User:Catherinehughes/Professor Anthony Hughes

Professor Anthony Hughes (born 6 July 1928) was a Irish past professor of Music at University College Dublin. His best-known work is ???.

Early life
Anthony Hughes was born in Dublin, Ireland and ... early background and career, notable events.

Personal life
Before passing away on 30 November 2007, Anthony lived in Rathgar, Dublin 6. He is a talented piano player, with a keen interest in Orchestral Music. He played the piano during in ???. Early influences, performances. Other passions. He is survived by his wife Nuala and children Kevin, Jenny, Catherine and Eleanor who continue to share his love of music.

Career
Anthony started his music career at the age of ??. He first came to prominence in Ireland for his role in ???.

More paragraphs on career. Anthony was part of University College Dublin's 150 year celebrations in 2004.

MUSICAL EDUCATION
1942 - 50: Royal Irish Academy of Music Dublin

Scholarships: for Piano with DINA COPEMAN

For Organ with GEORGE HEWSON

Harmony & Counterpoint with JOHN F LARCHET

1945 - 49 Bachelor of Music from University College Dublin

1953 - 54 Vienna State Academy of Music

Master Class for Piano with Bruno Seidlhofer.

Master class for Composition with Karl Schiske

QUALIFICATIONS
1946: Associate of the R. I. A. M. (Royal Irish Academy of Music)

1948: Performers licentiate of the R.I.A.M.

1949: Bachelor of Music Degree, First Class Honours, N.U.I.

1952: Travelling Studentship, National University of Ireland (N.U.I.)

1955: Doctor of Music N.U.I.

TEACHING POSITIONS
1949 - 52 Assistant Piano Professor at the R.I.A.M

1955 - 58 Piano Professor at the R.I.A.M.

1955 - 58 Assistant to Professor J.F. Larchet at U.C.D.

1958 - 91 Professor of Music, University College Dublin

1979 Visiting Professor, University of Santa Clara, California, U.S.A.

SOCIETIES
1963 -        International Musicological Society

1963 - 1994 Royal Musical Association

ADMINISTRATIVE POSITIONS IN IRELAND
1955-71 Committee member of the FEIS CEOIL, Chairman from 1962

1965 - 90 Chairman of the Royal Dublin Society Music Committee

1969 -     Member of the Council of the Royal Dublin Society

1988 Vice President of the Council

1967 - 97 President of the Dublin Grand Opera Society

1967 - 82 Member of the Cultural Relations Committee of the Irish Government

1970 - 84 Founder Member and Chairman of the Irish Church Music Association

1970 Trustee National Library of Ireland

1978 Vice-Chairman of the Board of Trustees

1981 - 94 Chairman of the Board of Trustees, National Library of Ireland

1972 -     Director of the Board of the Irish Youth Orchestra

DISTINCTIONS
1956 Arnold Bax Gold Medal for performance of modern music

1981 Commendatore from the Italian Government for cultural matters

1990 Fellowship of the Royal Irish Academy of Music

ACTIVITIES
Since 1947 as a pianist, broadcasts and solo recitals have been given in Ireland, England, France, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.

Anthony Hughes has been soloist with the Radio Orchestra and many eminent conductors among them Edmond Appia, Jean Martinon, Milan Horvat, Giuseppe Patane and Tibor Paul.

Anthony Hughes gave the premier of Piano Concertos by Archie Potter, and Gerard Victory and introduced to Ireland a Piano Concertino by Elizabeth Maconchy and Frank Martin’s Ballade for Piano and Orchestra.

He has been a member of chamber ensembles and accompanied eminent String players and singers.

Anthony Hughes has given lectures to the Italian Institute, the Goethe Institute, and throughout Ireland to Universities, Colleges and Musical societies.

An Appreciation by Prof Gerard Gillen
(appeared in the Irish Times 24/12/2007)

With the death of Anthony (Tony) Hughes on November 30th at the age of 79, Ireland has lost one of its most distinguished musicians and one who played a dominant role in the musical and cultural life of the country for over 40 years.

A quintessential Dubliner, Tony Hughes grew up in the South Circular Road area and attended Synge Street CBS at a time when that school, together with its Northside counterpart, O'Connell Schools, was the leading educational incubus for many of the brightest of the post-Independence generation of the capital's youth. Possessed of a striking musical talent, he became the prize pupil of leading piano teacher Dina Copeman at the RIAM, winning all available honours for piano at both the RIAM and the Feis Ceoil. After school he moved to UCD, where he quickly came to the attention of the college's legendary professor of music, John F. Larchet.

Nearing the end of his 37-year tenure of the chair of music, Larchet saw in the brilliance of the young Tony Hughes a potential successor. On graduating, Tony was awarded the NUI's coveted travelling studentship, which took him to Vienna for higher pianistic studies for two years with the great Bruno Seidlhofer (teacher of such eminences as Nelson Freire and Friedrich Gulda) where he quickly impressed the veteran Austrian professor with his natural musical capacity and his profound intellectual grasp of musical structure. In a later testimonial, Seidlhofer opined that he knew no one who could play Bach with such architectonic insight as Tony Hughes.

