At an English Music Festival (Yorkshire) event, there was a splendid concert devoted to British Song (Sunday 29th September 2019). The programme included music by Gerald Finzi, Ivor Gurney, Peter Warlock, Frederick Delius and John Ireland. Just after the interval, there was a strategically placed song by Ulster composer Joan Trimble. ‘Green Rain’ was sung by Lorna Day (mezzo soprano) and was accompanied by David Jones (piano).
Whilst preparing the programme note for this song, and a short biography, I realised just how accomplished a musician Trimble was. Best recalled today as one half of the Trimble Piano Duet, she was also a composer of considerable distinction. The style of her music is an elusive fusion of impressionist harmonies, Irish-infused melodies and rhythms with the prevailing pastoralism of Vaughan Williams. Here and there, something more acerbic enters her musical vocabulary.
Biographical Notes
Ulster composer Joan Trimble was born on 18 June 1915 in the Ulster town of Enniskillen, in County Fermanagh. After study with Annie Lord and Claude Biggs at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, she gained her BA and BMus at Trinity College. In 1936 she relocated to London. At the Royal College of Music (RCM), Trimble studied composition with Ralph Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells and piano with Arthur Benjamin.
During the late 1930s Joan Trimble formed a piano-duo with her sister Valerie which was extremely successful for over thirty years. Her piano teacher, Arthur Benjamin, dedicated his ‘famous’ Jamaican Rumba to them. It was given at their first recital, and finally became the Duo’s signature tune.
In her early twenties, Trimble published her first compositions which included several songs and music for two pianos. Other works followed, including an ‘advanced’ Sonatina for two pianos. In 1940, she won the prestigious Cobbett Prize with a Phantasy Trio for violin, cello and piano. Trimble also composed a couple of orchestral works, In Glenade and a Suite, both for string orchestra. She wrote many songs and arrangements of Irish folk tunes. Her one potboiler was the Irish reel, Buttermilk Point for two pianos: it was regularly used as an encore by Joan and Valerie.
In 1957, Trimble had a major success with her television opera Blind Raftery which was a story about a peripatetic Irish bard and his Spanish wife. Composition virtually ceased at this time: Joan Trimble taught at the RCM, played in the Duo and brought up her family. In 1977 Trimble had a major change of direction in her career: she returned to Enniskillen to manage the family-run newspaper, The Impartial Reporter. Joan Trimble died in her birthplace on 6 August 2000.
Overview of Joan Trimble’s catalogue.
Ruth Stanley, in her MA dissertation Joan Trimble (1915-2000) and the issue of her 'Irish' musical identity (2003), has provided a detailed catalogue of the composer’s music. This is presented in three sections: the dated works, the undated pieces and a list of arrangements (as opposed to original works) for two-pianos. The first section numbers some 23 entries.
Her earliest composition, My Grief on the Sea was written in 1937, and her final one, the Three Diversions for wind quintet in 1990. As mentioned above, there was a hiatus between the late 1950s and 1990. Only one work was composed between these years – the Introduction and Air for two harps (1969). The most significant piece in her catalogue is the television opera Blind Raftery, composed in 1957. It was commissioned by Kenneth Wright, for the BBC. Many of Trimble’s works are songs, which appeared throughout her compositional career. There is an important song-cycle The County Mayo (1949) which is unusual in having a two-piano accompaniment.
Joan Trimble wrote several original pieces for her Piano Duo. Some of these have a distinct Irish flavour but are not arrangements of pre-existing tunes. These include The Humours of Carrick, (1938), Buttermilk Point, (1938), The Green Bough (1941) and Puck Fair (1951). Other two-piano music pieces include the modern-sounding Sonatina (1940) and the French-accented Pastorale – Hommage à F. Poulenc (1943).
Works for orchestra include her masterpiece, the Suite for Strings (1953) (see below) the score for the documentary film The Voice of Ulster (1948) and a short tone poem, In Glenade (1942). Finally, in 1943 Kenneth Wright commissioned a March Rhapsody: Érin go Bragh scored for brass band.
The undated works appear to be relatively minor. These include song-settings of poems by Thomas Hardy, Padraic Colum and John Masefield. Two short instrumental pieces complete this section: a ‘Grazioso’ for clarinet and piano and a ‘Tempo di Gavotte’ for violin and piano.
The third section of Stanley’s catalogue features 23 arrangements, mainly for two pianos. Many of these are of Irish songs and airs. Transcriptions of other composers’ music include Frederick Delius’s ‘La Calinda’ from his opera Koanga, the Polovtsian Dances by Borodin, the ‘Scherzo’ from Mendelssohn’s Octet and the Rondo from Haydn’s String Quartet in E major, op. 33, no.3. One major work in this section is Ulster Airs arranged for orchestra (1939-40). This consists of some fifteen numbers.
With thanks to David Byars webpage, here, for permission to use the photograph of Joan Trimble.
With thanks to Spirited, the Journal of the English Music Festival where this essay was first published.
To be continued…
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