Cork composer brings a seasonal note to concert

Choirs are limbering up to deliver favourite carols in churches and concert halls around the country. Chamber Choir Ireland has commissioned new carol settings for its annual concert of seasonal choral music, offering a fresh take on traditional texts.

Sitting alongside the heavyweights of Renaissance music, William Byrd and Tomás Luis de Victoria is the unmistakably Irish name, Eoghan Desmond.

In the programme titled A Babe is Born, half a dozen carols by the Cork native are interspersed through a programme of early music and a Magnificat by Arvo Pärt. Four of the carols will be performed for the first time at the event.

The concert opens with Desmond’s setting of ‘Sir Christëmas’, a medieval text that struck the composer when he sang it at his first Christmas service as a nine-year old chorister at St Fin Barre’s Cathedral in Cork.

“As far as I can tell, it is the earliest known text for the personification of Christmas — that idea of a jolly fat man coming and spreading Christmas cheer,” says Desmond.

“Traditionally, a Nine Lessons and Carols service opens with a treble walking from the back of the church singing ‘Once in Royal David’s City’. In my setting of the opening carol, we hear the lines ‘Noel N — a bass baritone arrives in a slow ceremonial opening singing ‘I am here Sir Christëmas’ to the tune of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’. The rest of the verses are based loosely around other traditional carols. I’ve tried to crowbar in as many references to Christmas carols as I can to get this idea of spreading Christmas cheer everywhere he goes.”

Desmond spent his childhood in Bishopstown before moving to Ballincollig. He has been steeped in the sacred choral tradition since childhood, beginning as a boy treble at St Fin Barre’s Cathedral. When his voice broke, he joined the back row as a bass and was an organ scholar.

These days you’ll find him singing at daily Evensong service at St Patricks’ Cathedral, Dublin, and singing solo bass roles with choral societies as well as being a member of Chamber Choir Ireland. The impulse to compose started early.

“I first remember attempting to write a piece at the age of 7. The first time it started to go somewhere for me was when I was in Transition Year at Gaelcholáiste Choilm. The National Chamber Choir ran a programme where professional composers came in and worked with students to develop a piece for the choir to sing. I wrote a setting of the Kyrie. It was the first piece that I had performed. That was when the fire really got stoked.

Composing is a solitary activity and it was inspirational to come together with thirty other kids of my age from all around the country, to hear their pieces and realise that there was so much interest in what I wanted to do.

Desmond’s big break came when he won the Ó Riada prize at the 2015 Cork Choral Festival with ‘Mother Goose Melodies’, a setting of nursery rhymes. There was resonance with his early schooldays when he was a pupil at Gaelscoil Uí Riada.

Further commissions followed and he has built up an impressive catalogue. Repeat commissions have helped fund his PhD studies with Phillip Cooke in Aberdeen.

Desmond is enthusiastic about a new sheet music publishing venture based in Waterford.

“It is great to have a really serious publishing house for choral music in Ireland. Cailíno have their finger on the pulse when it comes to what the market wants. You can also buy digital copies of all the pieces in their catalogue. A lot of choirs are moving to using iPads in performance now.”

- Chamber Choir Ireland presents ‘A Babe is Born’ at Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin on Sunday, Decemebr 8. The concert is dedicated to Colin Mawby, founder of National Chamber Choir who died in November