The Life and Music of Elizabeth Maconchy Erica Siegel
Boydell 352pp (hb) £75
The core of ‘true music’, the Irish-English composer Elizabeth Maconchy said in 1940, was ‘impassioned argument’, something certainly true of her magnificent cycle of 13 string quartets and sundry other works beside. Maybe it’s partly the urgency and grit of her music that make this first full-length study of her life and output both valuable and frustrating. Erica Siegel, an American music historian, couldn’t have been more assiduous
