Chorus Noster Recolat (Our Chorus Recalls)
The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, is a centre which combines excellence in performance with rigour in academia. In Chorus Noster Recolat J.J. O’Shea explores Ireland’s earliest notated music medieval liturgical chant in the company of some of the Academy’s academic staff and with their choral group Cantoral.The programme which was made in 2018 includes the final interview with the late Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin who ruminates on this often overlooked area of our musical heritage, its present day revival as it moves from a religious context to the performance stage, and its possibilities for future composition. He also speculates on the nature of the music of the Irish monasteries in the very early medieval period before the origin of notation and before the standardisation imposed on church liturgy by Charlemagne`s reforms in the ninth century. Helen Phelan considers the influence of pre-Christian traditions on early church liturgy which found their way into the chant and together with Anne Mannion she looks at the traces of a uniquely Irish approach to hymn writing that draws upon very early Irish poetic forms. Historian Colmán O Clabaigh gives further context to the material and Limerick based choral group Cantoral perform some of the chant uncovered in the medieval manuscripts.
A J.J.O’Shea production for RTÉ lyric fm funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland from the Television Licence Fee.
(First broadcast 23rd December 2018)
RTÉ lyric fm, Sunday 31st March, 6pm-7pm
