Archive
23 April 2012
Listeners may be finding more and more signs of a renaissance in innovation in Irish traditional music these days, writes Jack Talty.
20 April 2012
Since its invention in the eighteenth century, the string quartet has proved one of the most resilient forms, continuously reinvented and repurposed for changing times. Having just completed a new string quartet of his own, composer Peter Rosser reflects on the medium's consistent allure.
13 April 2012
A performance of John Cage's Musicircus in London delights Liam Cagney, but he is less convinced by the deification of the composer.
1 April 2012
Where is the Woodie Guthrie of today, contemplates Breandán Ó hEaghra, as Genghis Khan joins the singer on a Conamara trampoline. And is that Angela Merkel on the banjo and Nicolas Sarkozy clapping along?
29 March 2012
Stephen Graham reflects on the nature of musicology as a discipline, particularly on its failure to gain a foothold in public debate, and considers the state of musicology in Ireland ahead of the symposium on the same subject at UCD on 4 April.
11 March 2012
A dislike of modern music is understandable, says Bob Gilmore, but for him it is the challenge of the music he loves that makes it so special.
2 February 2012
The composer Bill Whelan spoke of the challenges facing composers at the launch of the Music Composition Centre at Trinity College, Dublin. Here, we reprint his speech in full.
18 January 2012
The twelfth century Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen is celebrated as a visionary composer and writer, inspired directly by God, but there's an alternative history that paints her as an egotistical megalomaniac, for whom music was a means of repression.
4 January 2012
Adam Roberts experienced his first traditional Irish music session during a trip to Ireland at the age of fifteen. Ever since he's been contemplating the links to his native bluegrass, and finding sanctuary in both traditions.
30 November 2011
After the rejection of repetition by many modernist composers in the mid twentieth century, the extreme repetition of minimalism seemed inevitable. But, writes John McLachlan, composers don't always know when to stop.