WATCH rte.ie/culture LISTEN RTÉ lyric fm ARTHUR DUFF Echoes of Georgian Dublin JOHN KINSELLA Nocturne for Strings MÍCHEÁL Ó SÚILLEABHÁIN Bean Dubh an Ghleanna Oileán/Island Traditional arr. NEIL MARTIN The Fairy Queen Danny Boy The Humours of Ballyloughlin RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra David Brophy conductor Mark Redmond uilleann pipes, flute Presented by Paul Herriott, RTÉ lyric fm FRIDAY 25 SEPTEMBER 2020, 7pm NATIONAL CONCERT HALL 1 Arthur Duff 1899-1956 Echoes of Georgian Dublin i. In College Green ii. Song for Amanda iii. Minuet iv. Largo (The tender lover) v. Rigaudon Arthur Duff showed early promise as a musician. He was a chorister at Dublin’s Christ Church Cathedral and studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, taking his degree in music at Trinity College, Dublin. He was later awarded a doctorate in music in 1942. Duff had initially intended to enter the Church of Ireland as a priest, but abandoned his studies in favour of a career in music, studying composition for a time with Hamilton Harty. He was organist and choirmaster at Christ Church, Bray, for a short time before becoming a bandmaster in the Army School of Music and conductor of the Army No. 2 band based in Cork. He left the army in 1931, at the same time that his short-lived marriage broke down, and became Music Director at the Abbey Theatre, writing music for plays such as W.B. Yeats’s The King of the Great Clock Tower and Resurrection, and Denis Johnston’s A Bride for the Unicorn. The Abbey connection also led to the composition of one of Duff’s characteristic works, the Drinking Horn Suite (1953 but drawing on music he had composed twenty years earlier as a ballet score). The Drinking Horn was played by the Hallé Orchestra, conducted by John Barbirolli, when it visited Dublin in 1947. Multi-talented, Duff also wrote plays: his Cadenza in Black was produced by Hilton Edwards at the Gate Theatre in 1937, the same year that he joined Radio Éireann as a radio producer. In 1945 he was promoted to the post of Assistant Director of Music (a position later held by Seán Ó Riada), when his director was Michael Bowles. At this time Duff also became friendly 2 with the composers Arnold Bax and E J Moeran, both of whom had Irish connections and wrote music inspired by Irish themes. As a composer, Duff had a small but well-crafted output, written principally for the Dublin String Orchestra: small-scale, lyrical works such as his Meath Pastoral (1940, dedicated to the writer Brinsley McNamara), the Irish Suite for Strings (1940, dedicated to Moeran) and Music for Strings (1955). Echoes of Georgian Dublin was Duff’s final work. A form of Handelian pastiche, the suite of five movements nevertheless has the essential requirement of pastiche – that the writer must fully appreciate the style in which he is writing. Duff’s Echoes certainly achieves that. Echoes of Georgian Dublin was (as were his other works) frequently performed in the late 1950s and 1960s by the (then) RÉ Symphony Orchestra, and was recorded by the New Irish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by André Prieur, on the New Irish Recording Company label in 1974, and again, by the RTÉ Sinfonietta, conducted by Proinnsías Ó Duinn on the Marco Polo label in its Irish Composers series, in company with works by Seán Ó Riada, Gerard Victory, A.J. Potter, John F. Larchet and Padraig O’Connor, in 2000. Note by Richard Pine © RTÉ 3 John Kinsella b. 1932 Nocturne for Strings This piece began life as the slow movement of my second violin concerto (1990). Four years later I made this string orchestra version for the Irish Chamber Orchestra who recorded it on cd in 1994 with Fionnuala Hunt. Subsequently I wrote a version for cello solo and strings which has also been recorded on cd by the Irish Chamber Orchestra. The nocturne begins with a gently rocking figure and presents a number of themes. There is a central climax and the music works its way back through the altered opening material and closes with the rhythmic figure with which the piece opened. Note © John Kinsella 4 Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin 1950-2018 Bean Dubh an Ghleanna Bean Dubh an Ghleanna, the ‘Dark Woman of the Glen’ was composed in 1998 for string orchestra and saxophone solo. It is based on a passionate love song from the Munster tradition. The orchestral score responds to the emotional tapestry of the song text alongside the soaring beauty of the melodic line. The pastoral nature of the song text is picked up by the horns. It was recorded in 2001 on the Templum album (Virgin Venture) and appeared again on the compilation album Elvergleams: New and Selected Recordings (EMI