John S. Beckett
He was very musical and enjoyed playing piano duets with a friend, David Owen Williams, who later became a director in the Guinness Brewery, and his son, John, and his nephew, Samuel Beckett.
[10] Between 1950 and 1953, he befriended the pianist, organist and harpsichordist John O'Sullivan, the painter and musician Michael Morrow, the singer Werner Schürmann and the harpsichord maker Cathal Gannon ([12]).
[11] In 1950, the Music Association of Ireland organised a bicentenary celebration of Bach's music, wherein John played the harpsichord continuo part in a performance, at the Dublin Metropolitan Hall of the Mass in B minor, sung by the Culwick Choral Society and the Radio Éireann Choir and conducted by Otto Matzerath (de:Otto Matzerath).
[12] John returned to London in 1953, but was back in Dublin again by 1958, when the first complete performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion took place with Victor Leeson conducting the St. James' Gate Musical Society.
[25] He composed a fine score for "Inis Fail" (Isle of Destiny), the first RTÉ/BBC co-production, an aerial journey around Ireland written and narrated by his friend James Plunkett, author of "Strumpet City".
The famous series of Bach cantatas, performed during February in St Ann's Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, under Beckett's direction, began in 1973 and lasted for ten years.
[27] Because of this connection, the New Irish Chamber Orchestra and The Cantata Singers, conducted by John Beckett, were invited to perform an all-Bach concert at one of the Henry Wood Proms at the Royal Albert Hall on 22 July 1979.
[29] John Beckett regularly performed music by Haydn, notably his piano trios and songs, which were sung by Frank Patterson and which were recorded by RTÉ radio.
[34] He worked regularly with the New Irish Chamber Orchestra and went with them to Italy in 1975, where he was unexpectedly presented with a papal medal from Pope Paul VI after an impromptu performance with Our Lady's Choral Society in St. Peter's Square.
[36] He performed on a Kirckmann harpsichord of 1772[37] and an early nineteenth-century Broadwood grand piano, both owned by Trinity College Dublin,[38] and conducted the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra in works by Mahler,[39] Elgar[40] and Sibelius.
His two greatest treasures were a bamboo chair, purchased in China,[46] and an old hanging wall clock that had belonged to his mother,[47] which had been fixed for him by Cathal Gannon and about which he often spoke.
In 1983 Ruth David sold her house in Bray and she and John left Ireland, moving to Greenwich in London, where he worked until he retired, for BBC Radio 3, producing and presenting various music programmes, and reporting on 'foreign' tapes.
[53] In 1990 he was invited to conduct the inaugural concert of the Irish Baroque Orchestra at the Third Early Music Festival in Dublin, but ill health intervened.
John Beckett had visited Ann in Dublin on a regular basis and more frequently when she became ill; after she had died, he could not be persuaded to return to Ireland and declined to attend a reunion of the Cusack and Morrow families in Roundwood, County Wicklow.
He died, sitting in his chair, on the morning of his 80th birthday, 5 February 2007 and was cremated at Lewisham Crematorium 11 days later following a simple ceremony consisting of Japanese music for the shakuhachi (an end-blown flute), which he had requested to be played at his funeral.
