Proserpina: Goethe's Meldodrama with Music by Carl Eberwein, Orchestral Score and Piano Reduction
‘Carl Eberwein's dramatic setting of Goethe's melodrama, Poserpina, for solo voice (speaking part) and orchestra, with a choral finale’
Editor: Lorraine Byrne Bodley; Preface by Nicholas Boyle
Goethe is one of the best-known and most beloved poets in music history, with myriad settings and publications devoted to his poetry. And yet there remains an unexplored aspect of his career: his surprisingly significant role in 19th century melodrama. This score, the first edition of Eberwein's setting of Goethe's melodrama, Proserpina, offers an unprecedented examination of Goethe's text and overturns the accepted image of the artist as unmusical. Carl Eberwein's dramatic setting of Goethe's melodrama, Proserpina, for solo voice (speaking part) and orchestra, with a choral finale, is highly dramatic in impact and beautifully orchestrated. Eberwein's music for Proserpina was written under Goethe's supervision and according to his wishes; the selfless striving of the young composer to follow the poet's concrete instructions is everywhere apparent and it is the nearest thing we have to a 'composition by Goethe'. This is the first publication to represent the artistic intentions of both artists in a modern orchestral score, with piano reduction, German/English text and critical commentary on the work.ISBN HB: 9781904505273; PB: 9781904505297
Cost €28.00
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Goethe: Musical Poet, Musical Catalyst
Edited by Lorraine Byrne
'Goethe was interested in, and acutely aware of, the place of music in human experience generally - and of its particular role in modern culture. Moreover, his own literary work - especially the poetry and Faust - inspired some of the major composers of the European tradition to produce some of their finest works.' Martin SwalesISBN 1-904505-10-4
Cost €30.00
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Three Congregational Masses
‘By Seóirse Bodley’
Edited by Lorraine Byrne
'From the simpler congregational settings in the Mass of Peace and the Mass of Joy to the richer textures of the Mass of Glory, they are immediately attractive and accessible, and with a distinctively Irish melodic quality.' Barra BoydellISBN 1-904505-11-2
Cost €15.00
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A Hazardous Melody of Being
‘Seoirse Bodley's Song Cycles on the Poems of Micheal O'Siadhail. Available in hardback ( 978-1904505-32-7; €45) and paperback ( 978-1-904505-31-0; €25)’
Lorraine Byrne Bodley
Seoirse Bodley is one of the best-known senior figures of contemporary music in Ireland. This book seeks to examine his engagement with the poetry of Micheal O'Siadhail and the making of these song cycles. It assesses the joint contribution to the Irish art song and seeks to understand its roots in the departure from European tradition. This apograph is the first publication of Bodley's O'Siadhail song cycles and is the first book to explore the composer's lyrical modernity from a number of perspectives. Lorraine Byrne Bodley's insightful introduction describes in detail the development and essence of Bodley's musical thinking, the European influences he absorbed which linger in these cycles, and the importance of his work as a composer of the Irish art song. She asks an array of questions: Does song play a new role in twentieth-century music or was this the age, as many have insisted, that bears witness to the 'death of song'? How does contemporary Irish art song inscribe individual concerns and mirror the influence of dominant social trends through its music and texts? She demonstrates that the answers to such questions illuminate the context in which these cycles are created, and how they were valued and viewed. Through a blend of close analysis of Bodley's songs and wide-ranging engagement with both poetry and music, this book sheds new light on Bodley's integral part in fashioning Irish art song. It analyses the way Bodley's song has been harnessed both to legitimate and to challenging national art song. And it identifies elements of Bodley's musical style which are shaped by European traditions. Beyond such musico-poetic analysis, Lorraine Byrne Bodley's reading of the threefold roles of continuity, gradual change and revolution opens up a 'braided history' of Irish art song, where song is not an aesthetic given but a means to understanding the changing patterns of life. She argues convincingly than an understanding of the way in which Irish society has perceived song in recent centuries is available through a consideration of song as social document, and in her appraisal of Bodley's O'Siadhail settings she considers the importance of these song cycles as a reflection of Ireland's rich cultural heritage.ISBN 978-1-904505-31-0 (paperback)
Cost €25.00
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Goethe and Schubert
‘Across the divide’
Edited by Lorraine Byrne & Dan Farrelly
Proceedings of the International Conference, 'Goethe and Schubert in Perspective and Performance', Trinity College Dublin, 2003. This volume includes essays by leading scholars - Barkhoff, Boyle, Byrne, Canisius, Dürr, Fischer, Hill, Kramer, Lamport, Lund, Meikle, Newbould, Norman McKay, White, Whitton, Wright, Youens - on Goethe's musicality and his relationship to Schubert; Schubert's contribution to sacred music and the Lied and his setting of Goethe's Singspiel, Claudine. A companion volume of this Singspiel (with piano reduction and English translation) is also available.ISBN 1-904505-04-X
Cost €25.00
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Goethe and Schubert
‘Claudine von Villa Bella’
Edited by Lorraine Byrne & Dan Farrelly
Goethe's Singspiel in three acts was set to music by Schubert in 1815 after a period in which his engagement with Goethe's Faust had given rise to his first masterpiece and a flood of Goethe settings. Only Act One of Schuberts's Claudine score is extant, since Act Two and Act Three were largely destroyed - reputedly burnt as fuel by Joseph Huttenbrenner's servants during the revolution in 1848. The present volume makes Act One available for performance in English and German.It comprises both a piano reduction by Lorraine Byrne of the original Schubert orchestral score and a bilingual text.The latter is based on Goethe's 1788 version and has been translated for the modern stage by Dan Farrelly. This is a tale, wittily told, of lovers and vagabonds, romance, reconciliation, and resolution of family conflict.ISBN 0-9544290-0-1
Cost €14.00
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The Irish Harp Book
‘By Sheila Larchet Cuthbert’
This is a facsimile of the edition originally published by Mercier Press in 1993. There is a new preface by Sheila Larchet Cuthbert, and the biographical material has been updated. It is a collection of studies and exercises for the use of teachers and pupils of the Irish harp.
ISBN 1-904505-08-2
Cost €35.00
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