Norman O’Neill was born 150 years ago today. Who exactly was he?
O’Neill is probably the least known member of the Frankfurt Group – sometimes identified as the Frankfurt Gang – an informal collective of young musicians who came together at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt-am-Main during the 1890s. The group also included Balfour Gardiner, Roger Quilter, Cyril Scott, and, the youngest of the bunch, the piano prodigy Percy Grainger.
Later, though technically not “in” the Gang, other figures to become closely associated with it included Frederick Delius, Sir Thomas Beecham, and the composer Frederic Austin.
The Hoch Conservatory of the day had a reputation for being one of the finest conservatories in Europe. Clara Schumann had been on the faculty there until 1892 – within a few years of the Frankfurt Group’s arrival.
Two of the Gang attended twice. Cyril Scott arrived early, at the age of 12, and later returned for a second stint. Balfour Gardiner took a break to attend Oxford. Grainger was 13 at the time he was admitted. He was to remain at the conservatory for four-and-a-half years.
What united this brilliant array of young talent in a foreign land? Well, there was shared language and culture, of course, but also a determination to break away from the predominant, Teutonic musical thinking of the time, and especially the place, to create a fresh “English” art.
O’Neill, the son of Irish painter George Bernard O’Neill and Emma Stuart Callcott (daughter of glee composer William Hutchins Callcott), married pianist Adine Berthe Maria Ruckert. Ruckert, a pupil of Clara Schumann, was also a teacher. She would later become head music mistress at the St. Paul’s Girls’ School. Gustav Holst, who was director of music there, became a frequent visitor at their house.
O’Neill himself studied with Arthur Somervell and Iwan Knorr. Back in London, he served as treasurer of the Royal Philharmonic Society and taught harmony and composition at the Royal Academy of Music.
In 1934, he was on his way to a recording session when he stepped off the curb and was struck by a carrier tricycle. He developed blood poisoning and died less than three weeks later, on March 3, eleven days shy of his 59th birthday.
O’Neill’s concert output includes symphonic suites, chamber music, and instrumental works. Most of these pre-date World War I. After the war, as music director of the Haymarket Theatre, he devoted himself largely to music for the stage.
He achieved particular success with his music for J.M. Barrie’s “Mary Rose” (1920).
If I understand correctly, he was the first British composer to conduct his own music on record, when he led selections for a stage production of Maurice Maeterlinck’s “The Blue Bird” (1910).
O’Neill composed a lot of charming music that deserves to be resurrected, at the very least in new recordings. Even if no one else remembers him today, I will. Happy sesquicentenary to Norman O’Neill!
Piano Quintet in E minor (1902-03)
“La Belle Dame sans Merci,” after Keats (1908)
Frankfurt Gang reunion: (left to right) Cyril Scott, Roger Quilter, Percy Grainger, and Norman O’Neill in 1930
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