Norman O'Neill

Who was Norman O'Neill?

Norman Houston O'Neill was an Irish and British composer and conductor who specialized largely in works for the theatre. He studied in London with Arthur Somervell and with Iwan Knorr at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt from 1893-1897. His studies there were facilitated by his lover, Eric Stenbock. He belonged to the Frankfurt Group, a circle of composers who studied at the Hoch Conservatory in the late 1890s.

O'Neill was associated with the Haymarket Theatre. His works include over fifty sets of incidental music for plays, including many by Shakespeare, J. M. Barrie, and Maurice Maeterlinck. In 1910, he became the first British composer to conduct his own orchestral music on record, directing the Columbia Graphophone Company's house ensemble, the "Court Symphony Orchestra", in a suite taken from his Blue Bird music on two double-sided gramophone discs. He received personal congratulations from Sir Edward Elgar on his music for the innovative central ballet sequence of the 1924 revue "The Punch Bowl", which ran for over a year with O'Neill's contribution being widely singled out for praise in press coverage.