Music Ireland) in 2010. Note © Helen Phelan Oileán/Island Oileán/Island began life in 1979 following a commission from the Gorey Arts Festival. Under its original title ‘Concerto for Traditional Music and String Orchestra’, it was composed around the repertoire of the renowned traditional flute player, Matt Molloy. and was the first such piece featuring an Irish traditional musician soloist with a classical ensemble. Its first performance was conducted by Prionnsías Ó Dúinn with Matt Molloy as soloist and was recorded by RTÉ Radio for broadcast in a series entitled An Droichead Beo. 5 The piece emerged ten years later, re-written under the title Oileán/Island and was included in a commercial recording of the same title with Virgin Records in 1989. The juxtaposition of the Gaelic and English words in the title may be viewed as redolent of the linguistic and musical dichotomies of the island. Several significant Irish poets have been drawn to Ireland’s island character as seen in Cork poet Seán Ó Ríordáin’s Oileán agus Oileán Eile (‘An Island and Another Island’) as well as the acclaimed love poem Oileán by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. The work is in three movements (fast/slow/fast) and follows the form of jig, slow air and reel. Only in the second movement does the soloist exchange material with the orchestra. It is not so much a fusion of traditional and classical music, as it is a conversation between the two: one, carried by traditions of music literacy and the other, by traditions of music orality. The bridge between these sonic traditions is constructed from an analytical theory first put forward by Ó Súilleabháin around what he termed ‘set accented tones’. Using tones set at certain accented points in the traditional material, a diatonic tone row is revealed and becomes the basis for the classical music score. The full orchestral version of the piece was commissioned by RTÉ lyric fm in 2008 and broadcast live across the European Union Radio Network. It was revised again in 2016 for full orchestra with optional harp. While the soloist has typically been a traditional flute player, Ó Súilleabháin noted in the score that it could be played by various instruments including fiddle, pipes, concertina or button accordion and in 2017 it was performed by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra with Brendan Power on the harmonica. Note © Helen Phelan 6 Traditional arr. Neil Martin The Fairy Queen In his Ancient Irish Music, the 1796 publication of the music annotated at The Belfast Harp Festival of a few years earlier, Edward Bunting initially attributed the composition of this piece to the harper Turlough Carolan (1670–1738). Some years later however Bunting went on to suggest that it was an adaptation for harp from an older love-song - this song could possibly have been Coinnigh ón mBás Mé/Keep Me From Death. A version of The Fairy Queen also appears in the Neal collection of 1724, attributed to “sig Carrollini”. Whatever the provenance, the music fits very well into the era and style of Baroque interpretation of Irish music. There certainly were Italianate and Baroque influences on Irish society and music in the first half of the 18th century, with visits and performances from Geminiani and with Handel’s Messiah having its world premiere in Dublin in 1742. Note © Neil Martin Danny Boy Like much of “traditional” music, the lore behind this exquisitely perfect melody is not uncomplicated. Ó Catháin’s Lament, an air well-known to harpers from the mid-17th century onwards and attributed to the harper Rory Dall Ó Catháin is similar to what we now know as Danny Boy, and ditto Aislean An Oigfear (sic)/The Young Man’s Dream annotated by Edward Bunting 7 from the harper Denis Hempson at the end of the 18th century. Move forward to the mid-19th century and the collector Jane Ross from Limavady in County Derry apparently heard an itinerant fiddle player, Jimmy McCurry, play it on a market day. Jane Ross wrote it down and passed it on to the collector George Petrie who published it in the 1850s. Move further on again into the 20th century and the air, having been given a Victorian gentility and now known as The Londonderry Air, landed on the desk (via Colorado!) of an English lawyer, author and lyricist called Fred Weatherly. He had already written lyrics for a song called Danny Boy and with minor adjustment, crafted them to marry with the ancient air. The song was published in 1913 and it has never looked back since. Note © Neil Martin The Humours of Ballyloughlin I wasn’t quite yet a teenager in 1973 when I first heard uilleann piper Liam O’Flynn play this tune on a Planxty album, The Well Below the Valley.