Tony returned from Vienna in the early 1950s, having gained an abiding love for the city, its extraordinary place in the history of western art music, and the composers it nourished. Back in Dublin he gained his DMus degree, joined UCD as assistant to Larchet, and also taught piano at the RIAM. In the late 1950s and 1960s Anthony Hughes emerged, together with the more senior figure of Charles Lynch, as the country’s most prominent concert pianist, playing regularly as soloist with the then RTESO, and featuring prominently as chamber music player in the RDS annual international series of winter chamber concerts. His eminence as a concert pianist was recognised by the award of the prestigious Harriet Cohen Medal.

While Tony Hughes was a pianist of prodigious ability, he was always a rather nervous public performer, and it was not surprising that with his appointment to the chair of music in UCD in 1958 (a position he was to hold for 33 years), his public appearances as a pianist gradually decreased as he became increasingly involved in the world of academe and the wider educational promotion of music in the community.

As an academic Tony Hughes belonged firmly to the old school which viewed teaching, rather than publication, as the primary duty of the professor. He viewed music as a craft, embodying practical skills of writing techniques and general musicianship, which he sought to impart in a highly personalised methodology of pedagogy. Totally committed to his students, he was the most hard-working and demanding of teachers, who, it has to be said, was viewed with awe if not fear by many. But he was respected by all. His knowledge of the Western canon was without compare, and his ability to reproduce complex orchestral scores at the piano was truly awesome. I remember well, when he was giving a lecture on Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony (a composer he adored), the ageing record—player in the old UCD Music Department teaching room at 86 St Stephen’s Green suddenly fell silent.

Tony, with an impatient swish of his academic gown, swooped to the piano, impatiently thrusting the music before him as he sat down to realise the score on the keyboard with luscious sound, and with perfect fidelity to its numerous harmonic and instrumental complexities.

His great love was twofold: the music of the first Viennese school, and opera. Many will remember his public lectures over the years in the RDS, to gramophone societies throughout the country, and in the Italian Cultural Institute, as well as his annual extramural lectures at UCD. He spoke engagingly and with great insight over the widest range of music topics, often showing touching emotional involvement with his subjects. I remember particularly his Schubert sesquicentennial lecture in the RDS in 1978 when, speaking movingly without notes, his engagement with both the vicissitudes of Schubert’s life and his incomparable music literally reduced Tony to tears. His commitment to opera was shown by his long-term presidency of the DGOS and his membership of the council of Wexford Opera. Indeed his dedication to the promotion of opera in Ireland was recognised by the award of the decoration Commandatore by the Italian Government.

For the past 15 years Tony Hughes was in declining health, and for one who enjoyed company so much and was such a marvellous raconteur, as well as having the Dubliner's love of a pint or two of an evening, his failing health was a severe trial for him. For the past 47 years he enjoyed the love and companionship of his marvellous wife, Nuala, and his four children, Kevin, Catherine, Jennifer and Eleanor, who meant everything to him, and who brought out in him the very best qualities of a most complex and gifted personality. To them and to their families, and to his sister, Cora, we send our deepest condolences on the loss of a very special husband, brother, parent and grandparent. A man of deep religious faith, may he rest in peace and rise in glory.

Valedictory speech given by Maire Buffet
Date: ??/??/????

Valedictory speech given by Maire Buffet on the occasion of the retirement party organised by the former students of Professor Anthony Hughes

Allow me to echo the sincere good wishes expressed by Professor Bodley in his letter. I would like to extend them to include Mrs Hughes and to thank her also for her constant cheerfulness, gracious courtesy, generosity and patience towards us all.

No doubt I echo the feelings of everybody gathered here this evening when I say what a privilege it has been to be associated with the university department that he has nurtured and developed so expertly over the past thirty-three years. Professor Hughes leaves the department poised for further development and he can be assured that his colleagues, all former students of his, will endeavour to respond, as he did, with foresight and wisdom, to the changing needs of a new musical world of computerisation and specialisation.

Professor Hughes' contribution to the Music Department was both far-sighted and original. Only last week, a senior professor spoke enviously to me of the fact that we offer two honours undergraduate degrees to our students I refrained from pointing out that moreover, these degrees may be taken simultaneously or separately. I could have reminded him too, that whereas the B.A. Special degree was only implemented throughout the Faculty of Arts in the late eighties, it has been operational in the Music department since 1968.

One method of evaluating the merits of an undergraduate degree is to measure the achievements of graduates when they compete with their contemporaries as post-graduates in other educational establishments. It is fair to say that, thanks to the solid musical foundation provided in his undergraduate programmes, Professor Hughes' students have achieved considerable distinction both as performers and as scholars in the most prestigious musical centres musical of Europe and America.

Another reason for our indebtedness to Prof. Hughes is his capacity for hard work and dedication. In this, he is an example to us all. He taught more hours than any of his colleagues in his department. He never even took a sabbatical. He somehow managed to confine illnesses to vacation time and, when winter snow storms ground everyone to a halt, Professor Hughes was invariably 'housebound' in his office rather than in the comfort of his own home.

