Agnes Tyrrell (20 September 1846 – 18 April 1883) was a
composer and
pianist of English and Czech descent.
Agnes Tyrrell
Life
Agnes Tyrrell was born in
Brno, the regional capital of
Moravia in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was the daughter of English teacher Henry Foster Tyrrell, who had established himself among the German-speaking community of Brno, and his Czech wife Josefína Kotulánová.[1][2] Agnes Tyrrell grew up speaking English, German, and Czech fluently. A child prodigy, she performed in her first piano recital at nine, and attended the
Vienna Conservatory at sixteen. She studied piano with Adalbert Pacher in Vienna and composition with
Anton Bruckner's teacher
Otto Kitzler in Brno.[3][4] She had to give up an active career as a pianist due to failing health (heart problems), and instead devoted her short life to composition[5]
Oeuvre
Tyrrell was a prolific composer. During her fairly short life (she was 36 when she died), she composed 39 compositions for piano solo, 55 vocal compositions ranging from songs to choral music, oratorio and opera, and several major orchestral works. Tyrrell was one of the few women to compose a symphony before 1900.[6] In 2018, her Overture in C Minor received a world premiere performance by the Orchester L'anima giusta conducted by Jessica Horsley at the Frauenkomponiert Festival in Bern and recorded by Swiss Radio.[7] It is the only known recording of Tyrrell's orchestral music.[8] Many of Tyrrell's autograph scores are held in the Moravian Museum of Brno, some of her songs and song-cycles in Berlin's State Library.[9] Tyrrell's catalogue of published works is maintained by the
Kapralova Society.[10]
List of Works
Works for piano
Andante, op. 6 (publ. Certosa Verlag)
Theme and Variations in F Major, op. 8 (publ. Kapralova Society, 2021)
Allegro di bravura, op. 9 (publ. Ries & Erler, 2021)
Opera: Bertran de Born (libretto by Franz Keim is an adaptation of the namesake ballad of Ludwig Uhland)
Oratorio: Die Könige in Israel (libretto by Wilhem Smets), unfinished
Bibliography
Chmelová, Věra. Klavírní tvorba Agnes Tyrrell. (Piano compositions of Agnes Tyrrell.) Opus Musicum 38, no. 4 (2006): 15-20.
Fukac, Jiri. "Agnes Tyrrellova - zapomenuty zjev moravske romantiky". (Agnes Tyrrell - a forgotten phenomenon of Moravian Romanticism.) Opus Musicum 3, nos. 9-10 (1971): 269-278.
Sadie, Julie Anne and Rhian Samuel. The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994.
Schulmeisterová, Martina. Agnes Tyrrell, Život a dílo. (Agnes Tyrrell, life and work.) Dissertation. Janáček Academy of Performing Arts Faculty of Music, Brno, 2003.
Schulmeisterová, Martina. Život a klavírní dílo Agnes Tyrrell. Pianissimo 1 no. 3 (2015): 3–7.
Šnajdrová, Blanka. Agnes Tyrrell. Brněnská skladatelka a její smíšené sbory v ODH MZM. (Brno composer Agnes Tyrrell and her choral music for mixed choir.) Master's Thesis. Institute of Musicology, Masaryk University Faculty of Philosophy, Brno, 2019.