Agnes Tyrrell


Agnes Tyrrell was a composer and pianist of English and Czech descent.

Life

Agnes Tyrrell was born in Brno, the regional capital of Moravia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was the daughter of English teacher Henry Foster Tyrrell, who had established himself among the German-speaking community of Brno, and his Czech wife Josefína Kotulánová. Agnes Tyrrell grew up in this environment speaking fluently English and German but also Czech. A child prodigy, she performed in her first piano recital at nine, and attended the Vienna Conservatory at sixteen. She studied piano with Adalbert Pacher in Vienna and composition with Anton Bruckner's teacher Otto Kitzler in Brno. She had to give up an active career as a pianist due to failing health, and devoted her short life to composition.

Oeuvre

Tyrrell was a prolific composer. During her fairly short life, she composed 39 compositions for piano solo, 55 vocal compositions ranging from songs to choral music, oratorio and opera, and several major orchestral works. Tyrrell was one of the few women to compose a symphony before 1900. In 2018, her Overture in C Minor received a world premiere performance by the Orchester L'anima giusta conducted by Jessica Horsley at the Frauenkomponiert Festival in Bern and recorded by Swiss Radio. It is the only known recording of Tyrrell's orchestral music. Many of Tyrrell's autograph scores are held in the Moravian Museum of Brno, some of her songs and song-cycles in Berlin's State Library.

List of Works (selection)