A review of Charles Rosen and Catherine Temerson, The Joy of Playing, the Joy of Thinking: Conversations about Art and Performance, translated by Catherine Zerner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020). ISBN: 9780674988460, 160 pp, €20 (hardback).
A review of Carina Drury, Irlandiani: Carina Drury, Eimear McGeown, Nathaniel Mander, Aileen Henry, Poppy Walshaw, Penny Fiddle Records (2020), (CD and Digital Album) PFR2005CD.
A review of Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphonies 1–3; Gerald Barry: Beethoven, Piano Concerto, Nicolas Hodges, Mark Stone, Britten Sinfonia conducted by Thomas Adès, Signum Classics (2020), (CD) SIGCD616.
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphonies 4–6; Gerald Barry: Viola Concerto, The Conquest of Ireland, Lawrence Power, Joshua Bloom, Britten Sinfonia conducted by Thomas Adès, Signum Classics (2020), (CD) SIGCD639.
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphonies 7–9; Gerald Barry: The Eternal Recurrence, Jennifer France, Christianne Stotjin, Ed Lyon, Matthew Rose, Britten Sinfonia conducted by Thomas Adès, Signum Classics (2021), (CD) SIGCD659.
With the publication in 1762 of Fingal, the ancient epic poem James Macpherson claimed to have reconstructed from Erse sources, scholarly warfare broke out. The hitherto unassailable Irish bard Oisín was unexpectedly confronted with a rival Scottish claimant to the authorship of the Fionn Mac Cumhaill saga: Ossian. A consensus quickly emerged among outraged Irish antiquarians that Macpherson was a very clever fraudster who had ‘usurped the Fenian cycles of Gaelic Ireland’ for commercial gain. The controversy refused to die down, and half a century later there was still no final verdict on the alleged hoax. This article provides fresh perspectives on this controversy.
A review of Marianna Ritchey, Composing Capital: Classical Music in the Neoliberal Era (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2019). ISBN 9780226640235
A review of Ruth Barton and Simon Trezise (eds), Music and Sound in Silent Film: From the Nickelodeon to The Artist (New York: Routledge, 2019). ISBN: 9781138245358
A review of John Buckley and John O’Flynn (eds), Ceol Phádraig: Music at St Patrick’s College Drumcondra 1875–2016 (Dublin: Carysfort Press, & Oxford, UK: Peter Lang, 2019). ISBN 978-1-78997-579-6
A review of Kerry Houston, Maria McHale, and Michael Murphy (eds), Irish Musical Studies 12: Documents of Irish Music History in the Long Nineteenth Century (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2019). ISBN 9781846827242
A review of Ann Buckley (ed.), Music, Liturgy, and the Veneration of Saints of the Medieval Irish Church in a European Context (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017). ISBN 9782503534701
A review of Darragh Morgan and John Tilbury: Morton Feldman—For John Cage, Diatribe Records (2020), (Digital Album) DICCD025; Benjamin Dwyer: What is the Word, Diatribe Records (2020), (Digital Album) DIACD031; and Lina Andonovska: A Way A Lone A Last, Diatribe Records (2020), (CD and Digital Album) DIACD026
Charles Rosen and Catherine Temerson, The Joy of Playing, the Joy of Thinking: Conversations About Art and Performance (2020)