UCD School of Music
Scoil an Cheoil UCD
NEWS REPORT FROM MAY 2012
News
At the close of the academic year 2011-2012, it is a pleasure to record events from a notably busy semester in the School of Music (January - May 2012).
Performance
All three of our performance ensembles gave memorable concerts in the second semester of the academic year: the UCD Philharmonic Choir presented a programme entitled Choral Landscapes in April at St. Andrew's Church, Westland Row, including works by Tallis, Kodaly, Nystedt, Stanford and Tormis.
The UCD Symphony Orchestra's Spring Concert at the National Concert Hall in March included a magnificant reading of Shostakovich's tenth symphony, and the UCD Choral Scholars gave a memorable concert entitled Where Everything is Music at St. Bartholomew's Church, Clyde Road, also in April.
The Scholars have had an especially successful semester: they were awarded the special jury prize and two second prize awards at an international choral competition in Riva del Garda, Italy, in April, and in May they participated in a concert of Bill Whelan's music at the National Concert Hall.
This semester also saw the inaugural concert of the UCD Orchestral Scholars in Memorial Hall, Richview, conducted by their artistic director, Ciaran Crilly. The programme was entitled L'Esprit Nouveau and featured early 20th-century chamber music composed in France. This premiere represents a very exciting development in the performance culture of the School and the University at large.
A joint concert given by the UCD Symphony Orchestra and the Mannheim University Orchestra took place in Ad Astra Hall (UCD) in April. Finally, students of the School also took part in the first public performance of the UCD Ad Astra Academy at the National Concert Hall (Field Room) in February.
UCD Philharmonic Choir
UCD Symphony Orchestra
UCD Choral Scholars
Research
There were many visitors to the school who gave lectures and seminars during the semester; these included Professor Dr. Stanislav Tuksar (University of Zagreb); Professor Dr. Vjera Katalinic (Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts); Professor Dr. Lorenz Welker (Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich); Professor Michael Spitzer (Liverpool University and President of the Society for Music Analysis); Dr. Edward Venn (Senior Lecturer, University of Lancaster); Dr. Adrian Scahill (NUI, Maynooth); Dr. Mark Fitzgerald (DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama); Professor Philip Bohlman (University of Chicago).
Professor Bohlman delivered the 8th Larchet Memorial Lecture on 4th April; this followed Musicology in Ireland: a Symposium, hosted and organised by the School under the auspices of the Society for Musicology in Ireland at the UCD Humanities Institute. Speakers at the symposium included Professor Jan Smaczny (Queen's University, Belfast, and President of the SMI); Dr. Lorraine Byrne Bodley (NUI, Maynooth); Dr. Kerry Houston (DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama); Dr. Gareth Cox (Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick) and Professor Harry White (UCD). Approximately 70 delegates were in attendance for the symposium and lecture. The opening address was given by Professor Julian Horton, Head of the UCD School of Music.
News of Staff
In March, Dr. Ciaran Crilly conducted two performances of Mozart's Requiem and the Jupitor symphony with the Mornington Singers and the Dublin Orchestral Players at St. John's, Templeogue, and the Pro-Cathedral, Dublin. He also conducted a performance of the Requiem at the Annual Good Friday Concert at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin with the Goethe Institute Choir and the Dublin Orchestral Players in April. Also in April, Dr. Crilly conducted four performances by the Irish National Youth Ballet at O' Reilly Hall (UCD), and in May he gave two further concerts with the Dublin Orchestral Players (with violinist Ioana Petcu Colan) at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin and Fisherwicke Church, Belfast, in a programme that features Beethoven's fifth symphony.
Dr. Nicole Grimes, who is currently a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of California, Irvine, delivered a paper entitled ' "The Sense of an Ending": Adorno, Brahms, and Music's Return to the Land of Childhood' at the conference Brahms in the New Century, organised by the American Brahms Society at the CUNY Graduate Centre, on 21 March 2012. She also published 'A Critical Inferno? Hoplit, Hanslick, and Liszt's Dante Symphony, ' in the Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland 7 (2011-2012): 3-22.
Professor Julian Horton gave a pre-concert talk on Bruckner's seventh symphony at the NCH on March 16; on 20 April he delivered a paper entitled 'The Musical Novel as Master Genre: Schumann's Szenen aus Goethes Faust' at the Music in Goethe's Faust: Faust and Music Conference, NUI Maynooth. He has also completed editing The Cambridge Companion to the Symphony, which is now in production with Cambridge University Press. He convened and chaired the School's Seminar in Music Analysis, which included presentations by Professor Michael Spitzer (as above) and Ms. Eve O' Kelly (adjunct professor in the School of Music) and gave the opening address at the SMI symposium on musicology in Ireland.
Dr. Una Hunt (adjunct professor) participated in 'Music from the Edwardian Era' at the Titanic Festival of the Creative Arts, Public Records Office N.I., Titanic Quarter, Belfast on Thurs 12th April, 7pm. The programme included music from the Titanic playlist and a new song cycle specially commissioned for the performance: On the pathless ocean by David Byers. The artists included Rachel Kelly (mezzo soprano), Gavan Ring (baritone) and Dr. Hunt (piano), who also introduced the programme.
Dr. Jaime Jones delivered an ethnomusicology seminar at Oxford University on 2 February on 'Music, Motion and Devotion in India'; Dr. Jones was conference organiser for the ICTM Ireland Annual Conference entitled Movement and Music which took place between 24 and 26 February in TCD. She also gave a seminar in analysis and composition jointly with Professor Horton entitled 'Analysis across Disciplines' in the School of Music in April.
