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About this piece
Ina Boyle's Elegy, a single-movement rhapsody for cello and orchestra, was her first major success: in 1913 it took a prize in the composers' competition at the Sligo Feis Ceoil, alongside her Whitman setting The Last Invocation. The work then went unheard for more than a century; Faber Music gives its first performance as 30 May 2016, by Nadège Rochat with the Staatskapelle Weimar under Paul Meyer, and the same forces recorded it for the CD Cello Abbey (Ars Produktion, 2017). Martin Johnson played it with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, in January 2020, and Gabriel Cabezas gave what the Erie Philharmonic billed as its U.S. premiere in 2021. The score, typeset by Emma O'Keeffe from Boyle's manuscript, is scored for a modest orchestra (2222-2100-timp-strings) and is available on hire from Faber Music, which also offers an online perusal score. The Ina Boyle Society lists a piano arrangement by O'Keeffe as well.
Technical overview
One continuous movement of about seven and a half minutes, in a late-Romantic, Elgar-like idiom. The demands are mainly lyrical: sustained cantabile lines, tone and phrasing that carry over the orchestra, and expressive shifting. It suits an advanced student or a recital and concerto setting.
Technical focus
- Tenor Clef
- Legato
- Slurs
- Sustain
- Dynamics
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Accidentals
- Tempo Changes