THE first few weeks of 1996 have been hectic ones for John Kinsella as he finds himself immersed in the two activities which, after the writing itself, are the most important in the work of a composer: getting performed and getting recorded. Last January, Kinsella attended the Naxos recording sessions in the National Concert Hall of his Symphonies 3 and 4, while the beginning of February saw him return to the NCH for the premiere of his Symphony No. 6. At this stage he has been through the premiere experience many times ('thank God'), but reckons it remains much the same.

'You're always wondering how a first performance will go -- you're never quite sure about the work. Unlike a repeat performance when you've at least made up your own mind. They like the composer to say a few words before the performance. It's a good idea. And I'll be asked to do it. But it's the last thing in the world I will want to do! On the other hand, you just have to face the realities of the situation.'

We agree that John Buckley did well last year when Colman Pearce grilled him from the podium before the premiere of his Maynooth Te Deum. Kinsella is slightly more at home with the Meet the Composer! sessions organised by CMC. 'I did a series of them with the Vanbrugh Quartet the year before last. That was fine because you were going around to nice communities with small audiences. There was a certain amount of intimacy and you could talk and get reactions from people. But you're never quite sure on the large stage, with the orchestra behind you, wishing you'd get off so they can play the music.'

With the exception of the audience, replaced by record industry people, the location and personnel for a recording session are more or less the same as they are for an orchestral premiere: the National Concert Hall, the National Symphony Orchestra, a conductor, the composer. The kind of pressure, however, which is prevalent at a recording session is very different from that to be experienced at a premiere. Namely, it's not on the composer.

'I found the experience of being present at the recordings quite incredibly stimulating. The sessions were really pushed for time: to do a fairly lengthy orchestral work in one day requires a lot of work and puts a great strain on the players. But for a commercial CD, there can't be any irritants.'

We are momentarily at cross-purposes when I assume that by 'irritants' he means the interference of the composer in the recording. 'No, no. Little blemishes in the playing. If you have a CD on your rack and you know that at 1:28 the horn fluffs a note, you tend not to play it. But I believe that the Naxos sound engineer is a bit of wizard. He can work all kinds of magic in his editing, and he's a very fine musician himself.'

It takes one to know one. An avid string-player much involved in chamber music, Kinsella worked, nevertheless, as a computer-programmer at a time in the 1960s when his firm, Player Wills, was one of the first in Ireland to use computers. In 1968 he moved to the music department of RTE (Radio Telefís Éireann, Ireland's national radio and TV station) as a Senior Assistant, accepting a much smaller salary because music was his first love. After spells as Assistant Head (1972) and Deputy Director (1979), Kinsella became Head of Music in 1983. He took early retirement five years later in order to concentrate on composition.

'I work mornings, from around half-nine to one o'clock. It's my best time, and also good in a practical, family sense. I can only work on one piece at a time. I've always admired people who can push along a lot of different work at the same time. I just work constantly on one particular piece until I have it finished. There are good days and bad days.

'The working method I've laid down for myself is to write out a prose version of what I intend to compose. In other words, almost a programme note. Of course it changes as the work progresses, but I find it quite handy. Because if I write the prose version today and then, in the middle of May, I come back to it, it's a great signpost. When you're engaged in the particular details of something, it's of great benefit to be able to stand back and find that the larger plan is still clear.

'The most difficult thing is to get a work off the ground and to be satisfied with your basic ideas, that they are pregnant enough to merit development. Then as the work progresses you find easy bits and difficult bits, and it runs itself for a while, sometimes coming to a crossroads that you have to find your way through. I tend not to revise that much: instead I agonise before moving on. And I work in full score all the time. I don't sketch a thing through and then orchestrate -- I can't think that way.

'If you hold onto your routine, it builds up its own momentum for you. You get into the habit of working from A to B. I like to leave trailing ends when I finish each day, because when I know I have to do this, that, and the other, it acts as a stimulus to get me working the next morning.'

It would appear that the Kinsella regime must be pretty effective, for in the less than eight years since his retirement he has completed five symphonies (nos. 2-6), a second Violin Concerto, a fourth String Quartet, and various shorter pieces, including his Nocturne which featured on CMC's Contemporary Music from Ireland CD released last year.

'It sounds like a lot when you look back; but in actual fact, to turn out a forty-minute work in a year or ten months, if you're working steadily, is not really so hard. I suppose it's a bit of a strain on your creativity. But at certain stages of a work, when you get so far, it kick-starts itself. As I say, looking back it seems like a lot, but it's just a day's work. If you were to look back over your past seven years and summarise all you've done, you'd probably collapse!'

Kinsella is in the enviable position of working within a structured commissioning arrangement which was set up by his old employers, RTE, when he retired in 1988. According to this arrangement, which he acknowledges provided him with a 'golden opportunity', RTE commissioned from Kinsella a series of substantial orchestral works to be composed during the six years following on from the time of his retirement. Remuneration was not simply in the form of a retainer fee, but was organised on a pay-per-work basis: if he didn't produce the work, he didn't get the pay. Apart from anything else, it provided further motivation.

'I find that if you're asked to do something -- for a commission or to meet a deadline -- it's a powerful stimulus to the imagination. If your imagination is turned on, then you can come up with ideas. Where the ideas come from, God only knows. You just have to be receptive to them when they come.'

The Symphony No. 6 calls for three horns beyond the normal complement of four. These are spaced strategically -- either at three corners of the platform or in the gallery with two on either side of the organ -- with a view to creating sonic variety. Like the two previous symphonies, the Sixth owes something to extra-musical influences. 'It's dedicated to a very special group of friends of mine. We've listened together to music of common interest for about forty years. We still do. And there are, if you like, hidden references to members of the group in the work. It's not exactly Enigma Variations, but there are musical echoes of certain members of the group. The music might strike a mood or present an instrumental grouping which is somehow reminiscent of one of these people.

This, in fact, sounds to me a lot like Elgar. Will the personal allusions remain secret? Or is there any chance that at some later stage he might publish an annotated score, at least with initials? 'No. Unless for the right financial inducement.'

The Symphony No. 6 is in fact the last work commissioned by RTE under the terms of the 1988 arrangement. Kinsella actually finished the Sixth in 1993, since when he has worked on various other commissions. But he would love to write one more symphony and bring his total, like that of one of his heroes, Sibelius, to seven. Other composers who crop up in the conversation are Beethoven and Mozart. When I ask, in relation to revising, which of these composers he emulates, he replies: 'I wish I were either!'. Leonard Bernstein also receives a mention, but only a heart-felt refutation of his tolling the symphony's death knell. In fact, the quotation which accompanies Kinsella's entry in CMC's Directory of Irish Composers is from Berlioz: '...passionate expression, intense ardour, rhythmical animation, and unexpected turns'. These characteristics, none of which Kinsella believes are normally visible in his quiet personality, are nonetheless qualities with which he aspires to infuse his music.

'Berlioz at white heat in, say, the Corsaire Overture, is somebody who's actually spinning an orchestra around his little finger, catching the audience out with every move and turn he does. Fantastic aplomb. I don't know of anyone who can create that kind of quicksilver expression. Diving from one idea to another. Incredible.'

The last composer we discuss is John Kinsella. I put it to him that, some time in the middle of the coming century, someone will attempt to produce an up-to-date history of Irish music. Regarding the place of John Kinsella in that study, the composer gives voice only to a modest hope: 'That I have made some kind of significant contribution to the catalogue of Irish music in this part of the century.'