Performers:
Kristine Balanas, violin
RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra
Gavin Maloney, conductor

Recorded at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on January 20th 2015, as part of the RTÉ NSO's Horizons Series

Träumerei, for violin and orchestra

Sarcasms, four pieces for orchestra

Performers:
RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra
Gavin Maloney, conductor

Recorded at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on January 20th 2015, as part of the RTÉ NSO's Horizons Series.

Sarcasms, for orchestra

Vain Prayer, choreographic poem for orchestra

Performers:
BBC Symphony Orchestra 
Pierre-André Valade, conductor

‘…how can that be wealth of which a man may have a great abundance and yet perish with hunger, like Midas in the fable, whose vain prayer turned everything that was set before him into gold?’

Aristotle: Politics (Book 1, Part IX)

Formed of two tableaux, Vain Prayer is a choreographic poem for orchestra after the Midas myth, the Greek legend of a King granted the wish that everything he might touch turn to gold. In particular, I’ve long-loved Nathaniel Hawthorne’s version, wherein Midas’ blinding and unquenchable thirst for ‘that precious metal’ leads, through fateful embrace, to his daughter’s transformation into a golden statue. His greatest sorrow and loss comes ‘in the fullness of all his gratified desires’, made more resonant by ‘the questioning look of love, grief, and pity, hardened into her face…the prettiest and most woeful sight that ever mortal saw.’

Vain Prayer was written as part of a Sound and Music/BBC Symphony Orchestra 'Embedded' Composer Residency, and was premiered at Maida Vale studios on the 24th March 2016. 


Vain Prayer, for orchestra

The American author Edmund White describes the flâneur as ‘a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through a city without apparent purpose but is secretly attuned to the history of the place and in covert search of adventure, aesthetic or erotic.’ White’s book ‘The Flâneur’, subtitled ‘A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris’, is a collection of wanderings through the city, its history and the thoughts of the some of the people that have helped define what it is – touching on, amongst many other things, the buildings of the Île St Louis, the controversial and colourful life of writer Colette, the history (and current status) of French royalists, the habit of gay Parisian writers not to admit they’re gay writers, and so on.

My piece Flâneur is a stroll through a musical Paris populated by Debussy, Ravel, Messaien, Stravinsky, Takemitsu and Edith Piaf. Along the way, connections between those musical citizens and my own journey are made through quotation, transformation and allusion. I set out to compose Flâneur with no preordained ideas about its form, and instead allowed myself to write the piece that could be written with the time I had – to stroll through the French-hued sketches I had created. Heard at the centre point of the work, is a melody taken from Edith Piaf’s ballad ‘Les Amants de Paris’, and heard as a duet between flute and clarinet. 

Lovers of Paris sleep on my song,
In Paris, lovers love their way.
Every moment I tell them, 
It’s more beautiful than sun-filled days.

Edith Piaf, ‘Les Amants de Paris’

Flâneur was composed February 2011

Flâneur, for small ensemble

Ted Hughes, describes Emily Dickinson’s poetry as being concerned with a ‘Holy Trinity’; firstly, of the joy and awe inspired by natural world around her – ‘the Universe in its Divine aspect’; secondly, her morose and frightening vision of the pain-stricken soul within that universe; and thirdly, of ‘Death as the solution’ to the conflict created by these two subjects. In thinking of her poetry, it occurred to me that madrigals of Carlo Gesulado could be seen as an almost direct musical analogy to these ideas. The texts of his madrigals center on the conflicting simultaneity of joy and pain experienced through his pursuit of love, and see Death as the solution to the tension generated by these conflicting experiences.  

‘Asciugate i begli occhi’ can be seen as an attempt to bring the madrigals of Gesualdo and the poetry of Dickinson into the same orbit, creating a work that dwells on the deeply meaningful and moving ideas latent in both their works. The musical reasoning behind this pairing is, I hope, equally as potent; Dickinson’s terse writing style – with it’s short sentences, slow metrical construction, and strong tendency to linger on individual words (as though subjecting them to microscopic examination) – is perfect for setting in madrigal form. Through the quotation and transformation of material, found in the madrigal ‘Asciugate i begli occhi’ (‘Dry those beautiful eyes’), I’ve tried to express the emotion contained in each line, and sometimes individual words, of the following two Dicksinson poems: 


That Love is all there is, 
Is all we know of Love;
It is enough, the freight should be
Proportioned to the groove.

