The composers below are each having pieces restored to performable condition through the use of specialist music software. This project, a cooperation between the London Irish Symphony Orchestra and the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin is a crucial step in preserving Ireland's musical history. We are delighted to be working on this with the CMC, and hope to expand it in the future.
A.J. Potter Archibald James (Archie)
Potter was the son of a blind Belfast
piano tuner. Brought up by relatives in Kent, he ‘got the only education
then open to penniless boys – choir school followed by public school’. He also
won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music where he studied composition
with Vaughan Williams. After colourful wartime service he settled in Dublin and gained his
Doctorate in Music from Trinity College Dublin in 1953. From 1955 to 1973 he
was Professor of Composition at the RoyalIrishAcademy
of Music. His Missa Brevis won the Festival of Britain
(Northern Ireland)
Prize in 1951 and he won the Radio Éireann Carolan Prize in 1952 and 1953. For
many years he was a popular radio broad-caster on music. He was a very prolific composer, whose eclectic style encompassed a wide range
of techniques which were used to suit the style of a work to its purpose. His
orchestration in particular is outstanding. The sensitivity that lay behind the
ebullience of his personality, and his passionate concern about injustice and
intolerance, are all evident in his best works.
John Kinsella Born in Dublin, John Kinsella for many years combined
composition with administration until he resigned from the post of Head of
Music at RTÉ in 1988 to devote his time to composition. Since then he has
written nine symphonies; a second violin concerto; a fourth string quartet and
other works. He has received commissions from, among others, Concorde, the
Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition, RTÉ and the Irish Chamber
Orchestra. In 1999 his Eighth Symphony, a work commissioned by RTÉ, was
premiered by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. Recent commissions include
his Ninth Symphony for the Irish Chamber Orchestra, and a cello concerto for
RTÉ premiered by cellist Carlos Prieto and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra
in 2002. The work has since been recorded on the Mexican record label, Urtext. During Ireland’s Presidency of the EU in 2004, Serenata and conductor Barry
Douglas toured his 'Nocturne for Strings' throughout Europe and in China, while
the Irish Chamber Orchestra with Nicholas McGegan performed 'Hommage à
Clarence', on their European tour. His works have been recorded on the Altarus,
Keltia, Chandos, Urtext and Marco Polo labels. John Kinsella is a member of Aosdána,
Ireland’s
state-sponsored academy of creative artists. His 3rd Symphony recieved it's London premiere in 2006 with the Orchestra.
Decland Townsend Declan Townsend was born in Tralee, Co. Kerry. He has worked as a string teacher,
secondary school music master, light opera and choral conductor, adjudicator,
author and arranger. He is a former member of staff at the Cork School of Music
and is currently music reviewer for The Irish Examiner. His compositions have won prizes at the Cork International Choral Festival and
have been performed in many countries including the Netherlands,
Germany and the USA. He was
awarded a PhD for his study of the choral folk-song arrangements of Holst,
Vaughan Williams, Kodály and Bartok. He has completed commissions for the Cork
School of Music, the Cork Chamber Orchestra and the Cork Youth Orchestra and
his arrangements of traditional Irish material have been published in the UK and Germany.
Joan Trimble Joan Trimble was born in
Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh. She studied at the RoyalIrishAcademy
of Music and TrinityCollege in Dublin
before going to the Royal College of Music in London to study piano with Arthur Benjamin
and composition with Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells. Recognition as a composer came with the publication in 1938 of songs and
two-piano music. These were followed in 1940 by her Sonatina for two pianos and
her Phantasy Trio, which won the Cobbett Prize at the RCM. In 1938 she formed a
piano duo with her sister, Valerie Trimble, and enjoyed a highly successful
professional partnership for over thirty years. In 1957 her opera, Blind Raftery, a BBC commission, was broadcast on
television. This was her last major composition until 1990, when a
seventy-fifth birthday commission from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland
persuaded her to write a wind quintet. CDs of her music have been released on
the Koch International Classics and Black Box labels. In 1999 a disc of her
songs and chamber music was issued on the Marco Polo label.
