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The 43rd Seminar on New Choral Music SATURDAY 30th APRIL 2011, 10AM - 12.30PM STACK THEATRE, CIT CORK SCHOOL OF MUSIC   2011 welcomes back again the Seminar on New Choral Music

The Cork International Choral Festival has a long-standing commitment to foster awareness and appreciation of new choral music.  With this in mind a seminar was initiated in 1962 as part of the festival programme by the late Aloys Fleischmann, Professor of Music at University College Cork, as being central to this purpose. The Festival is delighted to present the 43rd edition of the Seminar on New Choral Music as a joint collaboration with The National Chamber Choir of Ireland, our Choir in Residence.

It is an exciting time for the Seminar, which presents a much-needed platform for the examination of new music, and the opportunity to foster this approach together with the choral community. The Seminar reinforces the commitment of Cork International Choral Festival and the National Chamber Choir to encourage the development, performance and commission of new choral music in Ireland and does so in line with the expanded focus and direction desired by both organisations. I particularly welcome Rhona Clarke as Seminar Chairperson, Paul Hillier, Artistic Director and Conductor of the NCC, and thank Imelda Dervin, Interim Chief Executive, for her commitment to involve the National Chamber Choir of Ireland in this project.

It is of central importance to the festival and the NCC that the revitalised seminar is more accessible to all and assists in making current performance practices in the performance of new choral music accessible to the wider choral sector in Ireland with a view to supporting the inclusion of these commissions and other new music as a part of the regular repertoire of Irish choirs.  This accessibility is further supported by presenting the seminar in the centrally situated CIT Cork School of Music, as well as presenting it on the Saturday, a time when many more choirs are present in Cork.

The Seminar on New Choral Music maintains its central purpose as a commissioner of new works by leading Irish and international composers. These works will be analysed, performed, and discussed in the presence of the commissioned composers, conductors, singers, musicologists, students, and the general public with a view to understanding the integrity of the piece and the intentions of the composer. The new works receive their premiere performances at the festival.

This year brings two new works to Cork; one by Siobhán Cleary and the other by the winner of this year’s Seán Ó Riada Competition, Patrick Connolly. The Seán Ó Riada Competition was initiated in 1972 in recognition of the creative life and work of Seán Ó Riada, and is a composition competition which invites the submission of new works from Irish composers in collaboration between the Cork International Choral Festival and the National Chamber Choir of Ireland.  This year the competition captured the imagination of almost thirty Irish composers and has excited us by the range and quality of entries. We are delighted to welcome both composers to Cork to take part in the Seminar.

- John Fitzpatrick

Artistic and Festival Director

Both new compositions will receive their world premieres in performance by The National Chamber Choir of Ireland in their festival concert:   Troped Tunes and Tripping Tongues FRIDAY 29TH APRIL 2011, 7.30PM ST. FIN BARRE’S CATHEDRAL, CORK

From composition to performance

The Seminar on New Choral Music will put new choral music to the fore and offer the choral sector the opportunity to learn and exchange experience and ideas about performing new work with Ireland’s foremost professional choir, the National Chamber Choir.

The examination and exploration of the two new commissioned pieces, by Siobhán Cleary and Patrick Connolly (winning composer of the Seán Ó Riada Competition) will be central to the day. The Seminar will use this as a spring board to cover performance, analysis, presentation, response from composers and conductors, and will be followed by open discussion. Analysis will cover areas including structure, harmonic language, textures and timbres from the composer’s viewpoint. The performer’s viewpoint will take into account the difficulties in performing modern repertoire including approaching complex tonalities, difficulties in voice leading and understanding notation of extended vocal technique.

Seminar Chairperson: Rhona Clarke

Entry is free of charge and all are welcome.

For more information on attending the Seminar on New Choral Music, please contact the Cork International Choral Festival office at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or on 021 4215125.

Presented in association with the C.I.T Cork School of Music.

Theophilus Thistle and the Myth of Miss Muffett

Composer: Siobhán Cleary

'The point of departure for this work lies in the tradition of word-games such as tongue-twisters,

battologisms, spoonerisms and shibboleths. The structure follows a geographical area journeying from the Italian peninsula; north through Germany; south to the Iberian peninsula and west to Ireland. On first encounter, these word-games have little meaning, indeed many of the ones included are a collection of nonsense words. Others contain words that are meaningful in themselves but become nonsensical because of their context. However, many contain a rich provenance of times gone-by such as the genealogy of the important Clan Maclean (in Scottish Gaelic), some sensible domestic economics from Lombardy, house building lore from Brittany and a lesson in tolerance in Irish.'

