Cork Music Archive

Tilly Fleischmann was born in Cork to German parents. Her father, Hans Conrad Swertz (1857-1927) was organist and choir master from 1879-1906 at St. Vincent’s Church and subsequently at the Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne; he was on the staff of the Cork Municipal School of Music from 1881-1906. Tilly was sent aged nineteen to study the piano and the organ at the Royal Academy of Music in Munich in 1901; her piano teachers Bernhard Stavenhagen and Berthold Kellermann had been pupils of Franz Liszt. After her graduation she married the church musician and composer Aloys Fleischmann of Dachau and returned to Cork with him in 1906. Through their music they came into contact with people involved in the new Gaelic cultural movement; among their friends were Terence MacSwiney, Daniel Corkery, Carl Hardebeck, Frank O’Connor, Seán Ó Faolain, Harry Clarke, Séamus Murphy, Arnold Bax and E. J. Moeran.

Her husband was interned during the first world war. During his absence, she took on his work as organist and choir director at the Cathedral while continuing to give private piano lessons. From 1919-1937 she was head of piano studies at the School of Music. She gave regular recitals in Cork, occasionally in Dublin, frequent broadcasts after the establishment of Irish Radio in 1926 and was the first Irish pianist to be heard on the BBC. She played with the Dowse and Kutcher string quartets, gave the first performances in Ireland of piano music by Arnold Bax, and accompanied singers – among them Elizabeth Schumann. She wrote the libretto for a ballet, Les Papillons, which was choreographed by Joan Moriarty in 1952 with Schumann’s music orchestrated by her pupil Seán Ó Riada.

None of the tapes of her broadcasts have survived. In 1952 she completed a book documenting what she had learnt in Munich about the Liszt tradition of pianism: Tradition and Craft in Piano-Playing. She was unable to find a publisher. In 1957, at the age of 75, she had her playing of Chopin and Liszt works privately recorded. She taught until the day of her death on 17 October 1967. Almost twenty years later an abbreviated edition of her book was published privately by her pupil Michael O’Neill, Aspects of the Liszt Tradition (1986, 1991). The entire book finally appeared in 2014 published by Carysfort Press; a year later a digital edition was placed on the digital musicology section of the Bavarian State Library. She was commemorated during the centenary celebrations of her son, Aloys Fleischmann, in 2010.

Ruth Fleischmann