17 Facts About Elizabeth Maconchy

Dame Elizabeth Violet Maconchy LeFanu was an English-Irish composer.

Elizabeth Maconchy is considered to be one of the finest composers Great Britain and Ireland have produced.

Elizabeth Violet Maconchy was born in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, of Irish parents and grew up in England and Ireland.

Elizabeth Maconchy's family moved to Ireland in 1917, where they lived in Howth, on the east coast.

The adolescent Maconchy began her musical studies in Dublin, studying piano with Edith Boxhill, and harmony and counterpoint with John Francis Larchet.

Those formative years in Ireland were important for Elizabeth Maconchy who considered herself Irish.

At the RCM Elizabeth Maconchy studied under Charles Wood and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

In 1932, Elizabeth Maconchy developed tuberculosis and she moved with her family from London to Kent.

Elizabeth Maconchy returned to Ireland in 1939, living in Dublin for a brief period, during which she composed her Fifth String Quartet, which some critics consider her greatest achievement, and gave birth to a daughter.

Elizabeth Maconchy did much to improve the conditions of composers, being elected Chair of the Composers Guild of Great Britain in 1959, a position she held for a number of years.

Elizabeth Maconchy was President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music.

Elizabeth Maconchy is considered to be "one of the finest composers the British Isles have produced".

Elizabeth Maconchy's work has been compared to that of Bartok, who was an acknowledged influence, and to Beethoven and Mozart, as well as to contemporaries such as Benjamin Britten.

In terms of style, Elizabeth Maconchy had "a predilection for intervallic composition", and, "profoundly influenced by the resonances produced by certain intervals, [she] tended to build works around one or a small number of intervals, which varied according to the work in question".

Elizabeth Maconchy wrote three one-act operas, including the erotic comic opera The Sofa, based on an eighteenth century novel, and stylistically in "dialogue with Mozart", which shocked the audience for its explicitness when it premiered in 1959.

In 1959, Elizabeth Maconchy was invited to chair the Composers' Guild of Great Britain, the first woman to do so.

Elizabeth Maconchy was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1977, and elevated to Dame Commander in 1987.