Music Network Commissions

Contrary to what is usually believed, it is not general ideas and grandiose unfolding of great events that impress the mind during times of heightened historic upheavals, but rather the uninterrupted flow of little experiences, observations, disturbances, small ecstasies, or barely perceptible discouragements that make up day-to-day living.” - Etel Adnan

The title of this piece, To Turn in Circles, is a line taken from the poem “To Be in a Time of War” by Lebanese-American poet Etel Adnan. This poem is a stunning depiction of the experience of living through a period of historic turmoil, and I found myself returning to it again and again over the course of writing this work.

During the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, I experienced a profound shift in the way I experienced the world around me. Time seemed to move both rapidly and at a glacial pace, and I found that the only way I could ground myself was to pay close attention to the minute details of my daily life. These months became an inextricable blend of anxiety and dread balanced by mindfulness and serenity, and it is this experience that I’ve tried to capture in this piece.

By stripping away everything but a single melodic line, the piano and violin become a unified instrument, playing as one for the entire work. In getting to the heart of what this moment in time is about for me, this piece has become about paying attention. Here, every moment is significant, the slightest shift in colour becomes monumental, and at times, these barely perceptible disturbances can become warped and distorted, taking on a life of their own.

– Emma O’Halloran

The title of this piece comes from the fact that its main theme literally came to me in my sleep. I was staying in Galway last September, writing music for Druid Gregory, Druid Theatre’s production of six Lady Gregory plays, staged in the grounds of her former home of Coole Park. One night, the opening melody came to me in a dream. On waking up, I quickly sang it into my phone before the mist cleared and it would be forgotten forever!

The piece is in an almost palindromic form. It opens with the ‘dream tune’, a slow, meditative melody, which then transforms into a graceful dance for one bowed and three pizzicato cellos in ever shifting time signatures.

The dance is interrupted by a more driven, playful, section which alternates between 4/4 and 6/8 bars, subsequently incorporating the initial melody. This moves back into a variation on the more pensive opening music before a brief coda of the ‘pizzicato’ dance.

The brief, such as it was, when writing the piece was to compose music which is optimistic and warm, in the face of such difficult times. It also distributes the material evenly between Martin, Ailbhe, Rosalie and Bill. After all, in a quartet of four cellos there is no musical hierarchy!

I hope that the piece invokes a little of the tone of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream music. I also hope that it also might have absorbed some of the magical spirit of Coole Park.

I’m very grateful to have been asked to compose this piece for four such superb musicians. I hope you enjoy it.

– Conor Linehan

I wanted to have my piece connect with the rest of programme in some way and this was made easy by the inclusion of 'When Laura Smiles' by Philip Rosseter and the obvious connection to my own partner Laura Sheeran. I thought this to be a good omen and worthy of pursuit.

Instead of simply resetting this poem again I searched for another ‘Laura’ poem to use and was delighted to find the sonnet ‘Rose-cheekt Lawra’ by Rosseter’s closest friend, fellow lutenist and collaborator Thomas Campion (1567 -1620). Small world!

In fact, ‘When Laura Smiles’ is taken from Booke of Ayres on which Campion and Rosseter collaborated in 1601. I was further facilitated in how Campion’s poem is filled with musical metaphors and was therefore very easy to express musically. You will hear the voice and guitar responding to ‘discord’, ‘gracing’ and ‘dull notes’ as they occur in the text. ‘Flowing’ and ‘eternal’ is expressed through the cyclical nature of the repeating arpeggiated chord progressions.

- Brian Bolger

Something I have been interested in a lot lately is people’s preconceptions of what things sound like and the interest they show when the actual sound deviates from their expectations. For example, one can imagine what a metal pipe might sound like, probably from having heard one crashing on the floor. Drill two holes in just the right spots however, then hang it up and strike it with a vibraphone mallet, and the sound you’ll hear is suddenly surprisingly different.

When asked to write this piece I wanted to make use of this idea, to write something that would provide enjoyment to the listener and lastly, be fun to play. It’s a piece in two halves, the first featuring the familiar sound of the drums (as well as a few other bits and pieces). From large to small (or low to high), we have a concert bass drum, tom toms, congas and bongos. The second part introduces some pieces of scrap into the mix, with both familiar and unfamiliar sounds of those said pieces of scrap being heard!

