Sir Hamilton Harty, now widely acknowledged to have been the most distinguished Irish musician and composer of his generation, was born in Hillsborough in County Down on December 4th 1879. He was a son of the local Church of Ireland organist and even in early childhood was out of the ordinary. It is recalled that he was 'ragged' on occasion by his school companions for talking of how one day he would conduct his 'mighty orchestra' when he was still hardly old enough to leave the kinder garden. When he was still so small that his feet could not reach the pedals of the organ he could play the accompaniment for the Services in the parish church.

His father, William Harty, has come to Hillsborough in 1878. Little is known about his antecedents except that there was a 'Limerick connection' in his family. He studied music spasmodically in Dublin, and he married Annie Elizabeth Richards whom he met when she was singing in the Church Choir in Greystones.

He came north with his family of three small children, and his fourth child, Hamilton, was born soon after their arrival in Hillsborough, where a further seven children were born. It was at the instigation of Lord and Lady Arthur Hill that he moved to Hillsborough where they were at that time administering the affairs of the old 'squirarchy' at the local 'Big House'. They developed a sort of benevolent dictatorship with a special interest in fostering a long standing Hillsborough tradition of Church music. As Church organist William Harty was given a free house, a 'paid choir', a modest but assured income, and the custody of a splendid Snetzler organ which had been installed in the Church by an earlier generation of Hills in 1772.

William Harty thrived on it all - in a slightly eccentric way - and his fourth child, christened Herbert Hamilton, was his particular pride and joy. It is said that his mother noticed that he moved in his cradle in time with the music when William was practising the piano in a nearby room!. She was greatly alarmed, but his father comforted her by putting his arm around her shoulders and saying, "We must face it, my dear, that God has given us a prodigy!"

Early Training. William Harty's ideas on education were appropriately unorthodox. He told his growing children that he did not much mind whether or not they went to School. What they must do was learn to play the piano or the violin or any other instrument of their choosing, and then play every scrap of music they could find in the house, every corner of which seemed to be stuffed with music. They were also required to read every book they could find in the house, where there was a heavy preponderance of Irish poetry and folklore. 'And when you have done all that,' William would proclaim, 'You will be educated.' Little Hamilton took him at his word and there grew up between father and son an exceptional relationship of admiration, affection and trust. It was a relationship which was to hold like a bond of steel right through the years when the child had become a man and gone away from home at the early age of sixteen, and as he steadily climbed to the heights of a scintillating career which was to bring him world fame, and make the Halle Orchestra, of which he became conductor in 1919, a household name.

Young Harty started off his musical apprenticeship in a number of modest appointments as a church organist - in Magheragall, near Lisburn, at St. Barnabas', Belfast, at Christ Church, Bray - and one very brief tenure at All Saints, Norfolk Square, London where he and the vicar were so far at variance on the choice of music that the appointment only lasted a week. He turned increasingly to the piano and within a few years, in his mid-twenties, he was established among the top rank of accompanists in England. But conducting was the thing upon which his heart was set and he deliberately turned his back on whatever 'glittering prizes' a career as a solo pianist might have brought him. Despite his virtuosity as an instrumentalist which is still recalled by those who were privileged to hear him, his lasting reputation rests upon his work as a conductor and composer. He was knighted in 1925, received the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1934 and was the recipient of Honorary Degrees from Dublin, Manchester, Queens and de Paul, Chicago, Universities. His name is perpetuated in Ireland in the Sir Hamilton Harty Chair of Music in Queen's University, Belfast.

A Brilliant but Blighted Life. Harty died tragically in 1941 after a prolonged period of gradually worsening illness caused by a malignant and inoperable tumour in the brain. He bore the disappointment and pain with great fortitude and the theme of his last original composition 'The Children of Lir', had a pathetic appropriateness as he came to the end of a brilliant but blighted life. The subject of the work is the story of three little princes who were bewitched and turned into swans, doomed to swim for ever in the Sea of Moyle (off the coast of North Antrim) unless perchance they should hear the sound of a Christian bell. Centuries passed and a Church was built above the cliff and the bell was rung. On the instant the curse was broken and the swans took human shape again as beautiful children of the King. But at once reality laid hold on them, for they grew did in the twinkling of an eye, and died. In his programme notes explaining the legend Harty included words of longing from the song by Thomas Moore: "When will heaven, its sweet bell ringing, Call my spirit from this stormy world?" Harty's ashes are buried near the west door of Hillsborough Church at a place marked by a memorial Bird Bath carved in Limerick limestone by Rosamund Praegar.

Footnote: I am indebted to Margaret and Geoffrey Leslie who gave me a copy of this article. On contacting Canon John Barry he was pleased to give his consent to include it in our church magazine. Canon Barry made the point that the Select Vestry of Magheragall took a very bold step in 1894 when they appointed the young Hamilton Harty but it was a crucial decision in the life of this young and talented musician because it gave him a start.