Home and away
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve really felt like Spring has sprung this past week! I’ve been back home in Belfast for a few weeks now, off on my Easter holidays. As always, I’m so happy to be back in Northern Ireland! As much as I love living in England, where I study, I’m a total homebird, and this place has my heart.
It wasn’t until I moved away that I really realised how much I loved it, and it’s also only recently that I have also been able to think about the impact and influence that my Northern Irish upbringing has had on my composing. I have recently been writing an essay for the ‘Words and Music’ module of my degree, about how the differences between the Irish and English languages effect the music composed by people who speak these languages. I’ve been finding a YouTube video by creator David Bruce Composer especially helpful. The video is entitled How the way you TALK affects the MUSIC you write | Music & Language, and I’d really encourage you to go away and watch it! It’s interesting to see his analysis on the fact that things like our individual language, accent and intonation can be heard in our music. It really made me wonder what qualities of my music have come because of the cultural surroundings I’ve been brought up in. Coming from Northern Ireland, potentially the influences on my music are more complicated. I’m one a small minority of people in the world who can say they have dual nationality, because, as a Northern Irish citizen, I have the right to be both British and Irish. I don’t think anyone would ever say that my music sounds distinctly Irish, but it’s more subtle things that have inherently informed the nature of my musicality.
I grew up in a family of singers, and therefore from a young age there would always be singing around the house, and as I moved through school, I was always in school choirs. Irish folk songs like Molly Malone, Star of the County Down and O Danny Boy were a big part of my childhood! I think the influence of Irish and Celtic folk song is one that can clearly be heard in my music.
I love beautiful lyrical and simplistic melodies that lilt and move naturally, while serving the words to make telling the story the priority. I also grew up in a Christian family, every week going to an evangelical church, and so contemporary praise music has also had many influences on my writing style. Songs by Christian artists like Keith and Kristyn Getty, Stuart Townend and Graham Kendrick were always on in the car and this was the sort of music I took my earliest interest in! Musically, many modern Christian songs are written around very simple harmony and basic chord patterns, and this has clearly influenced my approach to writing choral music. Quite often if I’m starting a new piece, I will start by simple assembling a few chords, which work as the initial ideas that I can then build a work on.
These are just a few of the musical influences I’ve had, but there are many more, all of which I’m so thankful for! As I have thought more recently about how these influences may have affected my writing, it has been so helpful for me in allowing me to understand more and more my compositional voice, and its uniqueness and strengths. It’s very easy as a composer to put yourself down all the time, and to get wrapped up in comparing yourself to the others around you who seem in your mind to be far better than you’ll ever be. But it’s a good thing to be yourself, and to celebrate the unique way that your music reveals who you are.
I apologise that this blog is shorter than usual- I’m been frantically writing my dissertation this week as my deadline is looming… so to make this more interesting I’m going to suggest a few choral pieces composed by Irish composers that I particularly love- please have a listen!
Michael McGlynn- Fill, Fill a Rún & The Flower of Magherally
Charles Wood- Hail, Gladdening Light
Charles Villiars Stanford- The Blue Bird
Written by Stephanie Devlin