Rhoda Coghill facts for kids

Rhoda Sinclair Coghill (born October 14, 1903 – died February 9, 2000) was an Irish pianist, composer, and poet. She was known for her amazing musical talents and her beautiful writing.

About Rhoda Coghill

Rhoda Coghill was born in Dublin, Ireland. She started learning music at a young age, studying piano from when she was just eight years old. She was very talented, winning 21 awards at the Feis Ceoil, which is a big Irish music competition, between 1913 and 1925. She won prizes for playing piano by herself, playing with others, and even for her own compositions.

In 1923, when she was only 20, Rhoda finished her biggest musical work. It was a long piece called Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking. This piece was for a singer, a choir, and an orchestra, and it was based on a poem by Walt Whitman.

Rhoda also played the double bass, which is a very large string instrument, in orchestras like the Dublin Philharmonic Society and for Radio Éireann (Ireland's national radio station). She continued her piano studies in Berlin with a famous teacher named Arthur Schnabel.

From 1939 to 1969, Rhoda worked as an accompanist for Radio Éireann. An accompanist is someone who plays music with a singer or another musician. In this role, she worked with many famous Irish and international performers. She was known for her incredible ability to sight-read music, meaning she could read and play a piece perfectly the first time she saw it. She also had what's called an "absolute ear," which means she could recognize or sing any musical note without needing to hear a reference note first. People loved to hear her play, and her concerts always attracted large audiences.

In the early 1940s, Rhoda stopped composing music and focused more on performing. Later, she started writing and translating poetry. Some people think she might have shifted to poetry because it was easier for poets to get recognized in Irish culture at that time, which valued literature highly.

Rhoda Coghill never married. She spent her later years in Dublin and passed away at the age of 96. Her original music papers, along with some notebooks and diaries, are kept safe at Trinity College Dublin.

Rhoda's Music

Rhoda Coghill's rhapsody, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, was one of the most advanced Irish musical pieces of its time, especially for the first half of the 1900s. She wrote it in 1923, during the Irish Civil War. Even though she had never heard an orchestra play before, she knew a lot about orchestral music from studying musical scores.

This piece is about 23 to 25 minutes long and is played continuously. It uses a tenor singer, a mixed choir, and an orchestra. The music is special because of its unusual singing style for the tenor, which matches the poem's rhythm. It also uses "whole-tone scales," which give it a unique sound. The music expresses deep feelings and drama. Rhoda was a Quaker, and her modesty might be one reason why she didn't write more orchestral music or promote this big piece for a long time.

Her songs show how skilled she was at setting words to music, whether she was arranging old folk songs or writing new ones. Some of her songs have a quiet, thoughtful, and atmospheric feel. Her only published piano piece, the Gaelic Phantasy (from 1939), uses ideas from traditional Irish music in a new and creative way. When it was published, she had to make some small changes to the music to make it simpler.

Compositions

Works with Orchestra

• Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking (based on a poem by Walt Whitman), a rhapsody for tenor solo, chorus, and orchestra (1923)
• Gaelic Phantasy. An arrangement of her piano work (around 1935) for piano and orchestra (1972)

Songs (for voice and piano):

• A Song of St. Francis (1921)
• I Love All Beauteous Things (1924)
• I Will not Let Thee Go (1924)
• Mary Moriarty (1925)
• Jenny (1925)
• Creeveen Cno (A Little Cluster of Nuts) (1924), published in Dublin in 1925.
• Messages (1925)
• Among the Heather. An old Irish song arranged by Rhoda (1926), published in Dublin in 1926.
• Peasant Woman's Song (1926)
• Five Poems by Pádraic Colum (set to Irish traditional melodies) (1923–26). Includes: In the Fore of the Year, Once I Loved a Maiden fair, The Hawk-Questing Maid, The Old Woman of the Roads, I'll Bring You These for Dowry.
• Meg Merrilees (1927)
• Erster Schnee (translated by Coghill) (1931)
• Four Poems by Æ (1941). Includes: Refuge, Parting, When, Germinal.
• The Might of Love (for mixed voices and piano), published in a Quaker song book in 1981.

Piano Music:

• Four Piano Pieces for Children (1926).
• Gaelic Phantasy (around 1935), published in 1942.

Recording

• Gaelic Phantasy, performed by Deborah Grimmett: New Classics Records NC01 (CD & downloads, 2021).

Poetry

Rhoda Coghill's poems show her love for nature, her belief in simple living, and her strong Christian faith. Even though her style was advanced for her time, she sometimes used different rhyming techniques. In 1948, a writer named Seumas O'Sullivan said that Rhoda's way of expressing herself would "eventually give their author full title to a place amongst the poets of our time." Her work was also included in an important collection of Irish women writers in 2002.

• The Bright Hillside (1948)
• Time is a Squirrell (1956)
• Angel Songs/Engellieder. Translated by Rhoda Coghill from the German of Rainer Maria Rilke (1958)