Rhoda Sinclair Coghill, who died on February 9th, aged 96, was a legendary and formidable musician and poet whose working life was devoted to the art of piano accompaniment. Born in 1903, the daughter of a Scotsman who had come to Ireland to manage the printing works of Eason & Son, she attended Alexandra College, studying piano with Patricia Read from the age of eight, before proceeding to Trinity College Dublin where she obtained a B.Mus - an unusual distinction in those days - in 1922. On the day of one of her examinations, June 30th, the Four Courts was fired and she later recalled the air in TCD being thick with papers which had floated in from the Public Record Office.
On the advice of Col Fritz Brase, who was directing the Free State army bands, she studied for a year in Berlin with Artur Schnabel, whom she described as "the most intellectual musician I ever encountered".
Back home, she played concertos with the Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra and later with the fledgling Radio Eireann Symphony Orchestra, under the batons of Michael Bowles, Arthur Duff, Milan Horvat and Tibor Paul. She also taught at the Read Piano School, but her true metier was as an accompanist. In this capacity she joined Radio Eireann in 1939 as the station accompanist in succession to Kitty O'Callaghan, at a salary of £4 per week.
In the Denmark Street studios and later in Henry Street, she mixed with artists and musicians including her original boss, Vincent O'Brien, and poets Austin Clarke, Padraic Colum, Donagh MacDonagh and Seumas O'Sullivan. Although she retired (compulsorily) in 1968 she was retained for a decade as an accompanist, such was her empathy with singers, instrumentalists and ensembles.
She identified the qualities of an accompanist as directness and honesty, requiring an early ability to meet and match the musical needs of her partners. On one occasion in the 1970s, the great Czech violinist Josef Suk was making an RTE studio recording and was somewhat astonished to encounter an elderly lady waiting at the keyboard, who primly looked him up and down and enquired if he was ready to begin. Emerging from the studio an hour later, Suk announced that seldom had he worked with such a fine and sympathetic musician.
Leon Goossens, Evelyn Rothwell (Lady Barbirolli) and Wanda Wilkomirska were among the many other visitors with whom she worked.
Rhoda Coghill was also an accomplished composer. Her rhapsody, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (1923), for tenor, choir and orchestra is regarded as very fine, as are her Rhapsody for piano and orchestra (published by An Gum) and her many settings of songs, with words by Colum and AE.
As a poet, she published two slim collections, The Bright Hillside (1948), and Time is a Squirrel (1956). An interest in the technicalities of the relation between rhythm and phrasing characterises her poems, as it does her chief hobby, the translation of poetry, especially that of Rilke.
Her poetry reflects her Quaker faith in its "quiet conviction" (her own term), its interest in and reflections on nature (typified by her poem There are no accidents with God) and in her private belief: "I have my own notion of how things should be".
Rhoda Coghill is survived by a nephew and nieces.
Rhoda Sinclair Coghill: born 1903; died February, 2000