The development of the Irish art music tradition between 1890-1990: Irish composers and their creative achievement in social and cultural context.

This project aims to survey the development of Irish composition over the long twentieth century. Research in this area has begun to gather momentum only recently: despite the existence of an extensive corpus of work by native composers, their careers and creative achievements have largely been subject to critical neglect. At present, there is a striking paucity of publications in the field. The last general history of Irish music was published as long ago as 1905; consequently the production of a new history detailing significant developments over the last hundred years is a matter of some urgency. Very few studies of Irish composers have appeared in print and, in many cases, their music remains unknown. Most of it has never been published or recorded for commercial release and can only be consulted in archives, rendering it comparatively inaccessible even to the specialist, let alone the general reader or scholars in other disciplines - a fact that has tended to perpetuate its ongoing neglect. Although in recent years several distinguished scholars (such as Axel Klein) have produced valuable work, much preparatory research remains to be done before we can arrive at a balanced and comprehensive assessment of native compositional activity during this period.

This project seeks to make a significant contribution to scholarship through research in the following areas:

1. The careers and creative achievements of some key Irish composers between 1890 and 1990, such as Michele Esposito, Frederick May, Brian Boydell and Gerard Victory, all of whom made important contributions in an Irish context and whose work has never been subject to thoroughgoing critical assessment. In each case, this will involve original biographical research and a close study of their music.
2. The intellectual and cultural climate influencing the emergence and subsequent development of an indigenous modern school of composition, taking into account such phenomena as the role played by Irish cultural and political nationalism from the 1890s onwards; the impact of the Anglo-Irish Literary Renaissance and the Gaelic League during the same period; composers' attempts to project a distinctively 'Irish' or 'Celtic' identity in musical terms; an exploration of musical constructs of 'Celticism', involving a comparative study with contemporary compositional activity in Britain; the ambivalent attitudes of Irish composers towards English culture, both during the colonial period and subsequently; continental stylistic influences, particularly that of the central European avant-garde.
3. The material circumstances of Irish musical life during this period: the historical reasons for the marginalised position of art music in cultural life; the underdeveloped state of musical education and performance infrastructures; the limited opportunities available to composers to secure performances abroad and place their work with publishers; the impact of these restrictions on the nature of the music that they wrote; the resultant emigration of many prominent figures and the contribution of this Irish musical Diaspora to cultural life in Britain.

The work undertaken by the researchers will ultimately result in the contribution of several chapters to a projected new history of modern Irish composition and three monographs on individual figures, as well a further monograph on musical constructs of Irish/Celtic identity. In addition, the investigators intend to give papers on allied subjects at conferences and produce several articles for peer-reviewed musicological journals. This area of research is a specialism of the music department at Durham and both investigators have already made notable contributions to the field of study. The outcomes of this project will be of landmark significance and will be of relevance to scholars working in a wide variety of disciplines, including British music, Irish cultural studies and imperial/postcolonial studies.