A History in Sound
AS many people have found to their disappointment, recordings of works by Irish composers are hard to come by, not necessarily because those works have never been recorded, but because the recordings are not available to the public.
Most performers, when contemplating learning a new twentieth-century work, would welcome the opportunity to listen to it first. Because the amount of Irish music recorded commercially is still so small, however, this can be an insuperable problem. The Contemporary Music Centre therefore sought permission from RTÉ to make copies of recordings of Irish contemporary music held in the RTÉ sound archive and in 1996 this was granted.
The RTÉ sound archive is a marvellous resource: a virtual history in words and music of the nation in the twentieth century. Indeed, in the absence of any other provision, it is de facto our National Sound Archive. But of course RTÉ is a broadcasting station, not a public facility, and while staff have always to the best of their ability facilitated requests for access it would be impossible to make all the material available for public reference.
Archive rarities
Among the literally hundreds of works by Irish composers spanning the period since the foundation of the station in in 1926 are many rare recordings. For instance, the complete 1954 recording of Padraic Fallon's play, The Wooing of Etain, with music by Brian Boydell, and the premiere recording of James Wilson's opera, Twelfth Night, performed at the Wexford Festival in 1969. Gerard Victory's prolific output is also reflected with, in the material accessioned to date, some 150 separate recordings of his works made between 1954 and 1991.
The series, Sixty Years of Irish Radio, included a number of programmes on Irish composers presented by Brian Boydell. Recorded in 1986, these -- now that we are on the verge of the new millennium -- provide an excellent overview of the development of music in Ireland during the earlier part of the century, a picture that the current Thomas Davis lecture series will update, we hope. The Dublin Festival of Twentieth Century Music is another rich source: so far we have tapes of over 140 works recorded between 1969 and 1984, many of them first performances of pieces that have since become the bedrock of the twentieth-century repertoire. And that's just the Irish music! The Festival's concerts of music by young composers mark the emergence of many names that are now well-known: Frank Corcoran, Raymond Deane, Paul Hayes andFergus Johnston among others. Interval talks and interviews are another fruitful hunting-ground: the Composers in Conversation series made by Dermott Rattigan in 1987-88 and the intriguing 1964 series, Dr Larchet and Musical Dublin, in particular.
As the promoter of contemporary music in Ireland, we hope to encourage members of the public, whether specialist or non-specialist, to use this resource. Discover music new to you and re-appraise those works you put on one side years ago. The collection is available to you, so please contact the Centre and arrange a visit.