Arthur Duff Arthur Duff was born in Dublin. He studied piano
and organ at the RoyalIrishAcademy
of Music and became assistant organist at Christ Church Cathedral at the age of
fifteen. He entered TrinityCollege, Dublin,
in 1917 and completed a MusB degree in 1922. He was awarded a DMus degree from
TCD in 1942. He was the first Irish-born bandmaster in the Army School of Music
and joined the Irish Broadcasting Service in 1937, becoming Assistant Music
Director in 1945. Arthur Duff’s works are very much influenced by Vaughan Williams and Delius and
include the ballet, The Drinking Horn, Music for Strings, and his evocation of
eighteenth-century Dublin,
Echoes of Georgian Dublin.
T.C. Kelly T. C. Kelly was born in
Wexford. He was awarded a BMus degree by University College Dublin and was
director of music at Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, for much of his
career. He has written both original compositions and arrangements, including
many orchestral works which were performed by the Radio Éireann orchestras and
the Dublin Orchestral Players under Brian Boydell. Kelly’s Three Pieces for Strings played by the Irish Chamber Orchestra were
issued on the Black Box label in 1998.
Aloys Fleischmann Aloys Fleischmann was born
in Munich to
Irish-based German parents. He graduated from University College Cork with the
degrees of BMus (1931) and MA (1932) and subsequently studied composition,
conducting and musicology at the StateAcademy and University of Munich.
In 1934 he became professor of music at University College Cork, a post he held
until his retirement in 1980. He was awarded a DMus degree by the National
University of Ireland in 1963. His compositions include large-scale works for chorus and orchestra, five
ballets, a symphony, several song cycles and many chamber and solo works. As
founder of the Cork Symphony Orchestra (1934), the Cork International Choral
and Folk Dance Festival (1954) and a crusading member of many organisations and
committees, he was a highly influential figure in musical life in Ireland. He has
written several books and articles on music including his major work, Sources
of Irish Traditional Music (1998). He was a member of the RoyalIrishAcademy
and of Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy
of creative artists. Other honours included the Freedom of the City of Cork, an Hon. MusD from the University
of Dublin, the Order of Merit of the GermanFederalRepublic and the Silver
Medallion of the Irish American Cultural Institute.
John F. Larchet John F. Larchet was born in Dublin. He studied at the
RoyalIrishAcademy
of Music where his teachers included Michele Esposito. He received his MusB in
1915 from DublinUniversity and completed his MusD in
1917. Larchet was Director of Music at the Abbey Theatre from 1907 to 1934 and
was professor of harmony and counterpoint at the RoyalIrishAcademy of Music from
1920 to 1955. He was also professor of music at University College Dublin from
1921 to 1958. As a teacher, Larchet was influential in developing a school of Irish
composers, many of whom went on to become important figures in Irish
composition. Irish traditional music was a source for many of his works and his
output includes several choral, orchestral and vocal works.
Marian Ingoldsby Marian Ingoldsby was born in
Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary.
She studied composition with Gerald Barry at UniversityCollege, Cork, graduating with an MA in Composition
and winning the Fleischmann Prize in 1995. She is currently a lecturer in the
music department of Waterford Institute of Technology. She has been commissioned by, among others, Opera Theatre Company, which
premiered her chamber opera, Hot Food with Strangers in 1991; the National
Symphony Orchestra of Ireland/Ulster Orchestra; Presteigne International
Festival of Music and the Arts, Wales;
Cork International Choral Festival; Pearls before Swine, Sweden;
and the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition. Awards include the Macaulay Fellowship (1995) and, in 1996, the first Elizabeth
Maconchy Composition Fellowship tenable at the University of York.
This enabled her to undertake a DPhil in Composition with Nicola LeFanu which
she completed in 2000.