Dr. Frank Lawrence presented a paper entitled 'Between oral and written: Music in late-Medieval Ireland - a European Tradition?' at the symposium From Ireland outwards: interactions between Ireland and western Christendom in the late medieval period at University College Cork on Friday, 23rd March. He also attended the study day and AGM of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society in Oxford on 10th March (during which he chaired one of the paper sessions) and attended the AGM and Council meeting of the Henry Bradshaw Society at the British Library, London on 17th April. On April 18th he and two of our second year BMus students, Maddie Kavanagh Clarke and Simon Nugent, presented the results of their semester-long research on late Medieval Saints' Offices at the annual UCD Micheal O' Cleirigh Institute Donatus Mooney seminar. Their presentation was entitled 'The Friars' Office Project: liturgical veneration of the Franciscan and Dominican Saints in the late middle ages'. Dr. Lawrence has been involved in various editorial activities for Cantus Planus in relation to the proceedings of the Vienna conference of August 2011 and the upcoming IMS - Cantus Planus day in Rome (July 2011). Finally, Dr. Lawrence participated in the symposium at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick on Documents of Irish Music in the long Nineteenth Century (27 April), in which he chaired the opening sequence of papers.
Dr. Wolfgang Marx gave the following papers during the current semester: ' "How I wonder what you're at!" The Genesis of Ligeti's Nonsense Madrigals ', Later Ligeti Conference, Senate House, University of London, (30 March); ' "Was zum Teufel will, das läßt sich nicht aufhalten," Alfred Schnittke's Faust Opera,' Music in Goethe's Faust: Goethe's Faust in Music, NUI Maynooth (20-22 April); 'Das Lied vom russischen Tod. Modest Mussorgsky's Lieder und Tänze des Todes,' 18th Annual Conference of the Europäische Totentanzvereinigung (European Danse Macabre Association), Kunstuniversität Graz, (27-29 April). He gave a guest seminar at the Music Composition Centre, Long Room Hub (TCD) entitled ' "How I wonder what you're at!" The Nonsense Madrigals in the Context of Ligeti's Late Style' (5 April). Dr. Marx organised and undertook the School visit to Prague with 30 students (9-12 March); he was a member of the organising committee of the Faust conference (as above) held in NUI Maynooth; he gave a pre-concert talk with Paul McCreesh on Brahms' German Requiem and Elgar's cello concerto at the NCH (20 April); his book, György Ligeti. Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds (edited with Louise Duchesneau) was shortlisted for a Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award in the category of 'Creative communication' (April) and he was re-elected as a member of the advisory board of the Europäische Totentanzvereinigung (29 April). Dr. Marx was awarded seed funding for the publication of Dublin Death Studies 1, a volume in preparation and co-edited with Philip Cottrell, UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy (May 2012). Dr. Marx's publications during the semester were: 'De morte transire ad vitam? Emotion and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Requiem Compositions,' in Emotion, Identity & Death. Mortality across Disciplines, Douglas J. Davies and Chang-Won Park (editors), Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate 2012, 189-203. (March 2012); review of Calvin R. Stapert, Handel's Messiah. Comfort for God's People, Milltown Studies 68 (Winter 2011), 97-99 (March 2012); review of J.P.E. Harper-Scott, Jim Samson (editors), An Introduction to the Study of Music, Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland 7 (2012), 39-45 (April 2012); '"Requiem sempiternam"? Death and the musical requiem in the twentieth century,' Mortality 17/2 (May 2012), 119-29.
Professor Thérèse Smith chaired a session at the ICTM Ireland Annual Conference in February; she was an invited speaker and moderator at the international conference on 'Making Connections: the Celtic Roots of Southern Music' at the University of Emory, Atlanta, Georgia, (USA) at which she delivered a paper on 'Whose Tradition Anyway and Why Should It Matter?'. She was also a panellist at the session 'Putting it All Together: Tradition and Innovation in Roots Music' (April 20-27). She continues as a research consultant to an AHRC-ESRC (UK) Religion and Society research project entitled 'The Experience of Worship'. Professor Smith's book, Ancestral Imprints: Histories of Irish Traditional Music and Dance is in press with Cork University Press; she has also contributed various articles to Fintan Vallely (ed.), The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, 2nd Edition (Cork 2012).
Professor Harry White was elected to honorary membership of the Croatian Musicological Society in January. He gave a guest lecture to the Irish Society for Archives in February and participated in the Quebec-Ireland research project held at Concordia University, Montreal in March. In April, he convened and organised Musicology in Ireland: a Symposium and chaired the opening (plenary) session of Music in Goethe's Faust: Goethe's Faust in Music at NUI Maynooth. Also in April Professor White gave the closing address at the symposium on Documents of Irish Music History held at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. He gave the opening address at the conference on 'New Directions in Irish Music and Dance Studies' at NUI Galway in May. Professor White acted as internal examiner for two UCD PhD dissertations in January and February respectively, and as a manuscript reader for the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies (January) and for Ashgate Publishing (May). He published reviews and letters in Music and Letters, Irish Historical Studies, and in Brian Cliff and Nicholas Grene (editors), Synge and Edwardian Ireland (Oxford). Professor White's first collection of poems, Polite Forms, was published by Carysfort Press and launched in the Royal Irish Academy of Music by Professor Margaret Kelleher in April. He was re-elected to the Council of the Society for Musicology in Ireland in May.
News of former Students
Congratulations are due to Maria Patricia O' Connor Gertsson, who successfully defended her PhD dissertation on Brahms and Bruckner in February. Her examiners were Professor Stanislav Tuksar (University of Zagreb) and Professor Harry White. Her supervisor was Professor Julian Horton. We also congratulate Dr. Anne Hyland, who has recently been appointed to a lectureship in music at Royal Holloway, University of London.