Who'd Ever Think it Would Come to This?

Introduction

I first thought about this cantata while I was sitting at my desk in 2016. We are fortunate in UCD Archives to curate private paper collections which document, among other things, the Irish revolutionary period. The material in these collections ranges from official military reports to deeply personal letters and diaries; from maps, and photographs to coded cipher messages to smuggled instructions; from execution orders to memoirs. Our collections cover the gamut of feeling: pride, disgust, horror, certainty, fear, love, friendship, loss.

From this material the voices in the archive rise. They compete with each other, some are confident, some struggle to be heard. Some speak with authority for the many, some argue against the consensus. These voices are a cacophony.

It struck me that one way to hear these voices was to set them to music.

In 2016 it seemed to be generally understood that the 1916 commemorations were regarded as successful. I wondered what that meant. I wondered about the use of words like ‘remember’ and ‘memory’ in the context of commemoration and reflecting on the past, and I wondered about the discussion that was building about the challenges of commemorating the civil war.

Serendipity led me to meeting Ed Vulliamy in 2016, whose book The War is Dead, Long Live the War, I had recently read. A theme Ed explores in this book is the importance of commemoration to survivors of the war in Bosnia and the ongoing trauma caused by the pervasive absence of memorials and obstacles placed in the way of acts of commemoration. I thought about commemoration as an act of solidarity.

So, at dinner in my apartment in August 2016, Anne-Marie O’Farrell, Ed Vulliamy, Ciarán Crilly and Wolfgang Marx gathered and we mapped out an idea for a cantata (orchestra, choir, soloists) with a libretto written using the voices in the archives. Anne-Marie would write the music, Ed would write the libretto, Ciarán would conduct and Wolfgang would organise a symposium to reflect on this creative response to commemoration. Kellie Hughes joined our team in late 2021.

In 2019, the UCD Decade of Centenaries grant scheme awarded us funding to commission the cantata. Then the pandemic hit and everything stopped. Instead of having two and half years to write the libretto and the music, that got telescoped into just about a year.

We received further support from Arts Council Ireland, UCD College of Arts & Humanities, UCD University Relations, Resurgam, and Lyric FM. We have an incredible list of performers and a date in the diary. What a journey.

It is an immense privilege to work with this group of people, all of whom I am honoured to call friends.

Kate Manning
Principal Archivist,
UCD Archives

I first thought about this cantata while I was sitting at my desk in 2016. We are fortunate in UCD Archives to curate private paper collections which document, among other things, the Irish revolutionary period. The material in these collections ranges from official military reports to deeply personal letters and diaries; from maps, and photographs to coded cipher messages to smuggled instructions; from execution orders to memoirs. Our collections cover the gamut of feeling: pride, disgust, horror, certainty, fear, love, friendship, loss.

From this material the voices in the archive rise. They compete with each other, some are confident, some struggle to be heard. Some speak with authority for the many, some argue against the consensus. These voices are a cacophony.

It struck me that one way to hear these voices was to set them to music.

In 2016 it seemed to be generally understood that the 1916 commemorations were regarded as successful. I wondered what that meant. I wondered about the use of words like ‘remember’ and ‘memory’ in the context of commemoration and reflecting on the past, and I wondered about the discussion that was building about the challenges of commemorating the civil war.

Serendipity led me to meeting Ed Vulliamy in 2016, whose book The War is Dead, Long Live the War, I had recently read. A theme Ed explores in this book is the importance of commemoration to survivors of the war in Bosnia and the ongoing trauma caused by the pervasive absence of memorials and obstacles placed in the way of acts of commemoration. I thought about commemoration as an act of solidarity.

So, at dinner in my apartment in August 2016, Anne-Marie O’Farrell, Ed Vulliamy, Ciarán Crilly and Wolfgang Marx gathered and we mapped out an idea for a cantata (orchestra, choir, soloists) with a libretto written using the voices in the archives. Anne-Marie would write the music, Ed would write the libretto, Ciarán would conduct and Wolfgang would organise a symposium to reflect on this creative response to commemoration. Kellie Hughes joined our team in late 2021.

In 2019, the UCD Decade of Centenaries grant scheme awarded us funding to commission the cantata. Then the pandemic hit and everything stopped. Instead of having two and half years to write the libretto and the music, that got telescoped into just about a year.

