John Buckley (b.1951) Piano Music Silent for many years and with few composers that immediately spring to mind, Ireland now has a new generation of young...
John
Buckley (b.1951)
Piano
Music
Silent for
many years and with few composers that immediately spring to mind, Ireland now
has a new generation of young composers beginning to make its mark in the
second half of the twentieth century. Tempting as it may be to look to the
Nocturnes of John Field for the inspiration of all Irish piano music, one of
the new and original voices, far from the days of those early Romantics, is
that of John Buckley.
Born in
County Limerick, between hills, seas and the Shannon, far from the urban bustle
that shapes so much contemporary music, Buckley studied flute and composition
at the Royal Irish Academy of Music with Doris Keogh and James Wilson. After
studies in Ireland he became a pupil of the Welsh composer, Alun Hoddinott and
the American innovationist, John Cage. Initially a teacher, after 1982 he
devoted himself to full-time composition. He has produced a wide range of works
ranging from solo piano pieces to full scale orchestral works, of which his
First Symphony and Organ Concerto have already appeared on Marco Polo (8.223876).
Success can
be judged by the commissions Buckley has been given, not only the Organ
Concerto written for the National Concert Hall in Dublin, but also such diverse
works as Rivers of Paradise ( for the official opening of the University of
Limerick Concert Hall), the chamber opera The Words upon the Window Pane (for
Opera Theatre Company) and the Maynooth Te Deum (written for the bicentenary of
the Maynooth College and first performed in the National Concert Hall in 1995).
More recently, Buckley has written his Saxophone Concerto for Kenneth Edge and
the Irish Chamber Orchestra as well as the orchestral A Mirror into the Light,
composed as recently as 1999 for Camerata Ireland.
This music
is not just a result of local commissions or personal inspiration, but has also
represented Ireland on five occasions at the International Rostrum of Composers
and at three of the ISCM festivals. His score A Thin Hala af Blue represented
RTÉ at the 1990 Prix Italia and he has won major awards including the Varming
Prize (1977), the Macaulay Fellowship (1978), Arts Council's Composers' Bursary
(1982) and the Toonder Award (1991). In 1984 John Buckley was elected to the
Irish Academy of creative arts, the Aosdana, and his music has been performed
and broadcast in more than forty countries.
This second
CD for Marco Polo concentrates on music for solo piano, much inspired by poets
such as Yeats, Shelley, Gray and Emily Bronto together with the countryside and
legends of native Ireland.
The Three
Preludes were first performed in the National Concert Hall, Dublin, in March
1996. Opening with a lyrical and expressive piece developing from a flourish to
a tranquil, reflective conclusion, this is based on Yeats' poem He Wishes for
the Cloths of Heaven. The second Prelude is a perpetuum mobile deriving from
words to Shelley's Ode to the West Wind. Finally comes a tribute to James
Wilson for his seventieth birthday. Inspired by Emily Bronte, it is based on fragments
from Wilson's song-cycle for soprano and chamber orchestra, Emily Singing.
And Wake
the Purple Year began as apiece for solo harpsichord, commissioned by Newpark
Music Centre and dedicated to Paula Best, who gave the first performance in
1985. This piano version was prepared in 1986 for Gillian Smith. The theme is
heard above a tremolo accompaniment and is inspired by Gray's poem Ode to
Spring.
Buckley's
daughter, Deirdre, and her eleventh birthday were inspiration for the Three
Lullabies for Deirdre. Appropriately for a young girl, the music is straightforward
and simple. a gentle arpeggio opening, chorale with spiky interjections and a
nostalgic jazz-tinged melody.
The Silver
Apples of the Moon is again inspired by Ireland's own W.B. Yeats and was commissioned
by the 1994 GPA Dublin Piano Competition, its first performance being given by
Paolo Cremonte.
In 1988
Winter Music was completed to a commission by the pianist Anthony Byrne and
first performed in London's Purcell Room. Representative of that season, the
piece is archlike in structure and derived almost entirely from the same basic
material. It begins with a portrait of the American Wood Thrush, as portrayed
by Messiaen in his ornithological soundscape Oiseaux exotiques. The irregular
pace quickens, builds to a climax and subsides to a quieter middle section, after
which the opening fanfares return before the work ends with a reflective
conclusion.
The final
piece on this CD was commissioned by Cardiff University and premièred in 1979
by Martin Jones. Oileain (Islands) is based on an Irish saga The Voyage of
Maelduin, the tale of a hero who sails with seventeen companions to find his
father's killer. The voyage visits thirty-one islands, of which Buckley portrays
four.
First an
island of horse-like beasts tearing the flesh from each other's sides, giving
rise to piano clusters and extremes in the instrument's range. Second comes an island
of black mourners inspiring a sombre cortège where one of the comrades weeps
until unrecognizable and is abandoned. Third an island with white and black sheep
where occasionally the shepherd mixes the two which change colour, represented
by shifting musical gestures. Finally, the island where inhabitants cry
"it is they", music based on octaves for the development of the
section.
John
Buckley
Ed. David
Doughty