Joan Trimble (18 June 1915 – 6 August 2000) was an Irish composer and pianist from Ulster. She studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music in London, and she and her sister performed for many years as a piano duo. In later years she inherited her father's newspaper, becoming its proprietor and editor.
Early life
Joan Trimble was born in
Enniskillen, County Fermanagh
[Ireland Civil Registration Births Index 1864-1958: Joan Trimble; Sept quarter 1915, Enniskillen; Vol. 2, p. 57.] (now
Northern Ireland) to William Egbert Trimble, the proprietor of
The Impartial Reporter, one of
Ulster's regional newspapers, and Marie Dowse
[Ireland Civil Registration Births Index 1864-1958: Marie DOWSE, June quarter 1887, Dublin; vol 2, p673. ('Maria' in index)] from
Dublin. Joan grew up in a musical household; her mother was a solo violinist from a Dublin family of musicians, from which all eleven children had attended the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and her father was a
bass-baritone and a noted collector of folksong.
[
] She attended Enniskillen Royal School for Girls and was the school's first
Head Girl.
In 1931, Joan and her sister Valerie (1917–1980), commenced studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin.
[
]
Joan studied composition with John F. Larchet and won a scholarship to the University of Dublin, from where she graduated with a BA degree in 1936.[Klein (1996), p. 466; see Bibliography.]
In June 1942 in London, Joan Trimble married John Greenwood Gant,[FreeBmd [1] GRO Marriage Indexes England & Wales 1916–2007; June quarter 1942, Chelsea, 1a 839; TRIMBLE, Joan marr. GANT, John G.] a Royal Army Medical Corps officer,
Career
Joan composed a total of twenty-four works in a creative career of twenty years, including
Buttermilk Point (1938), settings of Irish folksong (1939-40), the Sonatina for Two Pianos (1940),
(1949), and a Suite for Strings (1951). Her
Phantasy for Piano trio (1940), which she wrote at the suggestion of Vaughan Williams,
won the
Cobbett Prize for
chamber music and the Sullivan Prize for composition.
(1949) was an unusual combination of two pianos and baritone voice, a suggestion from the singer Robert Irwin.
Commissions for the
BBC included
Ulster Airs (1939–40) for the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra, and
Erin Go Bragh, a march-rhapsody for
brass band (1943). Her setting for voice and orchestra,
How Dear to Me the Hour, won the Radio Éireann Centenary Prize in 1953.
In 1957, the BBC commissioned an opera from her, and she chose the 1924 Blind Raftery by Donn Byrne, the story of a wandering Irish bard set in the west of Ireland in the 17th century.[ Radio Times Issue 1749, 19 May 1957, pp. 6, 17, bbc.co.uk. Accessed 16 December 2020.]
Between 1959 and 1977, Trimble was professor of accompaniment and musicianship at the Royal College of Music.
Piano duo
Trimble first gained notice performing with her sister Valerie in a piano duo, which won first prize at a
Belfast music competition in 1925.
[Jamieson (2013), p. 1008; see Bibliography.] Joan later composed works for two pianos which they performed together, including the
Sonatina (1940). The sisters gave their first professional recital as a duo in the evening of September 28, 1938, at the Royal College of Music in London, as war was about to be declared with Germany. One of their audience said he had come to hear them "as it might be the last music he would ever hear."
They performed three of Joan's new compositions,
Buttermilk Point,
The Bard Of Lisgoole and
The Humours of Carrick,
's Irish tone-poem for two pianos,
Moy Mell,
and the four-hand
Jamaican Rumba, which had been composed for them by Arthur Benjamin for their debut performance.
It was Benjamin who had encouraged Joan and her sister, whose principal instrument was the
cello, to play piano together, and this piece became their signature tune.
During World War II, the sisters worked as volunteer nurses for the Red Cross in London and were regular performers on the BBC, at Dame Myra Hess's National Gallery lunchtime concerts and at the BBC's promenade concerts. The first of their many Prom appearances was in 1943, and their piano duets were broadcast for many years in the weekly BBC radio series 'Tuesday Serenade'. Their repertoire was wide and included Arnold Cooke, Dallapiccola, and Stravinsky, and they premièred the two-piano concertos of Arthur Bliss and Lennox Berkeley. In the early 1950s, they gave the British première of one of Mendelssohn's for two pianos, the A-flat.
The sisters also performed modern music, including works by Igor Stravinsky, Dallapiccola, Arthur Bliss, Lennox Berkeley, and Kenneth Leighton, and they continued to perform in public until 1970.
Honours
Trimble was honoured by the Royal College of Music in 1960 and by Queen's University Belfast in 1983. From 1981 to 1985 she was on the board of Ulster Television, and from 1983 to 1988 she was a member of the advisory committee of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. In 1985 she received the rarely-bestowed fellowship of the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
Also in 1985, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a concert to celebrate her 70th birthday, which included the first performance since 1957 of her composition for baritone and two pianos,
The County Mayo.
In 1990, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland commissioned Three Diversions for Wind Quintet from her for her 75th birthday.
Musical style
Joan Trimble's music was conservative for her time. She had a deep and scholarly interest in Irish traditional music and there was an innate Irish quality to her writing.
Her work combined the Impressionist harmonic language she had learned since her studies with Annie Lord with melodic and rhythmic inflections derived from Irish traditional music. Her arrangements of Irish traditional airs for two pianos did not differ stylistically from her original compositions. She said that she wrote her music with regard neither to schools nor period. "Shape and form, rhythm and clarity, as well as freedom of expression, are all important. I am free to be myself regardless of fashion."
The Irish idiom which informed her distinctive style gave her music a rhythmic and rhapsodic quality, and her compositions conveyed something of the colour and clarity of French music.