We received further support from Arts Council Ireland, UCD College of Arts and Humanities, UCD University Relations, Resurgam, and Lyric FM. We have an incredible list of performers and a date in the diary. What a journey.

It is an immense privilege to work with this group of people, all of whom I am honoured to call friends.

The origin of the title
“Who’d Ever Think it Would Come to This?”

The title is a quote from Ernie O’Malley in reference to the crowds watching captured defenders of the Four Courts being marched through the streets of Dublin, following their seizure by government forces. From O’Malley’s Singing Flame: A Memoir of the Civil War, 1922–24.

Creative Team

Composed by
Anne-Marie O’Farrell

Libretto by
Ed Vulliamy
Adapted for Performance by Kellie Hughes

Conductor
Ciaran Crilly

Symposium Convener
Wolfgang Marx

Principal Archivist, UCD Archives
Kate Manning

Anne-Marie O’Farrell

Composer

Dr Anne-Marie O’Farrell has a substantial output of commissioned work for orchestra, choir, soloists, chamber groups and young performers. Her works have been performed by Ireland’s RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the University of Limerick Orchestra, the Co-Orchestra Dublin, the BBC Singers, Chamber Choir Ireland, the RTÉ ConTempo Quartet and numerous international solo artists. She is the winner of the BBC Baroque Remixed composition competition with her orchestral work, Rann Dó Trí. For three years she was Composer in Residence at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, funded by the Arts Council of Ireland in association with the Lime Tree Theatre.

Numerous and wide-ranging commissions include a choral suite Sevenses for Sing Ireland, Eitilt for the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra for the New Music Dublin Festival, Music Network’s commission for members of the Vienna Philharmonic, Dionysis Grammenos and Anneleen Lenaerts, and a harp concerto for the RTÉ Concert Orchestra commissioned by RTÉ Lyric FM. She holds a PhD in composition from Queen’s University, Belfast where she studied with Professor Piers Hellawell, and a first class honours MA in composition from the NUI Maynooth. Her compositions are featured on examination and competition syllabuses around the world. She has lectured for many years in composition at the TU Dublin Conservatoire, and is currently Head of Harp at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. www.annemarieofarrell.com

Composer

Dr Anne-Marie O’Farrell has a substantial output of commissioned work for orchestra, choir, soloists, chamber groups and young performers. Her works have been performed by Ireland’s RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the University of Limerick Orchestra, the Co-Orchestra Dublin, the BBC Singers, Chamber Choir Ireland, the RTÉ ConTempo Quartet and numerous international solo artists. She is the winner of the BBC Baroque Remixed composition competition with her orchestral work, Rann Dó Trí. For three years she was Composer in Residence at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, funded by the Arts Council of Ireland in association with the Lime Tree Theatre.

Numerous and wide-ranging commissions include a choral suite Sevenses for Sing Ireland, Eitilt for the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra for the New Music Dublin Festival, Music Network’s commission for members of the Vienna Philharmonic, Dionysis Grammenos and Anneleen Lenaerts, and a harp concerto for the RTÉ Concert Orchestra commissioned by RTÉ Lyric FM. She holds a PhD in composition from Queen’s University, Belfast where she studied with Professor Piers Hellawell, and a first class honours MA in composition from the NUI Maynooth. Her compositions are featured on examination and competition syllabuses around the world. She has lectured for many years in composition at the TU Dublin Conservatoire, and is currently Head of Harp at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. www.annemarieofarrell.com

Ed Vulliamy

Librettist

Ed Vulliamy was born and raised in then effervescent Notting Hill, London, during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Described by the New York Times as ‘a latter-day Graham Greene’, he has been an international journalist for more than 40 years, with Granada Television’s flagship documentary programme World In Action, then The Guardian and The Observer newspapers of London as a foreign correspondent and combat journalist for three decades. He won a Royal Television Society Award for a film about the North of Ireland, and was between 1992 and 2005 awarded all major prizes in British print journalism for his coverage of wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992–5), Iraq (1991, then from 2003), and organised crime, including the coveted James Cameron Award in 1994. He was the first journalist since Nuremberg to testify at an international war crimes trial, as witness for the prosecution—in nine cases against war criminals from Bosnia’s carnage—at the ICTY in The Hague. His book Amexica: War Along The Borderline, about drug cartel wars in Mexico, won the Ryszard Kapuśiński Prize for literary reportage and The War is Dead, Long Live The War, Bosnia: The Reckoning was shortlisted for the same award. He has also written books about painting and music.

