Composer: Deirdre Gribbin (b. 1967)
Performance date: 30/06/2014
Venue: St. Brendan’s Church
Composition Year: 2009
Duration: 00:06:44
Recording Engineer: Anton Timoney, RTÉ lyric fm
Instrumentation Category:Small Mixed Ensemble
Instrumentation Other: S-solo, hrp, 2vn, va, vc
Artists:
Vanbrugh Quartet (Gregory Ellis, Keith Pascoe [violins] Simon Aspell [viola] Christopher Marwood [cello]) -
[quartet]
Clíona Doris -
[harp]
Ann De Renais -
[soprano]
In 2008, I was
commissioned by Queen’s University to write Anahorish
as a gift to Heaney on his receiving a lifetime achievement award. The poetry
for me had its own musical language, its own world, which seemed complete. But
I was always drawn to the images and simplicity of Anahorish. Some of my
earliest childhood memories are tinged with the place too. My father was born
there and most of the hugely extended Gribbin family still work the land there.
Revisiting the poem unlocked images of Aunt Trea’s darkened farm byre with
huddled cattle breathing heavy in the winter air, of muddy tracks and country
smells, of butter being churned and of sounds so still I’d almost forgotten
them.
Copyright © 2024 West Cork Music. All rights reserved.
Designed and developed by Matrix Internet
