Upbeat and up to date

Dublin may lack the vital focus of a contemporary music festival or the specialised services of a full-time contemporary ensemble, but lively debate is free, writes Michael Dervan, as forums and talks organised separately by the Crash Ensemble and Mostly Modern demonstrated recently. With a title provocatively proposing a split along technological lines, Crash's discussion signally failed to raise ideological divides. Rather than dogfights, the session revealed a group of composers - Roger Doyle, Gerald Barry, Donnacha Dennehy, Raymond Deane and Clarence Barlow - talking about their art, aspirations and the general state of music with a frankness welcome for its rarity. It was Gerald Barry who stole the show, with an optimistic assertion, that yes, everything was really fine, since it was still possible to say that enough good work was being produced.

Mostly Modern's open forum aired familiar gripes about recognition (some composers just can't see why Irish writing gets more attention than their music), and uncovered that all-too-prevalent and damaging view that solutions call for action by third parties rather than by the composers themselves. The central component of the Mostly Modern talks was a lucid potted musical history of the past 150 years by Raymond Deane, contextualising the tricky issue, or, if you prefer, non-issue, of "music after postmodernism". Evening Herald critic Michael Dungan offered "A View from the Pew" (in which he interpreted diversity as perplexing, and not at all enriching), and Micheal O Suilleabhain pleaded the case of "Traditional Music as Contemporary Music". Mostly Modern's Benjamin Dwyer hopes to extend the debate by having the three talks published as Mostly Modern Essays.