Vulliamy was played by Rhys Ifans in Gavin Hood’s 2019 Hollywood movie Official Secrets, starring Keira Knightley, about the illegality of the US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. He now writes mostly for the New York Review of Books, currently on Native American and indigenous justice, and about music and painting. His book When Words Fail concerns music during, against and about war.

Vulliamy’s mother, the late, renowned children’s author and illustrator Shirley Hughes CBE, is described by Philip Pullman as ‘a national treasure’; but Vulliamy prefers to consider himself a national disgrace, and radical liberal republican. He supports Juventus FC and has two daughters.

Librettist

Ed Vulliamy was born and raised in then effervescent Notting Hill, London, during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Described by the New York Times as ‘a latter-day Graham Greene’, he has been an international journalist for more than 40 years, with Granada Television’s flagship documentary programme World In Action, then The Guardian and The Observer newspapers of London as a foreign correspondent and combat journalist for three decades. He won a Royal Television Society Award for a film about the North of Ireland, and was between 1992 and 2005 awarded all major prizes in British print journalism for his coverage of wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992–5), Iraq (1991, then from 2003), and organised crime, including the coveted James Cameron Award in 1994. He was the first journalist since Nuremberg to testify at an international war crimes trial, as witness for the prosecution—in nine cases against war criminals from Bosnia’s carnage—at the ICTY in The Hague. His book Amexica: War Along The Borderline, about drug cartel wars in Mexico, won the Ryszard Kapuśiński Prize for literary reportage and The War is Dead, Long Live The War, Bosnia: The Reckoning was shortlisted for the same award. He has also written books about painting and music.

Vulliamy was played by Rhys Ifans in Gavin Hood’s 2019 Hollywood movie Official Secrets, starring Keira Knightley, about the illegality of the US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. He now writes mostly for the New York Review of Books, currently on Native American and indigenous justice, and about music and painting. His book When Words Fail concerns music during, against and about war.
Vulliamy’s mother, the late, renowned children’s author and illustrator Shirley Hughes CBE, is described by Philip Pullman as ‘a national treasure’; but Vulliamy prefers to consider himself a national disgrace, and radical liberal republican. He supports Juventus FC and has two daughters.

Kellie Hughes

Theatre Artist

Kellie is a theatre artist working for over twenty years as a director, writer, performer and collaborator. Her work has toured extensively, both nationally and internationally. Highlights include; Galway International Arts Festival, Dublin Theatre Festival, The National Theatre, London, Barbican Arts Centre, London, FESTCO International Theatre Festival, Bucharest, Istanbul Theatre Festival, Turkey, Tampere Theatre Festival, Finland, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, Adelaide Theatre Festival and Sydney Theatre Company, Australia.

Recent theatre collaborations include Striking Back, a new play co-written with playwright Mathew Spangler, based on the experiences of activist Mary Manning during the Dunnes Stores anti-apartheid strikes in the 1980s. Striking Back featured as a reading in Dublin Theatre Festival 2020 and Hinterland West Literary Festival, San Francisco 2019. CONSTANCE, created in collaboration with composer Michael Rooney and commissioned by Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo, examining the life and legacy of radical revolutionary Constance de Markievicz. CONSTANCE premiered in December 2019, in a site-specific performance in Lissadell Church and was a part of the IMBOLC International Arts Festival in 2020.

Other collaborations of note include Death At Intervals, adapted from José Saramago’s novel of the same name, Samuel Beckett’s prose piece Lessness and Olwen Fouéré’s award winning riverrun, adapted from the voice of the river Liffey/Life in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.

Current works include, an immersive installation for the Museum of Literature (MoLI) based on Beckett’s masterpiece The Unnamable and Waking EVA, a new music commission from the Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo, based on the life of poet and activist Eva Gore Booth.

Kellie is Artistic Director of the UCD Ad Astra Academy for the Performing Arts.

