![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The chronic lack of investment in the capital needed to foster the development of music during the period of colonial governance in Ireland and the early years of the Free State, combined with Ireland’s peripheral position in relation to the centres of musical modernism, resulted in composers in Ireland adopting modernist ideas at a very late stage, particularly in comparison with the chronology of Irish literary modernism. Previous literature on the subject of Irish musical modernism has frequently obscured any clear sense of the real extent of this delay through the conflation of the concept of “modernism” with styles that may have been perceived by Irish contemporaries as “modern” at a particular historical juncture. This essay surveys the work of the key figures of twentieth-century Irish composition, examining the degree to which they may or may not have been interested in or engaged by international ideas of modernism. It re-evaluates composers frequently regarded as modernist in the literature such as Frederick May, Brian Boydell and Seán Ó Riada; discusses the important of Seóirse Bodley’s work from the 1960s; and posits the idea of an Irish avant-garde emerging in the 1970s. The essay concludes by noting the continued relevance of modernist ideas for a number of today’s composers.
Notes
1. For a more detailed discussion of these issues see Dwyer, Different Voices, 32–58.
2. C., “Hamilton Harty” (227), and John Larchet, “Michele Esposito” (430–1) in Pine and Acton, To Talent Alone.
3. Ryan, “Nationalism and Music in Ireland”, 386.
4. For more on the early development and expansion of the orchestra see Kehoe, “The Evolution of the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra”.
5. “Peter Stadlen at RDS Ballsbridge”, Irish Times (23 November 1937).
6. Stanford, “Sanity and Insanity”, 78–9.
7. Harty, “Modern Composers and Modern Composition”, 330.
8. In fact, it seems that at this point she had never actually heard an orchestra perform live. See Klein, Die Musik Irlands, 184.
9. For more on Rhoda Coghill see Watson, “Epitaph for a Musician”.
10. One can see similar debates regarding national versus international with the complication of class considerations in 1920s Russia. See for example Frolova-Walker, Music and Soviet Power, 1917–1932.
11. Donohue, “The Future of Irish Music”, 109–14.
12. For example in 1966, commenting on his commission to write a piece to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Rising, Boydell described it as “a tremendous sign of the coming maturity in the country that an Anglo-Irishman should be invited to do this, rather than someone who was known to be, shall we say, an ardent Gael”. RTV Guide, 8 April 1966.
13. Dungan, “Team Games”, 11. For a more accurate account of Fleischmann’s views see de Barra, Aloys Fleischmann. May’s views on traditional music are examined in Fitzgerald, “Retrieving the Real Frederick May”.
14. Ryan, “Nationalism and Music in Ireland” (1999), and Graydon, “Modernism in Ireland” (2003). Works by Axel Klein tend to be more generous in the attributing of modernity to any figure writing music which does not reference traditional music in the twentieth century. See for example Klein, “No State for Music”. Brian Cass in his essay to accompany the Irish Museum of Modern Arts exhibition “The Moderns” reflects the arguments of these writers. See Cass, “Modern Music in Ireland”.
15. See for example the concluding chapter of White’s The Keeper’s Recital.
16. See for example Ryan’s assertion of stylistic equivalence between May’s Scherzo and the work of Mahler or the String Quartet and the music of the Second Viennese School. Ryan, “Nationalism and Music in Ireland”, 405–12. Ryan’s contextual argument that nationalism had a stifling effect on music in Ireland is similarly problematic and lacking in empirical evidence. His argument also entails considerable misrepresentation of May and Fleischmann. For more on the problematic elements of Ryan’s work see Ó Ciosáin, “Missing Pieces” and Ó Seaghdha, “Reframing the history of Classical Music in Ireland”.
17. Cleary, Cambridge Companion to Irish Modernism, 5–6. It is notable however that in the chronology that prefaces the volume, the only musical works mentioned are Seán Ó Riada’s Nomos 2 and his score for the film Mise Éire. It also notes the foundation of the Music Association of Ireland in 1948, an organisation which played a fundamental role in the establishment of an infrastructure for music in Ireland.
18. For this essay, I define twentieth-century modernism as the radical aesthetic of language and form typified by composers such as Schoenberg and Stravinsky at the beginning of the century, with a second wave of post-war modernism associated with the European avant-garde, American experimental composers and early minimalism prior to its divergence into a neo-romantic style.
19. For an account of the emergence of these composers which also considers such concepts as national music, British modernism and the idea of a time-lag in the transference of aesthetic ideas from mainland Europe see Rupprecht, British Musical Modernism.
20. See for example Riley, British Musical Modernism.
21. For contrasting views of this work as parody with un-modernist features, aggressively modernistic or as an example of Anglo-Sibelian symphonic modernism see, respectively, Harper Scott “Vaughan Williams’s antic symphony”, 175–196; Frogley, “Constructing Englishness in music”, 1–22; and Horton, “The later symphonies”, 199–227. May’s String Quartet poses similar questions due to its combination of surface dissonance and formal innovation with a more traditional and English influenced pastoralism.
