Neo-Irish Synthesis Composition: A Presentation of Figure-Based Contemporary Cross- Fertilisation of European Classical and Irish Traditional Music

A lecture by Daniel Anthony Vives-Lynch (Composer) as part of the School of Creative Arts Research Forum.

This lecture will present completed historical and compositional research analysis and findings relating to the creation of a synthesised style of Irish music composition drawing from both a European classical and an Irish traditional genres of artistic expression and predicated on a figure-based building-block approach to composition.
Within the history of Irish musical composition there has existed an ever-present clash between Irish traditional musical performance and the presence of classical composition on the island of Ireland; denoting Ireland as an outlier in relation to the formation of regional styles of classical composition in nineteenth-century Europe. Such a clash is rooted in colonial practices of cherry-picking, tokenism, and the fetishisation of Irish traditional music but has gradually warmed over centuries into a now more democratic treatment of the Irish folk tradition. Irish traditional music is now observed in a more egalitarian manner within the socio-political context of a pluralist and modernised Ireland which has as a result induced a more analytical and authentic engagement with Irish traditional music within Irish classical compositional contexts facilitating its long overdue assimilation and potential synthesis.
An example of such analytical engagement is the creation of synthesis figures within acting as building blocks of musical composition combining microstructural and macrostructural aspects of both Irish traditional and European classical compositional structure. This presentation will present a selection of personally constructed synthesis figures, demonstrating their ability to facilitate a complete permeation of an Irish traditional-classical synthesis style within the musical identity of a composition and will conclude with a digital premiere performance of a six-minute Ensemble for Flute, Fiddle, Harp, and Piano.

About the speaker:
Daniel Anthony Vives-Lynch is a twenty-four-year-old Dublin-based Irish and Catalan composer currently completing a PhD in composition under Dr. Evangelia Rigaki in Trinity College Dublin on the synthesis of Irish traditional and European classical composition. Daniel began his music education in England with piano and violin studies (2007- 2010) and enrolled at the Academy for Music and Word in Mol after moving to Belgium in 2010. There he completed nine years of study in piano, viola, music theory, musicology, and composition. In Ireland, he completed a Bachelor of Arts in Music and History in 2022 as a non-foundation scholar, whereupon he received the Geoffrey Singleton Prize in Music and the Gerard Victory Composition Award. Daniel has composed instrumental and choral works, electro-acoustic compositions, and (recently) a forty-five-minute symphony. His works have been performed internationally in Ireland, Belgium, and Dubai.

Please indicate if you have any access requirements, such as ISL/English interpreting, so that we can facilitate you in attending this event. Contact: weiyi@tcd.ie