With the death of Wilfrid Myles, aged 85, at his home in Germany on April 9th, a life of remarkable diversity and accomplishment came to its gentle end.
Wilfrid Leech Clarke Myles was born in Lifford, Co Donegal in 1920 into a prosperous Anglo-Irish family of strong military and medical lineage. A cousin was the legendary Adelaide Hospital surgeon Sir Thomas Myles, and Wilfrid's father was also a medical practitioner. Both parents died in Wilfrid's infancy and he was brought up in the loving but austere home of his aunt "Clarke" at Inchinagh near Lifford. He was sent to preparatory school at Rockport in Holywood, Co Down, after which he moved to Epsom College in England, a public school that had a particular connection with the medical profession which Wilfrid was presumed to enter.
However, on completion of his schooling at Epsom he opted for the army and Sandhurst. On passing out he was commissioned into the Indian cavalry regiment where he spent most of the second World War, apart from a brief period in Italy. A posting followed at the Ministry of Defence in London, where the predominance of Donegal-connected command staff (Montgomery, to name one) ensured a smooth transitional return to civilian life and retirement from the army with the rank of major in 1950.
Wilfrid now turned to the second of his career changes on joining a firm of wine merchants at Winchester for which he travelled widely in France and the port areas of Portugal, acquiring in the process a formidable knowledge of wine that was to stay with him for the rest of his life. This expertise was given practical expression in later years at his hospitable table in his German home, where delicious food was served with wines of exquisite appropriateness .
It was, however, after 10 years in the wine trade that Wilfrid made his most radical career change when he decided to move to Germany to train as a church organist and choir director. To opt for such a switch at the age of 40 must have seemed like an act of foolhardy recklessness, given that professional music training is very much an activity for the young, when skills are easily and more naturally acquired. Wilfrid's love for the organ was instilled in him in his earliest years at the Church of Ireland at Lifford, and was confirmed and enhanced during his 10 years at Winchester when he came under the influence of the renowned cathedral organist Alwyn Surplice and the head of music at Winchester College, Raymond Humphry. Nothing daunted, he took himself to Cologne and was accepted into the organ class of the distinguished Dr Hans Klotz at the Hochschule für Musik.
After four years of study in Klotz's class (where he was by far the oldest student) Wilfrid became qualified to take a full-time permanent post as a Kantor in the established Lutheran Church. After a period working in the Cologne area, he moved north in 1967 to become organist and Kantor in the lovely market town of Hohenwestedt in Schleswig Holstein, Germany's most northern Bundesland. He retired from the position in 1990, but continued to live with his German wife, Brigitte, in the beautiful home he built adjoining the lovely wooded and lake-studded countryside of that least known but most attractive part of Germany.
To my knowledge, Wilfrid Myles is the only Irishman to have become a member of the German Kantorate. His assimilation into German life was complete: on arrival in the country he was determined to learn the language thoroughly and committed himself to acquiring both linguistic and musical skills with a sense of military thoroughness and discipline, refusing to speak English in a process of total immersion which eventually saw him gain complete spoken and written proficiency in his new language. Yet this assimilation into his adopted country did not occlude his feeling of identity as an Irishman.
While someone of his background and education might have been assumed to feel more British than Irish, Wilfrid was always clear as to his primary sense of national identity. And he never lost an opportunity to further the cultural presence of Ireland in Germany. It was the then young up-and-coming diplomat at the Bonn embassy, Sean Donlon, who put us in touch, as a result of which Wilfrid introduced me widely to his colleagues in the German kantorate, and this led to numerous organ recital engagements for me over the years. In the 1960s he also arranged the first visit to the Royal Irish Academy of Music by the organ class of the Cologne Hochschule, and he also used his good offices to secure a recital invitation for Hans Klotz to the Royal Festival Hall. At a time when the new Irish State was coy in asserting its distinctive voice in European high cultural art forms, Wilfrid's presence in Germany and his wish to introduce more of Ireland's talents to his adoptive land was indeed prophetic and groundbreaking.
Tall and military in bearing, Wilfrid had a commanding presence and used his army-trained ability to bark orders with excellent effect in achieving the highest musical results from the town Kantorei in Hohenwestedt, as well as "getting his way" from a parish council comprised of worthy but conservative German burghers. Wilfrid's unique combination of talents - military, equestrian, oenological, musical, linguistic - formed a human being of great warmth, generosity and capacity for friendship, qualities he shared with his wife Brigitte, their daughter, Suzanna, and two grandchildren. GG