ABSTRACT
The prevailing image of John Ireland is that preserved in portrait photographs: an old man, sedate, formal and living with his housekeeper, ‘a modest English gentleman, retiring and reticent’ (Pirie, 1979b: 18). But this is an image of a man in the latter years of his life. There was a younger Ireland, who loved ardently yet without ultimate fulfilment, and whose personal passions remain elusive. His music expresses a gamut of emotions associated with love, from hedonistic, ecstatic outpourings to a cramped, tortured angst. As with most of Ireland’s works, the music about love is autobiographical, linked to people, places and literature.
