background about the author

This is "Tim O'Shaughnessy's" first novel.  Many years ago, when ancestry records were on paper and microfiche, my dad was researching the family tree. He found some interesting characters, including the last person to be hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, but we won’t dwell on that.

He found we had a very musical ancestor, who had been born Richard Michael O’Shaughnessy in Dublin in 1811. At a young age, he became the musical director of the city’s Theatre Royal Orchestra and he was an unusually gifted violinist who travelled widely. It was his first visit to the Crystal Palace Handel Festival in London that led to a change of surname. When asked his name by the official in charge of enrolment, he promptly replied “Richard Michael O’Shaughnessy”. 

“Richard Michael O’Whatnessy?” echoed the astonished official.

“O’Shaughnessy” repeated the bewildered violinist.

“My friend,” volunteered his questioner. “You can never hope to make a success in professional life with an unpronounceable name like that. What was your mother’s maiden name?”

When told that it was ‘Leavy’, he instead wrote ‘Levey’ and so announced, “Hereafter you will be known as RM Levey in this establishment”. And so it’s by that Hebraic surname that he is known in musical history. 

He was later a professor of the violin at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, which he founded in 1848 along with other individuals, including John Stanford and Samuel Pigott.

Fast forward to the current day and having been a published author of some non-fiction books as part of my professional career as a Chartered Accountant, it felt natural to revert to the original family surname for the trilogy of musical books that tell the story of The Colour Spectrum.

Source: Francis O'Neill - Irish Minstrels and Musicians (1913)