irish Queen’ – and the idea of founding a symphony orchestra formed in his mind.1 It was put into practice later that year.The orchestra was founded to provide advanced students, amateur and professional musicians with an opportunity to perform music from the standard repertoire as well as works by living Irish composers, and to give Cork audiences a chance to hear such music in the days when gramophone records were an expensive rarity. Four years after his appointment, he founded the Cork Orchestral Society to promote the concerts of the Cork Symphony Orchestra and to organise an annual series of recitals in the city. Having composed two works in Munich, both of which were performed there,2 he now adopted an Irish pseudonym, presenting his Trí hAmhráin [Three Songs] under the name Muiris Ó Ronáin, 5. Handing on the Torch 1934–64 Aloys Fleischmann 1934 198 Handing on the Torch 1934–64 199 underlining his commitment to a specifically Irish form of art music. His post was made permanent in March 1936, whereupon his mother received a letter from a stranger congratulating her and outlining what the writer expected of the young professor: I wonder, if he later tries composition, could he produce a blend of the spirit of the ancient Irish Airs with modern music. Probably there is some form of music in which that could be attempted. I don’t mean the Airs themselves, but their spirit: sad and melancholy, sometimes merry, sometimes breathing the indignation and hatred of a hunted race. Fitzgerald’s poem of ‘Omar Khayyam’was not a translation of a Persian poem as was once thought, but a beautiful vehicle in which the whole spirit of Persian poetry was conveyed. He first drank it in, loved it, made it his own, became a Persian, and then poured it out. If some one could do this for us – we can’t do it ourselves as we are only emerging from the Penal Days – he would live.3 This interesting perception of how an outsider can become so immersed in a different culture that he can create in its spirit applied also to Ireland’s Anglo-Irish poets and dramatists. But Aloys Óg had been drawn to the Gaelic legacy since his boyhood, and had by now already begun his quest to create conditions conducive to the composition and performance of new Irish music inspired by the nation’s heritage. He had learnt from his father, and from Daniel Corkery, that for the arts to flourish they must become part of the lives of people of all classes, which can only happen if there is a nationwide infrastructure to support them. On his appointment to the chair of music, the young academic drew up a plan of campaign which he pursued throughout his life. The calamitous state of music education was his first concern. Singing was obligatory in primary schools, but was rarely taught by qualified teachers; the arts were optional non-examination subjects on the curriculum of most secondary schools, few schools offered tuition in music and those that did were not obliged to employ qualified music teachers.The great majority of people teaching music in Ireland had no qualifications whatsoever, the great majority of pupils left secondary school without having had any experience of the arts.4 Aloys Óg founded the Music Teachers’ Association in Cork. Together with colleagues in Dublin, he began petitioning the Department of Education to have music established in schools, to have it taught by competent teachers trained in recognised institutions and to have the teaching of music supervised by qualified inspectors. Negotiations went on for years with no tangible result. The Cork university music department, founded in...

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