Later life and death
After the death of her father in 1967, she became managing director of the family firm and took over the running of his newspaper,
The Impartial Reporter, in
Enniskillen, the fourth generation of her family to do so. She remained its proprietor and editor until her death, when she was succeeded by her daughter.
She was an active managing director, in the ten years after 1967 commuting between London, where she was teaching, and Enniskillen; and she became involved in local journalism and wrote for the paper, including a weekly column devoted to the history of the district.
In the 1990s, she was commissioned for a new composition
Legacy
In 2002, the Joan Trimble Awards Scheme was established by her family in her memory, and administered by the
Fermanagh Trust "in recognition of her lifelong commitment to County Fermanagh". The purpose of the scheme was to encourage and support the involvement of young people in creativity, the performing arts and Irish culture, and to provide bursaries for training and education.
In 2012, Fermanagh County Museum staged an exhibition titled "Buttermilk Point: The Musical Life of Joan Trimble, 1915–2000".
On 18 June 2015, "Music in Fermanagh" presented A Celebration Concert as part of the Joan Trimble Centenary Celebration at the Ardhowen Theatre in Enniskillen.
Works
Opera
-
Blind Raftery, television opera in two scenes (BBC, May 1957)
Orchestra
-
15 Ulster Airs (arrangements of trad. tunes, 1939–40)
-
In Glenade for string orchestra (1942)
-
Suite for Strings for string orchestra (1951)
Chamber Music
-
The Coolin (Irish air) (1939) for cello & piano. London: Hawkes & Son, c.1939.
-
Phantasy Trio (1940) for violin, cello, piano
-
The Pool among the Rushes (1941) for clarinet & piano
-
Erin go Bragh (1943) for brass band
-
Introduction and Air (1969) for two harps. Cork: Mercier Press, 1969 (in The Irish Harp Book ed. by Sheila Larchet-Cuthbert).
-
Three Diversions (1990) for wind quintet
Music for two pianos
-
The Humours of Carrick (1938). London: Winthrop Rogers, c.1938.
-
The Bard of Lisgoole (1938)
-
Buttermilk Point (1938). London: Winthrop Rogers, c.1939.
-
Sonatina (1940). London: Winthrop Rogers, 1941.
-
The Green Bough (1941). London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1951.
-
Pastorale (Hommage à F. Poulenc) (1943)
-
The Gartan Mother's Lullaby (1949). London: Boosey & Co., 1949.
-
The Heather Glen (1949). London: Boosey & Co., 1949.
-
Puck Fair (1951)
Songs
-
My Grief on the Sea (Douglas Hyde) (1937)
-
Girl's Song (Wilfrid Wilson Gibson) (1937)
-
Green Rain (Mary Webb) (1937). London: Winthrop Rogers, 1938.
-
The County Mayo, song cycle (James Stephens) (1949)
Recordings
-
Celtic Keyboards: Duets by Irish Composers, performed by Bruce Posner & Donald Garvelmann (pianos), on: Koch International Classics 3-7287-2 H1 (CD, 1994). Contains: Sonatina, The Gartan Mother's Lullaby, The Heather Glen, The Bard of Lisgoole, Buttermilk Point, The Green Bough, The Humours of Carrick.
-
Silver Apples of the Moon – Irish Classical Music, performed by Irish Chamber Orchestra, Fionnuala Hunt (cond.), on: Black Box Music BBM 1003 (CD, 1997). Contains: Suite for Strings.
-
Joan Trimble: Two Pianos – Songs and Chamber Music, performed by Patricia Bardon (mezzo), Joe Corbett (baritone), Una Hunt (piano), Roy Holmes (piano), Dublin Piano Trio, on: Marco Polo 8.225059 (CD, 1999). Contains: The Cows are a-milking, A Gartan Mother's Lullaby, The Heather Glen, My Grief on the Sea, Green Rain, Girl's Song, Sonatina, Pastorale (Hommage à F. Poulenc), Phantasy Trio, Puck Fair, The Green Bough, The County Mayo, Buttermilk Point, The Bard of Lisgoole, The Humours of Carrick.
-
Phantasy Trio, performed by Fidelio Trio, on: RTÉ lyric fm CD 153 (CD, 2016).
-
The Pool Among the Rushes, performed by John Finucane (clarinet) and Elisaveta Blumina (piano), on: Genuin GEN 18495 (CD, 2018).
-
Green Rain; Girl's Song; My Grief on the Sea, performed by Carolyn Dobbin (mezzo) & Iain Burnside (piano), on: Delphian Records DCD 34187 (CD, 2018).
-
Songs from the North of Ireland, Delphian DCD34329 (2024)
General references
-
Philip Hammond: "Woman of Parts: Joan Trimble", in: Soundpost 5 (1984–85), p. 24–7.
-
"Joan Trimble", in: Contemporary Music Review 9 (1994), pp. 277–84.
-
Axel Klein: Die Musik Irlands im 20. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1996).
-
Lisa McCarroll: The Celtic Twilight as Reflected in the Two-Piano Works of Joan Trimble (1915–2000) (DMA dissertation, Moores School of Music, University of Houston, 2013).
-
Ruth Stanley: Joan Trimble (1915–2000) and the Issue of her 'Irish' Musical Identity (MA thesis, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, 2003; unpublished).
-
Alasdair Jamieson: "Trimble, Joan" and "Trimble, Valerie", in: The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland, ed. by Harry White & Barra Boydell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013), pp. 1008–09.
-
Alasdair Jamieson: Music in Northern Ireland. Two Major Figures: Havelock Nelson (1917–1996) and Joan Trimble (1915–2000) (Tolworth, Surrey: Grosvenor House Publishing, 2017); .
External links