Theatre Artist

Kellie is a theatre artist working for over twenty years as a director, writer, performer and collaborator. Her work has toured extensively, both nationally and internationally. Highlights include; Galway International Arts Festival, Dublin Theatre Festival, The National Theatre, London, Barbican Arts Centre, London, FESTCO International Theatre Festival, Bucharest, Istanbul Theatre Festival, Turkey, Tampere Theatre Festival, Finland, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, Adelaide Theatre Festival and Sydney Theatre Company, Australia.

Recent theatre collaborations include Striking Back, a new play co-written with playwright Mathew Spangler, based on the experiences of activist Mary Manning during the Dunnes Stores anti-apartheid strikes in the 1980s. Striking Back featured as a reading in Dublin Theatre Festival 2020 and Hinterland West Literary Festival, San Francisco 2019. CONSTANCE, created in collaboration with composer Michael Rooney and commissioned by Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo, examining the life and legacy of radical revolutionary Constance de Markievicz. CONSTANCE premiered in December 2019, in a site-specific performance in Lissadell Church and was a part of the IMBOLC International Arts Festival in 2020.

Other collaborations of note include Death At Intervals, adapted from José Saramago’s novel of the same name, Samuel Beckett’s prose piece Lessness and Olwen Fouéré’s award winning riverrun, adapted from the voice of the river Liffey/Life in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.

Current works include, an immersive installation for the Museum of Literature (MoLI) based on Beckett’s masterpiece The Unnamable and Waking EVA, a new music commission from the Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo, based on the life of poet and activist Eva Gore Booth.

Kellie is Artistic Director of the UCD Ad Astra Academy for the Performing Arts.

Ciaran Crilly

Conductor

Ciarán Crilly is Head of the School of Music and Assistant Professor of Orchestral Conducting in UCD. He has been Artistic Director of the UCD Symphony Orchestra since its foundation in 2002, conducting over 50 performances, including concerts in Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden and the UK. He has delivered a range of taught modules on music analysis, orchestration, performance, and twentieth-century music. He has also been a lecturer in orchestral conducting for the BMus Performance Degree at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and for the MA in Film Scoring at Pulse College, Windmill Lane Studios. He is currently Chair of the Council of Heads of Music in Higher Education (CHMHE).

Ciarán has directed concerts in Ireland and abroad with the Baden Sinfonietta, Dublin Baroque Players, Dublin Screen Orchestra, Hibernian Orchestra, Miró Chamber Orchestra, RIAM Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Savaria Symphony Orchestra and Symphony New Hampshire. He was Principal Guest Conductor of the Dublin Symphony Orchestra (2004–07) and Principal Conductor of the Dublin Orchestral Players (2007–15). Through his work with the EAR Ensemble, Hilltown Music Festival, TCD Composer’s Forum Ensemble and the UCD Ad Astra Academy, he has been involved in the commissioning and performance of many new works. He has extensive experience as a studio conductor, recording for feature films, live radio, and Irish, Korean & US television shows. He has been engaged as a conductor for a diverse range of artists, including the Bootleg Beatles, Jerry Fish, Marvin Hammlisch, Jack Lukeman and Bill Whelan. As a violin and viola player, he has regularly performed with several orchestras, including the Irish Film Orchestra, Marlborough Baroque, Orlando Chamber Orchestra and RTÉ Concert Orchestra, and popular musicians, notably Elton John, Sinead O’Connor, Lisa Stansfield and Paul Weller.

Ciaran’s academic work has included contributions to conferences in Ireland, Spain, the UK and the United States, and articles on the composers Satie, Stravinsky, Ligeti, Tchaikovsky and Bernard Herrmann. He is currently co-editing a multi-author volume for Routledge on contrasting approaches to modern conducting with Dr Róisín Blunnie from DCU. Upcoming engagements include performances with the Irish Doctors Orchestra, DYO Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Academic Orchestra in Sweden, plus the UCD Symphony Orchestra’s 20th Anniversary Concert at the National Concert Hall in April 2023.

Conductor

Ciarán Crilly is Head of the School of Music and Assistant Professor of Orchestral Conducting in UCD. He has been Artistic Director of the UCD Symphony Orchestra since its foundation in 2002, conducting over 50 performances, including concerts in Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden and the UK. He has delivered a range of taught modules on music analysis, orchestration, performance, and twentieth-century music. He has also been a lecturer in orchestral conducting for the BMus Performance Degree at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and for the MA in Film Scoring at Pulse College, Windmill Lane Studios. He is currently Chair of the Council of Heads of Music in Higher Education (CHMHE).

