Boyle, Ina (Selina Adelaide Philippa) (1889–1967), composer, was born 8 March 1889 in Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, daughter of Rev. William Foster Boyle, curate in Powerscourt parish, and his wife Philippa Augusta Jephson. Her father made violins and cellos as a hobby. She grew up at Bushey Park near Enniskerry, where she lived all her life. Taught the violin and cello as a child, as well as harmony and counterpoint, she later studied composition privately with Charles Herbert Kitson (1874–1944) and George Hewson (qv). She was a cousin of Charles Wood (qv), who advised her on composition in letters from Cambridge. She published her first compositions in 1915: two anthems ‘He will swallow up death for victory’ and ‘Wilt not thou, O God, go forth with our hosts’. Much of her work was of a religious nature, reflecting her family background and personal beliefs. In 1917 she published ‘Soldiers at peace’, and when it was performed (1920) she described the occasion as the happiest of her life. She won a Carnegie Trust award (1919) for her orchestral work ‘The magic harp’, a piece inspired by Irish mythology, bringing her to public attention for the first time. In 1927 there was an enthusiastic public response to her ‘Glencree’ symphony.
In spring 1928 she visited London to study under Ralph Vaughan Williams. He had a high opinion of her music, and she became one of his favourite pupils. The lessons continued irregularly over the next decade, and in summer 1939 Vaughan Williams paid her a visit at Bushey Park. The previous year Aloys Fleischmann (qv) had conducted her pastoral ‘Colin Clout’, along with works by other living composers (including Elizabeth Maconchy (qv), E. J. Moeran (qv), and Frederick May (qv)) in an early public concert broadcast by Radio Éireann. Variously writing choral works, song-cycles, string quartets, and larger works for orchestra, she also composed three ballets, one inspired by Holbein and another by Plato. Her inspiration, however, was usually derived from poetry. In 1948 she set Edith Sitwell's ‘Still falls the rain’ to music, and was later crushed to find that the poet refused permission to use the poem after her five years of work. One of her final works was her only opera, ‘Maudlin of Paplewick’ (1964–6), taken from her own libretto and based on Ben Jonson's ‘The sad shepherd’.
Boyle was a friend of Elizabeth Maconchy, who described her music as ‘quiet and serious, never brilliant’; Maconchy found its idiom closest to Vaughan Williams in his early middle period, though she stressed that it was ‘not just a pale reflection of his style; her music always speaks with a personal tone of voice’ (Klein, Die Musik Irlands, 369). Boyle's great regret was that much of her music went unpublished and unplayed. Three of her four last songs, ‘Looking back’, were written in her final summer.
Thin and frail, she usually dressed in grey. She was prone to talking rapidly, with quick nervous movements. She lived alone for much of her life in a house without electricity. Never financially secure, she grew peas one summer to make money. In her later years she had a decreasing regard for her own comfort, and a waning appetite. She died of cancer 10 March 1967 in Enniskerry. She never married. Her manuscripts and scores are in TCD library.