It’s such a little thing to weep –
So short a thing to sigh – 
And yet – by Trades – the size of these
We men and women die!

Emily Dickinson

Asciugate i begli occhi was composed May 2011

Asciugate i begli occhi, for vocal quartet

Totentanz, was written for pianist Mark Austin and was premiered as part of the concert ‘In Search of Three Characters’. This programme consisted of works by Brahms, Ligeti, Bartok and myself in which all works were chosen to showcase the qualities of the piano, horn and violin – as solo instruments and in combination. The other repertoire, featured in this programme, included movements from both Brahms’ and Ligeti’s Horn Trios (the third and fourth movements of the Brahms, and the second movement of the Ligeti), as well as the fifth Intermezzo of Brahms’ Fantazias Op.116, and practically all of the material for Toten Tanzen is based on these pieces.  
 
Throughout the piece, the melodic material stems almost entirely from the first five notes of the violin tune in the third movement of Brahms’ Horn Trio (Adagio Mesto), which is mutated and transformed through transposition and rhythmic contraction/expansion. The rhythmic language (angular, asymmetric, and forever-changing its patterns) was inspired by the phenomenal second movement of Ligeti’s Horn Trio.  
 
Totentanz is a morbid tarantella and in a sense marks the beginning of an end. Any idea of jubilance or triumph gives in to a final demonic mania in which the instrumental writing, for piano and ensemble alike, constantly increases in its fiendish demands. A desolate yet impassioned solo piano interlude (explicitly based on Brahms’ aforementioned Intermezzo – specifically the middle section..) offers a brief respite before the mania resumes. Muscular dance rhythms and barbaric instrumental sounds mark out the piano’s serious and almost tragic role, and the frenzy intensifies until a final violent fanfare brings the work to a cataclysmic end.  

Totentanz was composed July-August 2011

Totentanz, for piano and large ensemble

Performers:

Choir of the Chapels Royal HM Tower of London
Colm Carey, directore
Christian Wilson, organ

Two Anthems, for choir - I. He giveth snow like wool

Performers:

Choir of the Chapels Royal HM Tower of London
Colm Carey, director
Christian Wilson, organ

Two Anthems, for choir - II. He telleth the number of the stars

Born in 1987, David Coonan is an Irish composer currently based in London. His work is driven by a notion of creative recycling, and his all-embracing musical curiosity has led to a body of compositions mindful of many diverse musical influences. From the Horn Trios of Brahms and Ligeti, to the ballads of Edith Piaf, his work plays on, and plays with, the many different musical ideas, works, genres, and styles that excite his imagination.

David’s works have been performed by, amongst others, the London Symphony Orchestra, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the RAM Manson Ensemble, EXAUDI vocal ensemble, the Choir of the Chapels Royal HM Tower of London, and Belfast city organist Colm Carey, and with conductors including Gavin Maloney, Maxime Tortelier, François-Xavier Roth, and Elgar Howarth. Current projects include works for the Pythagoras Ensemble (UK), and a song cycle based on the poetry of Federico García Lorca for Baltimore-based chamber music collective Vivre Musicale.

David was a featured composer in the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Horizons’ Series in January 2015; this saw the premiere of his Sarcasms for orchestra, an RTÉ commission, and his violin concerto Träumerei, with soloist Kristine Balanas, in a portrait concert at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, and was subsequently broadcast on RTÉ Lyric fm. He is a member of the Association of Irish Composers, the Irish Composers Collective, and the London Symphony Orchestra Soundhub community. He has held residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, in Ireland, and is currently composer-in-residence to Vivre Musicale. 

David studied at Trinity College Dublin with Donnacha Dennehy, and pursued further composition studies with Christopher Austin and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, with funds provided by the Irish Arts Council and the Arts & Humanities Research Council UK. He graduated with Distinction and the DipRAM award for outstanding final portfolio in 2011. 


David Coonan

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