'There were casualties along the way as I could not include every language and dialect in this topographical region, for example Manx and Aragonese. Apart from the title, neither Theophilus Thistle nor Miss Muffett make an appearance in the score. Reluctantly I also left out a host of their sibilant siblings who spent much time sitting and shining, or on sea-shores, selling sea-shells, and used more typical alliterative names such as Peter Piper who picked pecks of pickled peppers, and Oliver Oglethorpe who for no apparent reason ogled owls and oysters. Indeed the good Theophilus Thistle himself was a successful thistle sifter.'

'The short tongue twister “The Myth of Miss Muffett” is derived from the nursery rhyme Little Miss Muffet. It is speculated that the young arachnophobe was the daughter of Thomas Muffet (1553-1604), an entomologist who wrote the first scientific catalogue of British native insects.'

'The work ends appropriately enough with a blessing from a nomadic tribe, the Irish travelling community - “Stafa tapa hu” meaning ‘long life to you’.

SC 16^th February, 2011

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Siobhán Cleary, composer Born in Dublin in 1970, Siobhán Cleary studied music at NUI Maynooth, Queens University and Trinity College Dublin, as well as attending composition courses in Italy, France and Poland, under the tuition of Franco Donate and Louis Andriessen.   A finalist in the Young Composers’ Award at the Huddersfield Festival in the UK in 1995, Siobhán also won a Pèpiniérs Young European Artists award (1996) for a three-month residency in Bologna, Italy, as well as taking first prize in the Arklow Music Festival Composers’ Competition in 1997.

Siobhan’s compositions have brought international acclaim, and her music has been performed and broadcast worldwide. Her orchestral work, Threads (1992 rev. 1994), was selected by Vienna Modern Masters for performance at the Second International Festival of New Music for Orchestra in Olomouc in the Czech Republic, and was later released on CD. A second orchestral work, Alchemy (2001), commissioned by RTÉ, was performed for the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in 2002, followed by selection as a featured composer in the Composers’ Choice concert series at the National Concert Hall in 2003.

In a collaborative project with Kerry County Council, Siobhán was invited as composer-in-residence for the region for 2007 - 2008, undertaking a number of educational projects in primary schools, as well as workshops for school teachers on composition in the classroom.

Recent commissions include Conachlann (2008), commissioned for the Amstel Quartet and Maria McGarry with support from the Arts Council of Ireland; Mis (2008) commissioned by the Kerry Chamber Orchestra, also funded by the Arts Council, as well as a work commissioned for the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra in 2009. In addition to an illustrious performance career, Siobhán has also explored the area of film score composition and has written music for two Roger Corman films - Spacejacked! and Dangerous Curves.

Siobhán Cleary is a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy of creative artists.

Rhona Clarke, Seminar Chairperson   Biography: Rhona Clarke was born in Dublin. She studied music at University College, Dublin, pursued composition studies with John Buckley and James Wilson, and completed a Ph.D at Queen’s University, Belfast under the supervision of Michael Alcorn.   Her output includes choral, chamber, orchestral and electronic works. She has received commissions from RTÉ, the Cork International Choral Festival, Music Network and the National Concert Hall, among others. Her work has been performed and broadcast throughout Ireland and at several European music festivals, including Donne in Musica, Italy, Begegnungen, Austria, and Neue Musik Winterthur, Switzerland. Recent works include Pas De Quatre for string quartet, commissioned by The Contemporary Music Centre as part of their New Notes project and performed by the ConTempo Quartet with a visual projection by artist Marie Hanlon and Veni Creator which was performed last July by Sydney Philharmonia Symphony Chorus as part of their London tour.

Current work includes another collaboration: a non–narrative film with music, based on the landscape of the Burren area in the west of Ireland.

Rhona Clarke is a lecturer in music at St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra. In 2005 she was elected to Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy of creative artists.

Following Fleischmann’s retirement in 1987 as Director of the Festival, the format of the Seminar changed, and after undergoing a number of further transformations, it was temporarily suspended in 2004. In 2008, a revitalized version of the Seminar of Contemporary Choral Music was reintroduced into the Festival’s calendar of events.

Séamas de Barra