Agnes Tyrrell

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.[1][2] 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.[3][4] She had to give up an active career as a pianist due to failing health, and devoted her short life to composition.[5]

Tyrrell was a prolific composer. During her fairly short life (she was 36 when she died), 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.[6] 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.[7] 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.[8]

• Andante, op. 6, for piano (published by Certosa Verlag)
• Theme and Variations in F Major, op. 8, for piano
• Piano Sonata, op. 10
• Mazurka, op. 15 (published by Spina in Vienna, year?)
• Deux Nocturnes, opp. 16 and 17, for piano (published by Spina in Vienna, year?)
• Twelve Etudes (Grand Studies), op. 48 for piano, dedicated to Liszt (published in Vienna by Fr. Schreiber, c.1872)
• Grand Sonata, op. 66, for piano
• String quartet in G Major
• Symphony in C Major
• Mazurka for orchestra
• 5 Schilflieder (1876)[9]
• Overture in C Minor for orchestra
• Oratorio Die Konige in Israel (unfinished)
• Opera Bertran de Born

• Chmelová, Věra. Klavírní tvorba Agnes Tyrrell. (Piano compositions of Agnes Tyrrell.) Opus Musicum 38, no. 4 (2006): 15-20.
• Fukac, Jiri. "Agnes Tyrrellova - zapomenuty zjev moravske romantiky". (Agnes Tyrrell - a forgotten phenomenon of Moravian Romanticism.) Opus Musicum 3, nos. 9-10 (1971): 269-278.
• Sadie, Julie Anne and Rhian Samuel. The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994.
• Schulmeisterova, Martina. Agnes Tyrrell, Zivot a dilo. (Agnes Tyrrell, life and work.) Dissertation. Janacek Academy of Performing Arts Faculty of Music, Brno, 2003.
• Šnajdrová, Blanka. Agnes Tyrrell. Brnenska skladatelka a jeji smisene sbory v ODH MZM. (Brno composer Agnes Tyrrell and her choral music for mixed choir.) Master's Thesis. Institute of Musicology, Masaryk University Faculty of Philosophy, Brno, 2019.

• Agnes Tyrrell: Overture in C Minor
• Tyrrell's lieder in RISM
• Tyrrell's piano music published by Certosa Verlag
• Women in Czech Music