The title refers to the extensive use of cross-rhythms and the individual paths that each player’s line takes throughout the piece. There is a culminating moment right in the middle where everything comes together. Visualising how the piece would look as a diagram, I imagined it as an X.

- Alex Petcu

I wrote a Planxty for the harp, it took a while because I wanted to write something I was really happy with, so bits and pieces of it came to me at different stages, and I also wrote a modern take on a slip-jig, called An Spideóg – The Robin. This July our house was visited twice in the one week by a young robin who flew in and took a look around and flew off again. I like to think that it was a visit from our little boy, Robin, to whom this tune is dedicated.

- Josephine Marsh

I began this piece with a fragment of material from my 4th piano concerto, which I then developed in several ways, whilst adding in a cello part, which in turn affected the piano part.

- Kevin Volans

This piece was commissioned by Music Network for Baroque instruments, surrounded by Bach’s music in performance. I drew on some general impressions of Bach’s music, the style of the period, and also the particular qualities of sound inherent in these two contrasting instruments from another era. Open strings, harmonics and arpeggiations create stretches of rich sonority from the violin, while the harpsichord’s plucked strings make sharp incisions into these lines. Alongside rhythmic passages there are free sections where the music escapes into a timeless space.

‘Fantasia’ was a form often used by Bach, described as ‘the play of imaginative invention’; the term implies freedom, unpredictability, an element of surprise. As the music flows, moving forward and reaching upward, it takes some twists and turns, and a resonance from the past filters through.

- Jane O'Leary

The word ‘edge’ conjures up the idea of sharpness but it can also refer to extremes of nervous tension, to ‘being on edge’. Tentatively, we edge towards something fearful or become immobilised with apprehension as the feared entity edges towards us. Although the title was applied when the string quartet was almost finished, these are the qualities found in the music. Tension is created initially by high, hovering, barely moving individual parts; later the sliding, falling sensation which can be heard early on, becomes extreme, moving to the lowest registers of the instruments.

- Rhona Clarke

Connla’s Well has been an inspiration for Irish poets for centuries. Surrounded by nine hazel trees the ripe nuts fell into the well feeding the ‘salmon of knowledge’. Reputedly those who ate the nuts or the salmon would have immediate and profound knowledge, mystical insight and the ability to create visionary poetry.

The well was known to be the source for seven Irish rivers. Women were forbidden to go near it but the beautiful Sinaan, granddaughter of the sea god Lir wanted this knowledge. Approaching the well she ate the salmon. The water rose in a torrent engulfing her new-found power into a mighty river. From the name Sinaan it became the river Shannon.

This title is from George William Russell:

And when the sun sets dimmed in eve and purple fills the air,
I think the sacred Hazel Tree is dropping berries there
From starry fruitage waved aloft where Connla’s Wello’erflows;
For sure the enchanted waters run through every wind that blows.

In the music there is strong robust interplay between the soloist trumpeter and pianist. Fragments are repeated and distorted with rough-edged wah,wah rasping mutes. The soloist emerges into the foreground, is meshed with the filigree piano line, and eventually is drawn upwards, ending in quiet trance-like reflection.

- Deirdre Gribbin

This work is a 21st-century response to the idea behind Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, as seen through the lens of American artist Cy Twombly’s major work from the 1990’s, Quattro Stagioni. Involving the talents of four of the finest violinists in Ireland – Mia Cooper, Ioana Petcu-Colan, Katherine Hunka and Helena Wood – Quattro Stagioni consists of four “concerto”-type movements: each of the four violinists has their own focal movement, where the other three act as the ‘ripieno’ group. The character of each movement is inspired by one of Twombly’s Quattro Stagioni paintings:

Primavera; Estate; Autunno; Inverno

‘Never give all the heart’ was composed in response to a Music Network commission – a setting of the WB Yeats poem for baritone and piano. The poem contains a gamut of emotions, from blind love to romance, passion, frustration and loss, and I have tried to encapsulate all in this short song. The piano and baritone remain interactive in the main, here and there the piano assumes the role of accompaniment for atmospheric purposes.

I have used simultaneous D major and E major tonalities, alongside some delayed rhythmic patterns, echoing the sense of pain and longing. Chords are almost but not quite, consonant, never settling anywhere, but becoming at times darker and more dissonant throughout. The rhythm does however settle as the poem moves towards its conclusion, where hearts are ‘given… up to the play’. The tessitura of the baritone is varied, highlighting the general tenor of the lines of poetry.

- Marian Ingoldsby