Ciarán has directed concerts in Ireland and abroad with the Baden Sinfonietta, Dublin Baroque Players, Dublin Screen Orchestra, Hibernian Orchestra, Miró Chamber Orchestra, RIAM Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Savaria Symphony Orchestra and Symphony New Hampshire. He was Principal Guest Conductor of the Dublin Symphony Orchestra (2004–07) and Principal Conductor of the Dublin Orchestral Players (2007–15). Through his work with the EAR Ensemble, Hilltown Music Festival, TCD Composer’s Forum Ensemble and the UCD Ad Astra Academy, he has been involved in the commissioning and performance of many new works. He has extensive experience as a studio conductor, recording for feature films, live radio, and Irish, Korean and US television shows. He has been engaged as a conductor for a diverse range of artists, including the Bootleg Beatles, Jerry Fish, Marvin Hammlisch, Jack Lukeman and Bill Whelan. As a violin and viola player, he has regularly performed with several orchestras, including the Irish Film Orchestra, Marlborough Baroque, Orlando Chamber Orchestra and RTÉ Concert Orchestra, and popular musicians, notably Elton John, Sinead O’Connor, Lisa Stansfield and Paul Weller.

Ciaran’s academic work has included contributions to conferences in Ireland, Spain, the UK and the United States, and articles on the composers Satie, Stravinsky, Ligeti, Tchaikovsky and Bernard Herrmann. He is currently co-editing a multi-author volume for Routledge on contrasting approaches to modern conducting with Dr Róisín Blunnie from DCU. Upcoming engagements include performances with the Irish Doctors Orchestra, DYO Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Academic Orchestra in Sweden, plus the UCD Symphony Orchestra’s 20th Anniversary Concert at the National Concert Hall in April 2023.

Wolfgang Marx

Symposium Convener

Wolfgang Marx has been a lecturer at the UCD School of Music since 2002. His areas of interest include music and death, the music of György Ligeti, music and post-truth and the theory of musical genres. Particularly, in the context of the first two topics, he is very interested in how music relates to issues of memory, commemoration and identity, and has most recently explored these questions in relation to composers such as Ligeti and Bernd Alois Zimmermann.

Symposium Convener

Wolfgang Marx has been a lecturer at the UCD School of Music since 2002. His areas of interest include music and death, the music of György Ligeti, music and post-truth and the theory of musical genres. Particularly, in the context of the first two topics, he is very interested in how music relates to issues of memory, commemoration and identity, and has most recently explored these questions in relation to composers such as Ligeti and Bernd Alois Zimmermann.

Kate Manning

Principal Archivist, UCD Archives

Kate is a UCD graduate (BA (Hons) English and Music, 1990, MA in Modern English and American Literature, 1992, Higher Diploma in Archival Studies, 1997). She has served on the committees of the Irish Society for Archives and the Archives and Records Association, Ireland and was the reviews editor for the Journal of the Society of Archivists.

Kate was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1999 which enabled her to spend 2000 at the University of Pittsburgh as a Visiting Scholar, working with Prof. Richard Cox. She has worked as an archivist at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin and in UCD Archives, where she is now Principal Archivist. She was appointed as a member of the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 2017.

Kate served as chairperson of Pipeworks and sang for nine years with the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir. She is now a board member of the UCD Symphony Orchestra.

Principal Archivist,
UCD Archives

Kate is a UCD graduate (BA (Hons) English and Music, 1990, MA in Modern English and American Literature, 1992, Higher Diploma in Archival Studies, 1997). She has served on the committees of the Irish Society for Archives and the Archives and Records Association, Ireland and was the reviews editor for the Journal of the Society of Archivists.

Kate was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1999 which enabled her to spend 2000 at the University of Pittsburgh as a Visiting Scholar, working with Prof. Richard Cox. She has worked as an archivist at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin and in UCD Archives, where she is now Principal Archivist. She was appointed as a member of the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 2017.

Kate served as chairperson of Pipeworks and sang for nine years with the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir. She is now a board member of the UCD Symphony Orchestra.

Presented by UCD Archives and UCD School of Music

Supported by Arts Council, UCD Ad Astra Academy, UCD College of Arts and Humanities, UCD Decade of Centenaries, UCD University Relations, RTÉ Lyric FM, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Resurgam