Tilly Fleischmann

Maria Theresa Mathilda Tilly Fleischmann (2 April 1882 – 17 October 1967) was an Irish pianist, organist, pedagogue and writer of German descent.

In September 1905 she married Aloys Fleischmann of Dachau, who had also studied music at the academy in Munich, taking composition with Josef Rheinberger, and was now organist in the parish church of his native town.

A year after her marriage, she was called back to Cork: her father had left Ireland to take up a post in Philadelphia; all eight brothers and sisters were still either at school or college, and she was the only one in a position to earn her living.

In 1909 they decided that Tilly should spend some months in Munich, studying with her former professor, giving a concert and establishing contacts in the hope of their being able to return.

Since the 1890s, interest in the old Gaelic culture had grown, giving rise in the following decades to a political movement seeking independence from Britain.

The Fleischmanns had friends among Anglo-Irish musicians, and were also friends with republicans such as Terence MacSwiney and his sisters, Tomás Mac Curtain and family, Daniel Corkery, William Stockley and his German wife Germaine, née Kolb, and many others involved in the Gaelic language and arts movement and later in the struggle for independence.

As well as doing her husband's work, she continued her teaching, though student numbers had diminished considerably due to anti-German sentiment in the city.

The University Art Society invited her to perform with the Kutcher String Quartet in 1932 and in 1939, and to accompany the celebrated German Lieder-singer, Elisabeth Schumann in 1934.

Among them were Pat Ahern, Bridget Doolan, Denis Houlihan, Patrick Kennedy, Muriel Murphy (who met her husband, Terence MacSwiney, at a Fleischmann recital[10]), Geraldine Neeson, Jane O’Dea, Dónal Ó Tuama, Ina McCarthy, Seán Ó Riada, James Roche, Betty Russell, Gerard Shanahan, T.C.

Nearly 20 years after her death, in 1986, an abbreviated edition was printed privately by her former pupil Michael O'Neill and in 1991 published by Roberton in England under the title: Aspects of the Liszt Tradition.

During her last years Tilly archived her own and her husband's papers, thus preserving the documents recording the activities and impact of three generations of this immigrant family of musicians.