It's a long progression from a papal pronouncement to a reception hosted by the Heineken brewery, official partner with Cork 2005, where musical programme details were announced.
Back in 1880 the Prussian musician Hans Conrad Swertz married, as Jane Austen might say, to disoblige his family. These were the years when the Catholic church was re-establishing an Irish tradition of sacred music; it drew its inspiration and many of its conductors and organists from Germany, and in order to wed Walburga Rossler of Dachau, Swertz came to Cork to work first at St Vincent's Church and then, in 1890, as organist and choirmaster at the North Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne.
His 16 successful years there ended when Pope Pius X pronounced that "singers in church have a real liturgical office, and therefore women, being incapable of exercising such office, cannot be admitted to form part of the choir". Outraged by this prohibition (which banned not only women but Haydn, Mozart and Gounod in favour of plainchant and polyphonic music), Swertz resigned his post and went off to Philadelphia. His son-in-law, Aloys Fleischmann, succeeded him.
If Swertz saw the encyclical as the ruination of his work not only at the cathedral but also in a career that set the pattern for his son-in-law, as teacher at the Cork School of Music, Aloys Fleischmann had no problem with it; a native of Dachau, a graduate of the Munich Royal Academy of Music, musically adventurous and energetic, he had met Tilly Swertz in Germany and a year after their marriage returned to Cork.
Swertz died in the US in 1927. In the meantime Aloys had been interned from 1916 to 1919 before being sent back to Dachau for a year. Tilly, an organist and pianist of concert status and a former student of Bernhard Stavenhagen, kept things going in Cork, where the encyclical didn't prevent her from fulfilling her husband's duties at the cathedral while establishing herself as one of the city's most respected music teachers.
By now, of course, there was Aloys Jnr. He was to become professor of music at UCC from 1934 to 1980, inheriting a musically evangelical spirit.
Although the Cork Choral Festival, the Cork Symphony Orchestra, the several ballet companies that developed from his association with Joan Denise Moriarty and the Cork Orchestral Society are the immediate connections provoked by his name, these are only his most visible achievements - the Guinness Book of Records includes him as the longest-lasting orchestral conductor in the world, with 58 years to his credit.
The family of Aloys Jnr have worked since his death in 1992 to catalogue his compositions, research and performances. They have also prepared a biography of Aloys Snr, whose granddaughter Maeve Fleischmann is secretary of the Cork Orchestral Society.
Its chairman is Geoffrey Spratt, director of the Cork School of Music, conductor of the Fleischmann Choir and the School of Music Symphony Orchestra and founder of Cumann Náisiúnta na gCór (Association of Irish Choirs).
The role of Cork 2005 in excavating this cultural heritage was part of the presentation at the Heineken hospitality bar last week, where Spratt, wearing his Association of Irish Choirs hat, introduced the "Singing Days!" project, of the Mass in honour of St Finbarr written in 1948 by Aloys Fleischmann Snr.
Blanaid Murphy will conduct and Colin Nicholls will play the organ for the performance at the North Cathedral in May, when the scheme invites choristers to rehearse on one day and perform on the next.
The idea is to match liturgy and architecture, so that the organist, teacher and composer Angel Climent will return to the Church of Christ the King at Turner's Cross for a performance of his liturgical settings at noon Mass on Sunday March 6th. The 19th-century Messe Solennelle by Louis Vierne will bring Donald Hunt, OBE, former organist and Master of Choristers at Worcester Cathedral, to St Fin Barre's in October, while Peter Hunt, author of the Voiceworks series for school choirs, will conduct a Christmas repertoire for schools at St Mary's Church on Pope's Quay in November.
The orchestral society founded by Aloys Fleischmann Jnr in 1938 enjoys the assistance of the Arts Council but now offers a programme that looks as if it has been given a financial Botox injection.
It's all plumped out with, for example, the inauguration of a fortnightly lunchtime series of 24 recitals at the Crawford Gallery, featuring young performers from each of the other EU member- states. A budget of €50,000-€60,000 makes all this possible, with Cork 2005 providing approximately half of it and individual embassies subventing living and accommodation costs.
Cork 2005 is giving 25 per cent of the €100,000 needed for the Welcome Home programme of nine concerts, which will take place at venues ranging from UCC's Aula Maxima to the City Hall and St Fin Barre's Cathedral and will be performed by musicians born or trained in Cork and now working abroad.
The sponsorship has enabled partnerships such as: Cian O'Duill's viola joining Simon Aspell, Gregory Ellis and Keith Pascoe (violins), Christopher Marwood (cello) and Mathew Manning (oboe) in Bach, Vivaldi and Haydn; Mark O'Keefe's trumpet with organist Colm Carey; Aisling Casey's oboe with Jason Witjas-Evans's double bass and the Vanburgh String Quartet; and Mary Hegarty with the Fleischmann Choir.
For more information on Singing Days!, tel: 021-4312296; www.cnc.ie
