Ann Cleare describes herself as “an Irish artist working in the areas of concert music, opera, extended sonic environments, and hybrid instrumental design”. Her work has been commissioned and broadcast by major radio stations around Europe, and been heard in major festivals on four continents.
In 2019 she was a recipient of an Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize. She is assistant professor of music and media technologies at Trinity College Dublin and last month was nominated as one of the first 40 members of the Royal Irish Academy’s Young Academy Ireland, “a new interdisciplinary organisation of early-career researchers and innovators” that “brings together individuals who will work collaboratively for the benefit of society”.
Cleare’s large new piece at the New Music Dublin festival, entitled MIDHE, is for three solo voices, solo accordion, spatialised choir and orchestra. The spark for it goes back to a polemic by Manchán Magan in Midlands Arts and Culture Magazine in 2015. It was, she says, “a really rousing article on how powerful the midlands of Ireland were, and how the country was once governed from there, and all energy and life radiated from there”.
She continues: “People took their cues on the seasons of the year from there. And how special the Hill of Uisneach was in a pre-electricity world, how symbolic the arrival of spring would be, and seeing the fires lit, and moving from this land of eternal darkness into light.”
When I sit down and I try and express these ideas, for me the best expression of them is through this language that I have, which is more rooted in sound
Cleare says she was amazed to learn about this ancient province of Midhe. “Because it wasn’t in my history book going to school, unfortunately, even though it would have been so interesting for a midlander like myself. And probably a good education for most Irish people to know of this province and this history.”
It resonated with her as a composer, too. “I had noticed this pattern in my pieces a lot. I’m always trying to find or create this centre that everything else exists around. And I’d always felt that is because, geographically, I grew up right in the middle of an island.”
Now, she felt, she had another metaphor to draw on. “I became really interested in the hills of the midlands and visiting them and getting to know more about the history of them, particularly Uisneach and Croghan, and the Loughcrew Cairns became really an interesting part of the whole history for me, too.”
She made field recordings and spoke to historians and geologists. “It’s proved a very fruitful and interesting area for me to dig into,” she says, “and kind of understand more why this idea of centre has always been there both subconsciously and more consciously.
“I think the centre of Ireland at the moment is in a very interesting situation in terms of its future, given all the kind of industries that have had to transition into other ways of working, like the boglands, different energy and power centres as well.”
The province of Midhe reached out to the coast, and Cleare says: “One of the main maps I worked with actually goes out as far as Dublin. And of course the title, MIDHE, it translates now as Meath. So when people google the title, some of them will think I’ve written a piece about Meath.”
She talks of the time when “government and church wanted to rule and they wanted to kind of break ties with these ancient spiritual places as well. They felt like there was a danger in letting those hills and those traditions guide people”. Today, there are tours for the Hill of Uisneach. “They are doing a great job in bringing the history to people’s attention again,” Cleare says. “Now in Ireland we’re all still dealing with the trauma of the Catholic Church, trying to understand how we can centre our lives, how we find a centre, how we find ways to get through life that isn’t maybe through the kind of obvious religions that are on offer.”
This centering, she says, is referenced “in some of the rituals of the new work, the movement, the migration of bodies, the singing and moving”.
I generally need something conceptual to work with before I go into what the sound will be
MIDHE, which she composed between 2019 and 2023, is anything but a solo run. The score describes it as having been created in collaboration with Justine Cooper, Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Frauke Aulbert, Michelle O’Rourke, Eoghan Desmond, Dermot Dunne, David Brophy and David Young and also carries thanks to Manchán Magan “for his inspiring article on MIDHE”.
The geography of the midlands, she says, “has somehow always been in every piece I’ve written. That geography, and the psychology of it is just there. When I look at any piece I’ve written, it’s there. I travelled and lived in different places, but I think I was eager to come back and understand it in a deeper sense as well. So I suppose I’m invested in the future of the midlands, and particularly the role that the arts can play in it. And, yeah, I’m interested in my work in drawing attention to the place.
“And even in this piece, I guess in some ways I’m trying to create these new centres in a concert hall, not just the National Concert Hall in Dublin, but all concert halls, really. Because there will be five types of new centre points that run throughout the whole piece and the whole hall.”
Some people, Cleare says, may feel a bit disoriented. “The piece opens with the orchestra playing and a solo accordion part. And you hear this solo accordion part try to bring the orchestra to this very centred place and the orchestra doesn’t really go with it. They keep dispersing from it. From there, this choir starts to sing. I have the National Symphony Chorus in the balcony, all around the audience, singing down into the audience space. The audience will just be on the ground floor.”
The chorus, she says, “are quite symbolic of the ancient province of Midhe in the piece. Their job is to awaken the next centre point in the piece”. The conductor is not the only person who will have a podium. He will awaken other podiums, each with an associated solo singer, drawing attention away from the stage, she says, “in the same way that people’s attention used to be drawn to the midland hills.
“When the soloists sing,” Cleare explains, “they bring the orchestra with them to these places, as well. The whole idea is to bring the audience to these new centres. That, for me, I suppose is related to the geography of Ireland and the politics of Ireland as well, at the moment.”
I think the centre of Ireland at the moment is in a very interesting situation in terms of its future
Cleare’s work is the opposite of minimalist, and she says: “I generally need something conceptual to work with before I go into what the sound will be. Particularly in recent years, in thinking about places, as in this piece, these ancient hills, I’ve been doing a lot of recordings. A lot of the material of the piece comes from transcribed field recordings. At least to begin with. And then I develop the material more.”
The complexity is never a goal. It’s just, as she puts it, “how the music ends up manifesting itself. I do try to keep it as clear and simple to read as I possibly can, edited to its absolute essentials. But at the same time I am interested in really rich, complex sonorities. That’s just, at the end of the day, who I am”.
She adds: “When I sit down and I try and express these ideas, for me the best expression of them is through this language that I have, which is I suppose more rooted in sound, the huge spectrum that sound offers, rather than even the spectrum that Western tonality offers. I need to work on a much wider scale that feels important to me. In working that way the music does become less conventional and it requires more thinking and interpreting for the performer.”
Life would be much simpler, she says, “if I could just sit down and a pop song would come out. But it doesn’t”.
Ann Cleare’s MIDHE is premiered by Frauke Aulbert, Michelle O’Rourke, Eoghan Desmond and Dermot Dunne, with the National Symphony Orchestra and NSO Chorus under David Brophy, at the National Concert Hall, in Dublin, on Friday, April 21st. The programme also includes works by Seóirse Bodley and Amanda Feery. The New Music Dublin festival runs from Thursday, April 20th, to Sunday, April 23rd
