Debussy was associated with various French composers whose work stylistically spanned nineteenth-century tradition to the twentieth-century avant-garde. This chapter explores his connections with Ernest Guiraud, Ernest Chausson, Camille Saint-Saëns, Gabriel Fauré, Paul Dukas, and Erik Satie. It assesses key issues in each setting. Various relationships are represented here: the student-teacher archetype, less formalised mentorship, peer friendships, the more distant collegial relationship, and sometimes adversarial exchanges. Debussy and these composers engaged with each other in multiple ways; dynamics shifted such that the student became the teacher, a distant figure became a colleague, a peer became a critic. The study of these relationships casts new light on Debussy and the other parties.

Introduction

This chapter explores the ways in which students have experienced the Professional Qualification in Probation (PQiP) during the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes comments drawn from focus groups with students in a range of cohorts at various stages of the qualification when the pandemic occurred. The findings lead to reflections on the implications for probation education moving forward. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on probation has been documented by the House of Commons Justice Committee (2020) in their report Coronavirus (COVID-19): The impact on probation systems, which details the move to the exceptional delivery model that changed the way probation services were delivered. Unfortunately, there was no mention of PQiP students within the Justice Committee's report. We are interested in learning more about the students who transitioned from the workplace to working from home, and those students who started the qualification when already working from home. Given that the report states that staff ‘[m] orale and wellbeing are being affected’ (House of Commons Justice Select Committee, 2020) by the current circumstances, there is further support for research that explores the ‘wellness’ of probation trainees.

The aspiring probation officers were entering the service at a time of tumultuous change. During this period, the Justice Select Committee (2020) reported that probation practice adapted by using Skype, phone and messaging services for supervision, while people assessed as high risk received doorstep visits. Further to this, sentence requirements could not be completed where they involved unpaid work or offending behaviour programme interventions. In addition, an already-stretched workforce, with high caseloads and not enough staff, suffered the absence of 2,000 staff per day due to COVID-19. Moreover, Phillips (2020) flags a request from HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) for the frequency of contact with people on probation at this time to be doubled. With 224,174 individuals on probation in the community in March 2021 (GOV.UK Justice Data, 2021), this was also a difficult time for people on probation and in prison experiencing supervision, exacerbating the ‘pains’ of supervision (McNeill 2019, 2020). This has all come at a time when probation services in England and Wales are undergoing significant reforms following the failure of Transforming Rehabilitation.

Women and Music in Ireland portrays an ever-changing kaleidoscope of women’s musical work and leisure activities in Ireland over the course of several centuries, from the sixteenth century to the present day. Such a long trajectory naturally encompasses many shifts in Ireland’s political formation, social structures, economic fortunes, cultural values and practices, and demographics. Centuries of British colonialism, until independence was achieved (for twenty-six counties) in the early twentieth century, and entrenched patterns of emigration further shaped the country’s identity and positioning in the global consciousness. The enacting of partition in 1921 led to the formation of Northern Ireland as a British jurisdiction, distinct from the independent Republic of Ireland. Regardless of politically constructed borders in Ireland, this book is concerned with women and music across the island. As part of this it is attentive to figures such as Alicia Needham and Joan Trimble, who spent much of their lives in what is now Northern Ireland and in Great Britain. The peripherality of Ireland as an island nation prompted many musicians to develop their careers internationally. Mary Dickenson-Auner, for example, cultivated a reputation as a violinist and composer across continental Europe, with only occasional visits back to the country of her birth where she was less well-known.

While some Irish musicians made an impact on music education and concert life abroad, others, such as Annie Patterson, remained in the country and committed to building infrastructures here. Some of these were formal entities, such as annual festivals, and therefore highly visible; the most famous example is the Feis Ceoil, which Patterson co-founded. Other infrastructures were less formal, however, and sustained by networks of women whose names have largely been forgotten today. Examples of these include ‘schools’ or ‘academies’ of music run from the home by women for whom teaching was one of their many domestic roles. A handful of women held official teaching posts at the prestigious Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM), while a few others contributed to the institution in a less recognised way in their capacity as assistants to male professors.

Social expectations of most women confining their musical pursuits to a private setting permeated traditional music as much as it did classical/ art music, with the result that women’s contributions to that genre were often rendered invisible.

The protagonist of Nina Berberova’s 1936 novella The Accompanist is a young pianist, Sonechka Antonovskaya. She is a recent conservatory graduate, hired by a glamorous, wealthy soprano to rehearse at her home and accompany her on stage in concert tours. The round-the-clock nature of the young musician’s employment soon necessitates a move into the singer’s apartment. As Sonechka narrates: ‘I became a member of the family, I was Maria Nikolaevna’s principal audience and at the same time – her servant.’ The pianist finds herself catering to her employer’s domestic and emotional needs, as well as tending to their artistic collaboration. The story begins in St Petersburg in 1919 but the account of the pianist’s life resonates beyond those historical and geographic boundaries and transcends fiction. Sonechka’s initial plan to support herself by teaching piano, just as her mother and grandmother had, alludes to how such labour was perceived as ‘women’s work’ across Russia, Europe and the United States by the early 1900s. In Berberova’s novel, references to the narrator’s practice routines, the partnership with the star soloist and audience perceptions of the pianist’s role show that the author was sensitive to the realities of the accompanist’s profession. Berberova’s book is fiction, but by drawing attention to the feminisation of the accompanist’s role – highlighting the expectation that the young female pianist should act as a caring, domestic figure and presenting her as a musician of secondary importance to the soloist – the author creates a world that resonates with the gendered, biased environment encountered by at least one Irish twentieth-century woman musician.

In this chapter I discuss Rhoda Coghill’s multifaceted career and reception history as a pianist. Coghill (1903–2000) published a handful of scores (including arrangements), saw one major composition of her own performed (the 1923 rhapsody Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, for solo tenor, chorus and orchestra), and, beyond the world of music, authored two acclaimed poetry collections.