# Irish composers



## Durendal (Oct 24, 2018)

In honour of St. Patrick's Day, are there any well known Irish composers or works of classical music? I can't think of any.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

John Field is probably the best known (he 'invented' the nocturnes).

Hamilton Harty and Charles Villiers Stanford deserve to be better known than they are outside the British isles. Among contemporary composers, Donnacha Dennehy is a particular favourite of mine, and South African Kevin Volans (recorded by the Kronos Quartet) is now apparently an Irish citizen.


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

Arnold Bax might be considered an honorary Irishman, although he was born in South-east London.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Turlough O'Carolan. 

.....................


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

David Phillips said:


> Arnold Bax might be considered an honorary Irishman, although he was born in South-east London.


In that case, an even stronger case can be made for Ernest John Moeran.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Charles Stanford. I don't know his music but he has some reputation.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I spent some time on Sunday with a lot of Irish symphonic music:

*Mary Dickenson-Auner* wrote a wonderful "Irish Symphony" that is not nearly as well known as it deserves. The only recording is pretty awful - the playing, recording. But the beauty of the score still comes out.

*Charles Stanford*'s Third Symphony, the "Irish", is a very pleasant, exciting work. It used to be quite well known and played around the world, but not so much anymore.

*Arthur Sullivan*, not Irish, wrote another delightful Irish Symphony.

*Victor Herbert *thought he was Irish-born, but his mother lied. Still, his Irish Rhapsody is fine listening.

Then I ended the day with a couple of bottles of Guiness and Leroy Anderson's Irish Suite - about the best Irish score ever made.


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## Dirge (Apr 10, 2012)

Frank CORCORAN: Symphony No. 3 (1994)
Coleman Pearce/NSO of Ireland [Marco Polo '98]





This is a brutal, craggy, volatile, percussive work that moves along with all the grace of a caveman pushing a stone-filled cart fitted with square wheels. The music is forged into a 14-minute single movement that develops from a core of six notes: C sharp, D, E flat, F, G, A flat. This allows for a good deal of harmonic ambiguity and contributes to the primordial building-block atmosphere of the goings-on, which has something of a raw and primitive Varèse-like sense of growth about it. The music struggles to make full-fledged melodies and harmonies out of melodic fragments and tone clusters, to make order out of chaos. In the process, the musical arsenal gradually expands from its core of six notes to neighboring notes until only one note is left to sound: C. Curiously, "the Sacred Birth of the note C" (as Corcoran puts it) on flute and tambourine is buried in the work and isn't all that prominent. After this, the music eventually builds to a rambunctious final climax wherein the strings lift the baby C above the din for all to behold. The climax eventually peters out, and the building blocks of chords and motifs that were previously lost in the din of the music-making are laid bare.

The music has a primitive ritualistic feel that makes even the most brutal and chaotic aspects of works such as Stravinsky's _Le Sacre du printemps_, Birtwistle's _Earth Dances_, and Finnissy's _Red Earth_ sound refined and genteel. In the most elemental of ways, however, Corcoran's Third Symphony sounds like the prehistoric progenitor of Carl Nielsen's Fourth & Fifth Symphonies.


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

I'll second John Field. I have his Nocturnes played by Miceal O'Rourke. I listened to Elizabeth Joy Roe's, too, but I don't remember why I preferred O'Rourke's in the end.


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## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

John Kinsella is scandalously neglected. His symphonies are his unquestionable masterpieces. They all (the ones that are recorded) catch the listener with their resourceful development of music. Highly recommended to investigate this Irish composer.


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## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

Dirge said:


> Frank CORCORAN: Symphony No. 3 (1994)
> Coleman Pearce/NSO of Ireland [Marco Polo '98]
> 
> 
> ...


This looks interesting. Thanks!


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## Durendal (Oct 24, 2018)

I just remembered that Michael William Balfe, who composed during the romantic era, is the only Irish composer I've ever heard of, and he's not that well known. What's the consensus on him on this board?


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

The only thing I've ever heard by Balfe was The Bohemian Girl. It used to be extremely popular - played around the world - but for me once was enough. Light? Cheesy? Corny? Hokey? Not my cup of tea, or ale, I guess. It must have had something going for it that the Victorians liked. He did write a symphony which I would like to hear. It's early - 1829. But I've never been able to locate even the score.


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