William (Bill) Young, who died on March 11th aged 71, was a singer whose name was once synonymous with the performance of oratorio in Ireland. For most of his career, his diary was so full it would have surprised many who knew him only as a performer to learn that he also had a full-time day job in an insurance company.
He is widely and fondly remembered as the regular bass in the series of Bach cantatas, conducted by John Beckett, which began at St Ann's Church, Dawson Street, in 1972. For a number of years, the team of soloists from the cantata concerts - soprano Irene Sandford, contralto Bernadette Greevy and tenor Frank Patterson - dominated choral concert activity in Ireland. The cantatas were taken to the BBC Henry Wood Proms in London, to the Bruges Festival in Belgium, and BBC Radio 3 commissioned studio recordings in Dublin in the pursuit of a complete broadcast series of the cantatas at a time when not all of these works had been issued on commercial recordings.
Before that, he had appeared at the first Killarney Bach Festival in 1970 and in Brian Boydell's A Terrible Beauty is Born, commissioned to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. He was also called on for Sean O Riada's Nomos No. 2, at the memorial concert held after the composer's death.
His performances of Beethoven's Choral Symphony included one in 1976 to celebrate 50 years of broadcasting in Ireland, and the two that were given at the opening of the National Concert Hall in 1981. On that occasion, he took part also in the premiere of the specially-commissioned Ceol by Seoirse Bodley. And he is warmly remembered, too, as a Christus in the Bach passions. He toured the US with Our Lady's Choral Society, and his well-modulated, mellifluous bass-baritone voice was heard as far away as Italy (where he toured with the Guinness Choir), and Finland. He was widely heard in Britain, where he had a particularly close relationship with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
He appeared with the Ulster Orchestra and was active in opera with a number of companies. Albert in Werther and Valentine in Faust were among his roles for the Dublin Grand Opera Society, and Tarquinius in Britten's Rape of Lucretia for the Studio Opera Group in Belfast. He also created the roles of John in Gerard Victory's The Music Hath Mischief in concert (RTE) and on stage (DGOS), and of the bank manager McTeevan in Archie Potter's The Wedding in 1981. He gave recitals with his wife, the pianist Alison Young.
Bill Young was born on February 23rd, 1930 (sharing a birthday with Handel), to a musical family in Dublin. He was one of 11 children of William and Elizabeth Young (nee Edis). His father was a clerk and caretaker with Craig Gardner. He came early to singing, at the age of seven, when he accompanied his older brother to an audition for the choir of St Patrick's Cathedral, where his talent also excited the cathedral's organist, Dr George Hewson. He was educated at St Patrick's Cathedral Grammar School (where, like his son Richard after him, he was a Winstanley scholar), studied singing under Frank Cowle, and went on to become a lay vicar choral at the cathedral.
As a young man he won most of the competitions open to him in the Feis Ceoil, an organisation he supported until the end of his life. After leaving school, he took a job with the Ocean Insurance Company, and later joined Hibernian Insurance, where he rose to the rank of inspector. As a choirboy he had sung in the 1942 bicentenary performance of Handel's Messiah and as a young man he made his oratorio debut in the same work in 1955.
Colleagues remember him as an unstinting worker, never unprepared, and an unfailing gentleman. He once described his singing as a hobby, and he always resisted the blandishments of agents who encouraged him to turn to a full-time musical career. On top of his solo career, he was a member of the Catch Club, the Strollers and the Clef Club. In 1990, when his major singing days were over, he founded the Seafield Singers, with himself as musical director. With this choir he helped raise £40,000 for charity. He made his final appearance conducting its Christmas concert last December. It was a fitting conclusion to the career of a man, Christian in the simplest sense, whose life and music-making were so intimately connected with things spiritual.
He is survived by his wife Alison, whom he married in 1956, his children, Ian, Barbara and Richard, six sisters and a brother.
William (Bill) Young: born 1930; died, March 2001