Gerald Barry Gerald Barry

 Gerald Barry (born 28 April 1952) is an Irish composer.

Life and works

Gerald Barry was born in Clarehill, Clarecastle, County Clare, and was educated at St. Flannan's College, Ennis. He studied music at University College Dublin, at Amsterdam with Peter Schat, at Cologne with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel and at Vienna with Friedrich Cerha. He taught at University College Cork from 1982 to 1986. Growing up in rural Clare, he had little exposure to music except through the radio: "The thing that was the lightning flash for me, in terms of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, would have been an aria from a Handel opera, from Xerxes maybe, that I heard on the radio. I heard this woman singing this, and bang – my head went. And that was how I discovered music."

"Barry's is a world of sharp edges, of precisely defined yet utterly unpredictable musical objects. His music sounds like no one else's in its diamond-like hardness, its humour, and sometimes, its violence." He often conceives of material independently of its instrumental medium, recycling ideas from piece to piece, as in the reworking of Triorchic Blues from a violin to a piano piece to an aria for countertenor in his opera The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit:

It seemed to me unprecedented: the combination of the ferociously objective treatment of the material and the intense passion of the working-out, and both at an extreme of brilliance. And the harmony – that there was harmony at all, and that it was so beautiful and lapidary. It functions, again, irrationally, but powerfully, to build tension and to create structure. It wasn't just repetitive. It builds. And the virtuosity, the display of it, that combination of things seemed, to me, to be new, and a major way forward.

His most recent opera, The Importance of Being Earnest, has become a huge success after its world premiere at Los Angeles and European premiere at the Barbican, London. A critic comments:

He writes "what he likes" in the way Strindberg does, not trying to characterise his characters, but letting them perform his own specialities, a kind of platform for his own musical specialities. As in Strindberg where you feel every sentence stands for itself and the characters are sort of borrowed for the use of saying them (borrowed to flesh out the text, rather than the other way round), that they've been out for the day. In Gerald's opera the whole apparatus - for that's what it is - takes on a kind of surrealistic shape, like one person's torso on someone else's legs being forced to walk, half the characters in the opera and half the composer.

Operas

• The Intelligence Park, libretto by Vincent Deane (1990)
• The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit, libretto by Meredith Oaks (1991–92)
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• The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, based on the play (later a film) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005)
• La Plus Forte, a one-act opera for soprano and orchestra based on Strindberg's play (2007)
• The Importance of Being Earnest, libretto by Gerald Barry after Oscar Wilde (2010)
• Alice's Adventures Underground, libretto by Gerald Barry after Lewis Carroll (2014/15)

Selected other works

•  for organ and orchestra (2018)Organ Concerto
• Canada for voice and orchestra (2017)
• The Destruction of Sodom for 8 horns and 2 wind machines (2015)
• Crossing the Bar for voice and any instruments or orchestra (2014)
• Baroness von Ritkart for orchestra or any number of instruments: 1 - Clever, noble, but not talented. 2 - Talented, noble, but not clever. 3 - Talented, clever, but not noble. (2014)
• Humiliated and Insulted for piano (2013)
• No People for ensemble (nonet) (2013)
• O Tannenbaum for choir or voice and piano (2012)
• Piano Concerto (2012)
• Schott and Sons, Mainz for solo bass voice and choir (2009)
• No other people for orchestra (2009)
• Beethoven for bass voice and large ensemble (2008)
• Le Vieux Sourd for piano (2008)
• Feldman's Sixpenny Editions for large ensemble (2008)
• Karl Heinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) for voice and piano (2008)
• First Sorrow (String Quartet No. 4) (2006
• Lisbon for piano and ensemble (2006)
• Day for orchestra (versions for strings and full orchestra (2005)
• Trumpeter for solo trumpet (2003)
• In the Asylum for piano trio (2003)
• Dead March for large ensemble (2001)
• God Save the Queen for solo boy's voice, choir and large ensemble (2001)
• Snow is White for piano quartet (2001)
• String Quartet No. 3 (Six Marches) (2001)
• Wiener Blut for orchestra (2000)
• Wiener Blut for large ensemble (2000)
• The Coming of Winter for choir (2000)
• The Eternal Recurrence, a setting of Nietzsche for soprano and orchestra (1999)
• 1998 for violin and piano (1998)
• String Quartet No. 2 (1998)
• Before The Road for four clarinets (1997)
• Piano Quartet No. 2 (1996)
• Low for clarinet and piano (1995)
• Quintet for cor anglais, clarinet, cello, double bass and piano (1994)
• The Conquest of Ireland for solo bass voice and orchestra (1995)
• Piano Quartet No. 1 (1994)
• The Chair for organ (1994)
• Triorchic Blues for solo trumpet (1994)
• From The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit for orchestra (1994)
• Sextet for ensemble (1993)
• Triorchic Blues for piano (1991)
• Bob for ensemble (1989)
• Chevaux-de-frise for orchestra (1988)
• String Quartet No. 1 (1985)
• Water Parted from The Intelligence Park for soprano or countertenor and piano (1986)
• Swinging Tripes and Trillibubkins for piano (1986)
• From The Intelligence Park for orchestra (1986)
• Five Chorales from The Intelligence Park for two pianos (1985)
• O Lord How Vain for choir (1984)
• Au Milieu for piano (1981)
• Sur les Pointes for piano (1981)
• Kitty Lie Over Across From The Wall for piano and orchestra (1979)
• ø for 2 pianos (1979)
• '_____' for ensemble (1979)
• Things That Gain for piano (1977)
• Things that Gain by Being Painted for soprano, speaker, cello and piano (1977)