Choral/Vocal
Below I highlight a selection of works from this category which includes works for mixed choirs both acappella and accompanied, as well as works for solo voice with accompaniment. For a full list of choral/vocal works please visit:
a Choral Introit for SATB choir and organ
Dur. 3’30”
Commissioned and premiered by the Charles Wood Singers with organist Philip Scriven and conductor David Hill in St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral, Armagh on 24th August 2022 - broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 Choral Evensong and with repeat performances on 26th and 28th August and a broadcast on the 28th August.
A setting of Psalm 139:8-12:
You Are There (2022)
“If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
In the dark pine-wood (2021)
for SAATB choir and obbligato horn
Dur. 4’
Commissioned by Desmond Earley and the Choral Scholars of University College Dublin for a CD release Chamber Music by James Joyce: Volume I on Signum Classics UK in September 2024.
Poem XX from Chamber Music by James Joyce
In 1907 James Joyce wrote a letter to his brother expressing the hope that his poems from Chamber Music would one day be put to music: ‘I hope someone will do so, someone that knows English music such as I like’. With the aim of fulfilling the wishes of James Joyce, Desmond Earley and the Choral Scholars of University College Dublin commissioned 38 composers from around the world. They are the first choral ensemble to wrap Joyce’s ‘suite of songs’ in an Irish choral voice.
In the dark pine-wood uses the resonant textures of an obbligato horn as a shadowy background to evoke the sense of the forest: realm of love, lust, secrets (and natural paradoxes - it is dark at noon - which echo and endorse the sensual puzzles at play).
for mixed choir a-cappella
Dur. 10’
Commissioned by the Terezín Music Foundation to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Terezín and the end of World War ll and premiered by the Boston Children’s Chorus with conductor Anthony Trecek-King in Prague’s Spanish Synagogue on 29th June 2015 with subsequent performances at the Lobkowicz Palace on 1st July and Chor@Berlin Spezial at Radialsystem V Berlin on 4th July 2015.
Poem by Justin Quinn and featured in the anthology Liberation: New Works of Freedom from International Renowned Poets.
Regreen (2015)
At its inception in 1991, Terezin Music Foundation took on the urgent work of recovering, preserving and performing the music created by the Terezín musicians and artists. Inspired by them, TMF commission emerging composers to create a vibrant memorial, tribute and voice to those who perished in the Holocaust and to all who are silenced by war or genocide. TMF commissions strive to fulfil the unrealised artistic and mentoring roles of the Terezín composers.
In 2015, TMF launched their acclaimed LiberArt project, honouring the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camps and the end of WWII. Eighty-two poems about freedom were commissioned from sixty-three of the world's most renowned poets and a number of significant emerging composers were commissioned to set these works to music. Regreen is a setting of Irish poet Justin Quinn’s poem and received its American premiere on 5th November 2016 by Ghostlight Chorus, conducted by Evelyn Troester DeGarf, in the Bohemian National Hall in NYC.
Regreen (extract)
Green comes even so
from cracked concrete, bare
black branches. The doe
rocks to the roe-deer.
Pollen everywhere,
on me, even here,
as I walk past the fields, along the road…..
Justin Quinn
for SATB choir a-cappella
Dur. 5’
Commissioned by RTÉ lyric fm and premiered at the opening night of Chamber Choir Ireland’s 2004 Autumn Irish tour “Love’s Labours” in the National Gallery of Ireland, 30th September by Chamber Choir Ireland, conducted by Celso Antunes.
Poem by Pat Boran.
Bread (2004)
Bread is a RTÉ lyric fm co-commission, involving the pairing of a composer and a poet as a way of reflecting the mix of music and words associated with the Quiet Quartet radio essay series on Lyric Notes. The idea for Bread came from thinking about the way Ireland has changed in recent years. A simple thing like bread, common to almost all cultures, when one thinks about all its different types the world over, offers a way to mark and celebrate a new diversity on the island. The poem consists of two parts, the first listing the names for all the different types of bread, reminding us of other cultures, and off difference, but also serving to celebrate a common and often sacred coming-together of people. Here I rhythmically play with spoken and sung sounds, often in unison, to stress these colourful names.
The second part reflects the baking of bread within the Irish family ‘the beating, the kneading, the rolling, the baking of bread’ are, at once, magical and very ordinary, necessary acts. Bread was released on the CMC CD Contemporary Music from Ireland Volume 5.
Bread (extract)
Barrel loaf, butter loaf, dinkel bread, bagel,
brotchen, ciabatta, focaccia, brioche,
cholla, challah, povatica, pretzel,
calzone, pita bread, pizza bread, batch….
Somewhere in a house near here
a woman lifts dough to a board on a table,
a man spreads flour with a flick of his wrist,
a child stands by with the butter and milk,
O the beating, the kneading, the rolling, the baking of bread.
The only working time machine is the smell
of warm bread cooling near a window...
four songs for baritone and piano
Dur. 10’
Commissioned by the Belfast Music Society to mark BMS’s centenary year and recorded by Ben McAteer and Iain Burnside at the Northern Lights Mini-Fest for broadcast on the BMS digital channel on 22nd October 2020.
Poems by Ciaran Carson.
Eesti (2020)
The four poems that I selected show Ciaran Carson’s remarkable control of form and rhythm. The first three short songs are taken from his collection On The Night Watch. Each poem has 14 short lines written in couplet form with rarely more than two or three words per line. In the final longer song Eesti, a visit to Estonia and hearing church bells in Tallinn lead the poet into the ‘bronze-Dark, shrines and niches’ and a memory of going to first Mass with his father:
‘This red-letter day would not be written, had I not
wandered through the land of Eesti.
I asked my father how he thought it went. He said to
me in Irish, Listen: Éist.’
As part of NI Opera Festival of Voice, Eesti was recorded at Rosemary Street First Presbyterian Church by Ben McAteer and Simon Lepper and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 19th October 2021.
for voice and piano
Dur. 3’30”
Recorded by Susan McKeown and Isabelle O’Connell for a CD release on Hibernian Music “Singing in the Dark” CD
Poem by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill - translated from the Irish by Paul Muldoon.
The Crack in the Stairs (2010)
The Crack in the Stairs (extract)
There’s a crack in the flight of stairs
at my very core
that I simply can’t get round or traverse.
For days on end, I can do little more
than rummage and root
through the gloom
of the cellar, or try out
the dusty furniture I trundle from room to room
to lower room: there’s a rose withered
in its pot; a china dog slumped
on the mantel; an oleograph of the Sacred Heart
and, before it, a paraffin lamp
that’s long since snuffed it. The drapes
have been shredded by moths, as well
as the nightly phantom-troop
who leave a familiar, all-pervasive smell…