Perhaps I can begin to describe the most lasting impression made by Professor Hughes on us all by relating an incident that occurred only last year. Emerging from the library one afternoon he was approached by a mature student. Unaware that she was addressing the longest-serving senior professor in the Arts Faculty, she invited him to become a member of the Mature Students' Society and attend its functions! While I sympathise with the student's subsequent embarrassment, I admire her perspicacity. Professor Hughes is, and always has been, a mature student, a true scholar. He was successful as a teacher because he allowed us to share his scholarly quest for - and I quote his own words to intending students - a cultivated knowledge of music that enriches the mind and soul over a lifetime". Remember, for example, those Saturday morning seminars, his deeply felt and illuminating response to the Mozart Requiem, the late Beethoven quartets, the Bach Passions, the operas of Richard Strauss. to name but a few masterpieces. Remember too, meeting him in the lift in Belfield seeing that literary masterpiece in paper-back protruding from his coat-pocket or, again, noticing in his office, alongside a stack of harmony exercises, art books depicting the illuminated treasures of the medieval world, the perfect antidote to an overdose of consecutive fifths and a sure sign of a rich, enquiring, scholarly mind.

The transition from the work place to early retirement must therefore be a source of great joy to Professor Hughes, however much we might think he will miss us. He will simply continue his lifetime quest for aches of mind and soul by further cultivating his knowledge of music and the arts. We wish him well and hope that he will continue, at his leisure, to share his precious and unique artistic experience with his friends gathered here tonight.

Arnold Bax Notification
ROINN GNOTHAI EACHTRACHA DEPARTMENT OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS

BAILE ATHA CLIATH DUBLIN

12 January (Eanair?), 1956

A Chara,

I have pleasure in informing you that you have been awarded the Arnold Bax Memorial Prize for the finest performance of 20th Century Music and for general distinction as an artist.

This information was conveyed to the Ambassador at London, Mr. F. H. Boland, by Miss Harriet Cohen, Vice Chairman of the Harriet Cohen International Music Awards, with the request that this Department should notify you of the award.

Mise, le meas,

Runai.

Anthony Hughes, Esq. D. Mus. , 55, Donore Road, South Circular Road, Dublin.

Recommendation by Bruno Seidlhofer
Vienna,December 17,1954

To whom it may concern,

Mr. Hughes has been a pupil in my class at the Academy for the past two years. In this time he has worked with great application and industry, and he has made really remarkable progress.

As he learns very rapidly ,he has studied many works of all periods and styles with me.

He is instinctively musical, and possesses considerable interpretative gifts. In his period of study here his technical and musical abilities have greatly developed, and it has been a great pleasure to me to guide his development.

I have been impressed with Mr. Hughes general musical interests, and have found him a musician versed in all aspects of his art.

Furthermore I am convinced that he possesses those qualities which make a fine teacher.

I am always sorry to lose a good pupil ,but I am sure Mr. Hughes will achieve a successful career,in which I will always be interested, and for which he has my deepest good wishes.

Bruno Seidlhofer

Recommendation by Prof. Dr. Hans Sittner
AKADEMIE FUR MUSIK UND DARSTELLENDE KUNST IN WIEN

Ill/40, LOTHRINGERSTRASSE 18

U 14-0-46 U16-0-45

Vienna, December 16, 1954

To whom it may concern,

Mr. Anthony Hughes has been a very intelligent student. As he is extremely gifted he gained remarkable progress during his stay in Vienna. He possesses a good interpretation of the various works shown in several public recitals in which he had enormous success.

Besides his pianistic qualities he also worked as composer, and in addition he possesses pedagogical abilities. Mr. Hughes was studying with conscientiousness and enthusiasm. His professors were very satisfied with him. I am convinced he will be a successful musician and I wish him a good career.

Prof. Dr. Hans Sittner President

TO DO
These are notes that need following up before this page is published. These should be removed prior to moving this page from 'Userspace' to the main/public Wikipedia pages. Notable alumni and faculty members of University College Dublin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_University_College_Dublin_people)
 * Cannot upload an image/picture image - not until I'm a confirmed user, more info here. But I think I have made this criteria, maybe I need to make 4 edits on a live page??
 * After publishing this page, edit the the following pages and add an entry for Tony and link to this page.
 * Maybe pull other interesting info from stuff found on the web (Should cite the references in this page if used)
 * Google Search click here
 * Other interesting links
 * Book New history of Ireland
 * To Talent Alone: The Royal Irish Academy of Music 1848 - 1998
 * Programme: Our Lady's Choral Society - 21st Anniversary First Performance of Hail Mary (A.J. Potter) Requiem (Berlioz) RDS, Ballsbridge, 3 September, 1966. RTE Symphony Orchestra. Soloists Bernadette Greevy. Conductor: Tibor Paul.
 * Dail Supplementary Estimates, 1979. Vote 3: Department of the Taoiseach. Tuesday, 3 April 1979


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