Books/Book Chapters

The Carnival King

Ian Kilroy — Tue, 07 May 2013 01:15:11 PDT

A play in two acts. A macabre farce about murder and the search for justice during carnival time.

Music in Alternative Spaces

Seán Mac Erlaine — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:50:22 PDT

Chapter from Dublin’s Future: New Visions for Ireland’s Capital City, Dr. Lorcan Sirr (ed.), (Dublin: The Liffey Press, 2011).

Dublin’s Future is a collection of essays, which, for the first time, recognises that the future of the island’s largest and most important urban conurbation is about more than the engineering of roads and the colouring of development plans.

Seán Mac Erlaine’s chapter explores the performance of music in Ireland’s capital city, documenting the currently vibrant use of alternative art spaces for niche markets of improvised, experimental and non-mainstream music practice.

Contributors are recognised authorities in their fields. They cross sectors of age, private and public, profit and non-profit, and each and every one has something interesting to say about the future of Dublin. Lorcan Sirr - on Cities; Peter Sirr - on Literature; Patrick Daly - on Energy; James Pike - on Housing; Dermot Lacey - on Politics; Paul Donnelly - on Theatre; Seán Mac Erlaine - on Music; Sinead Shannon - on Ageing; Helen Carey - on Visual Arts; Ciaran Fallon - on Movement; Gillian O'Brien - on Memory; Conor Skehan - on Economy; Deirdre Black - on Landscape; Katrina Goldstone - on Ethnic Legacy; Noel J. Brady - on Bridges and Crossings; Ferdinand von Prondzynski - on Education; Gregory Bracken - on the View from Without.

A Musical Journey 1890-1993: From Municipal School of Music to Dublin Institute of Technology

Jim Cooke — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 04:45:32 PDT

Minimalism: Towards a Definition

Adrian Smith — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 07:57:36 PDT

What is minimalism when applied to music? Is it an adequate term to describe this movement or does it have misleading connotations? Does it show parallels with its counterpart in the fine arts? In what context did it arise? These are all questions which I hope to answer in this paper. No single area of 20^th century music has provoked more terminological confusion than minimalism. Many of the attempts to define it have only focused on obvious surface features without exploring deeper into its aesthetic raison d’etre. The result of all this is that after thirty years of minimalist scholarship we have a universally accepted term which is still not fully understood.

This paper will be divided into two distinct but nonetheless intrinsically linked sections. The first half focuses on the inadequacy of ‘minimalism’ as a descriptive term when applied to music. I will argue this unsuitability through a number of points namely, that it;

a) is too specific to describe the overall movement

b) it assumes a false aesthetic

c) it has negative connotations when considered against the compositional climate in which it originated.

Ultimately however it is too late for a name change and we must accept what is now a common currency in musicological terms. Since this is the case and we are dealing with a universally accepted term, an understanding of the aesthetic behind the music itself and an awareness of the term’s limitations are necessary. This is the argument which will comprise the second half of this paper. I will examine the fundamental core of this music and put forward a definition based on a-teleological stasis which will adequately describe the music of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, the four composers most associated with the movement. This definition of minimalism will place it in a context which also considers the post-Cagian and post-war Serialist movements. Finally, I will define the distinction between ‘classic’ and ‘post’ minimalism which I feel is necessary to cater for the influences of minimalism in more recent composition.

Light, Space, Colour: The Impact of Abstract Visual Stimuli on the Aesthetic of Kevin Volans

Adrian Smith — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 07:39:30 PDT

An abstract painter in his youth, the music of the South African born Irish composer Kevin Volans has always exhibited a concern for visual stimuli. After almost a decade studying in Cologne under both Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel, his return to South Africa on recording field trips re-awakened his senses to both the musical and visual heritage of his homeland. While much of his music during the 1980s was best known for its incorporation of African music, his engagement with the organisational principles of African visual art forms initiated a preoccupation with visual models as a source of formal design. Since the early 1990s much of his music, in both its form and content, often mirrors the concerns and procedures of various schools of western abstract art. Cicada (1994), for two pianos, draws upon a range of visual models including the hatch paintings of Jasper Johns and the light installations of James Turrell while his String Quartet No. 6 (2000) has explored the spatial conceptions present in the work of the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko. Like his mentor Morton Feldman, Volans has used such models in a search for material which is completely ‘abstract’, suggestive of nothing beyond itself. This essay will attempt to map the trajectory of Volans’s engagement with the visual arts, from the African project through to the more direct influences of recent years. The main section of this chapter will be devoted to an analysis of his composition Cicada (1994) which attempts to translate the formal implications of a specific visual artwork into music.