22. The most notable of these are Pfitzner, Futuristengefahr: Bei Gelegeheit von Busonis Äesthetik and Pfitzner, Die neue Aesthetik, der musikalischen Impotenz, Ein Verwesungssymptom? In the latter modernism is denounced as international, the artistic equivalent of Bolshevism, Jewish and impotent.
23. A full description of the work is given in de Barra, Aloys Fleischmann, 132.
24. Klein notes that Boydell abandoned art when he realised “he would never quite achieve enough facility in draughtsmanship”. Klein, “Brian Boydell: of man and music”, 4–5. For contemporary critical reaction to his play see “Play for puppets”, Irish Times, 16 November 1944, and D.S. “Puppet show at the Peacock”, Irish Independent, 16 November 1944.
25. Pine, Charles: The Life and World of Charles Acton, 189.
26. Taylor, “An interview with Brian Boydell”, 78. Zavod (Music of Machines / Iron Foundry) is one of a number of pieces from the early years of the twentieth century that imitates to some degree sounds associated with the industrial world.
27. Taylor, “An interview with Brian Boydell”, 71.
28. Cox, “Octatonicism in the String Quartets of Brian Boydell”, 266. Boydell also took some composition lessons from Martinon at this time.
29. Raymond Deane recalls a lecture on modern music given by Boydell ca. 1969–70 in which he “posited Sibelius and Bartok as the greatest modern composers, before pooh-poohing the “artificiality” of Schoenberg’s techniques and playing an extract from Stockhausen’s Song of the Youths which, he declared derisively, was invalidated by the fact that it reminded “one” of digestive noises”. Deane, In My Own Light, 140.
30. For the contemporary critical response see for example B, “Composer attends R.D.S. recital”, Irish Times, 25 January 1949.
31. Pine, Music and Broadcasting, 91. Pine incorrectly states that this performance was part of a concert under Adrian Boult on 26 April 1942. Bowles conducted Spring Nocturne in concerts on 27 November 1941 and 29 October 1944. See Kehoe, “The evolution of the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra”, Appendix A.
32. For Boydell’s letter to Fleischmann see de Barra, Aloys Fleischmann, 99.
33. Fleischmann in a letter to Acton, 28 February 1973 states “He never studied harmony with my father, and never had any coaching in composition, other than what he did for the B Mus course”. Charles Acton Archive, National Library of Ireland, Acc 6797. Acton, clearly not understanding the difference between an undergraduate techniques class and composition tuition, dismissed Fleischmann’s clarification.
34. See for example the opening of Nomos 2 or the central section of Seoladh na nGamhan.
35. Charles Acton, “New work performed at Winter Prom in Gaiety Theatre”, Irish Times, 23 January 1956 and “R.E. Orchestra at Phoenix Hall”, Irish Times, 4 July 1956.
36. Charles Acton, “New notes for old”, Irish Times, 22 November 1961.
37. See for example Charles Acton, “New notes for old”, and “Music Makers”, Irish Times, 2 July 1960. For more on Potter’s limited experimentation with twelve-note collections see Zuk, “The “serial” works of A.J. Potter”.
38. Charles Acton, “Prom concert at the Gaiety Theatre”, Irish Times, 2 November 1959. It is interesting that “cleverness” is still singled out as an undesirable feature of music.
39. Discussion of Ó Riada’s music for Mise Éire falls outside the remit of an essay on modernism as it consists of arrangements for orchestra in an idiom derived from nineteenth-century romantic music and thus is more closely aligned to the music of a figure such as Stanford than anything from the twentieth century.
40. Cox, “The Bar of Legitimacy?”, 201. Victory also made a tentative approach to integral serialism in his Cinque Correlazioni (1966) in which the number 5 controls elements of pitch, duration and dynamics (ibid., 196–7).
41. Dwyer, Different Voices, 121. O’Leary founded the contemporary music ensemble Concorde in 1976 to tackle the deficit in the performance of new music in Ireland.
42. Ibid., 84.
43. Cox, Seóirse Bodley, 38.
44. See for example Byrne Bodley, “A Hazardous Melody”, xiii, where she notes that Bodley rejected modernism having concluded that the compositional methods he had been utilising “did not satisfy the development of [his] artistic ideas”.
45. The festival was biannual from 1970 until its demise in 1986. Featured composers included Peter Maxwell Davies, Witold Lutosławski, Elliott Carter, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel.
46. Deane, “Exploding the continuum”.
47. Johnson, “Return of the Repressed”, 46–50. For Volans’s own comments see Volans, “Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments etc”, 5. For an Adornian evaluation of modernism in the work of Deane, Barry and Volans see Smith, “The Preservation of Subjectivity through Form”.
48. See http://www.aisteach.org.
49. Dwyer, Different Voices, 73.
![Supercharge Your Next Research Paper: Research and write your next paper with Jenni AI.]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/112441/MPU-humanities-jenniai.png"})