John McLachlan (born 5 March 1964) is an Irish composer.

Life

McLachlan was born in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

, son of the writer

Leland Bardwell Constance Olive Leland Bardwell (25 February 1922 – 28 June 2016) was an Irish poet, novelist, and playwright. She was part of the literary scene in London and later Dublin, where she was an editor of literary magazines ''Hibernia'' and '' Cyp ...

, and studied at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama (1982–6), the

Royal Irish Academy of Music Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family or royalty Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Roy ...

(1989–97), and

Trinity College Dublin Trinity College Dublin (), officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, and legally incorporated as Trinity College, the University of Dublin (TCD), is the sole constituent college of the Unive ...

(BA 1988), where he received a Ph.D. in musicology in 1999 for a study of the relationship between analysis and compositional technique in the post-war

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

. He has also studied privately with Robert Hanson (1989–90) and

Kevin Volans Kevin Volans (born 26 July 1949) is a South African-born Irish composer and pianist. He studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel in Cologne in the 1970s and later became associated with the ''Neue Einfachheit'' (New Simplicity) mo ...

(1994–5). He now lives in

Inishowen Inishowen () is a peninsula in the north of County Donegal in Ireland. Inishowen is the largest peninsula on the island of Ireland. The Inishowen peninsula includes Ireland's most northerly point, Malin Head. The Grianan of Aileach, a ringfor ...

County Donegal County Donegal ( ; ) is a Counties of Ireland, county of the Republic of Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster and is the northernmost county of Ireland. The county mostly borders Northern Ireland, sharing only a small b ...

. He has written numerous articles for ''The Journal of Music in Ireland'' (2000–10; now the onlin
''Journal of Music''
. He was executive director of the Association of Irish Composers (AIC; 1998–2012), and in 2007 he was elected to

Aosdána Aosdána ( , ; from , 'people of the arts') is an Irish association or academy of artists, each of whom must have produced a distinguished body of work of genuine originality. It was created in 1981 by the country's Arts Council on the initiati ...

. McLachlan was the featured composer in the

RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra The National Symphony Orchestra (NSO; previously known as Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Symphony Orchestra and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra) is the largest professional orchestra in Ireland. Housed at the National Concert Hall, D ...

's "Horizons" series in 2003 and 2008. He has also represented Ireland at international festivals, including the

ISCM World Music Days The ISCM World Music Days is an annual contemporary music festival organized by the International Society for Contemporary Music, originally created in 1923 as the ISCM Festival as a means to support the most advanced composition tendencies.

Slovenia Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...

in 2003

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

in 2005 and New Zealand in 2022. In 2006, his work ''Grand Action'' was commissioned as a test piece for the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition.

Music

McLachlan's musical aesthetic is largely shaped by a desire to impart a sense of narrative and expectation to his music without recourse to pastiche rhetorical devices. A critic wrote of a recording of McLachlan's piano piece ''Nine'': "The style of each little piece sends one's imagination and musical memory reeling, some of them evoking French

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

, some jazzy in feel, some reminiscent of the miniatures for piano of

Webern Anton Webern (; 3 December 1883 – 15 September 1945) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and musicologist. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its lyric poetry, lyrical, poetic concision and use of then novel atonality, aton ...

, and none of them in any way, shape or form derivative."Rafael de Acha, in: ''Music for All Seasons'', 2015. Much of his music is structured in contrasting and suddenly changing block-like sections of homogeneous material. The material within these sections is propelled by a rigorous focus on subtle rhythmic and melodic permutations, which result in both surface opacity and gradually increasing tension.

Select compositions

Orchestral *''Concerto for Chamber Orchestra'' (1988) *''Here Be Dragons'' (2003) *''Triptych'' (2004) *''Octala'' (2007) *''Incunabula'' (2007) *''Taca'' (2011) *''The Inishowen Set'' (2013) Chamber music *''Two Lyric Sketches'' (1987; rev. 1991), for string quartet *''Heuristic Pieces'' (1990; rev. 2003), for clarinet, horn, violin, viola, cello *''Suspirations 1'' (1991), for 3 trumpets, horn, trombone *''Suspirations 2'' (1991; rev. 1992), for clarinet, oboe, horn, violin, cello, double bass *''Frieze'' (1993), for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, percussion, violin, cello, double bass *''Concords'' (1997), for clarinet, violin, cello, piano *''Meetings with Remarkable Men'' (2001), for 4 percussionists *''Filament of Memory'' (2002), for 4 guitars *''Radical Roots'' (2003), for violin, viola, cello escored for 2 pianos, 2005*''neo-plastic coloured shapes'' (2003), for string quartet *''The Metal Pig'' (2004), for clarinet, violin, cello, piano *''Ghost Machine'' (2004), for violin and piano *''Fragile'' (2004), for alto flute and guitar *''Leaves Loose'' (2006), for piccolo/flute/alto-flute/bass-flute, oboe/oboe d'amore/cor anglais, clarinet/bass-clarinet *''Wonder'' (2008), for clarinet, glockenspiel, organ, e-guitar, violin, double bass *''Extraordinary Rendition'' (2008), for violin, cello, piano *''Natural Order'' (2009), for violin, cello, piano *''Five Points, Manhattan'' (2010), for 7 percussionists *''Where we are'' (2012), for string quartet *''Fragment (After Lafcadio Hearn)'' (2016), for speaker and piano *''Deliquescence'' (

) (2016), for soprano, clarinet, piano *''Glad it Was the Sun'' (2016), for string quartet *''Venise en hiver'' ( Jeanine Baude) (1995), for mezzo-soprano, alto sax, piano *''Diomedea'' (2017), for saxophone and contrabass recorder doubling treble recorder *''Isola'' (2019), for flute/alto flute and piano *''Headland'' (2021), for violin, viola, cello, piano, flute, clarinet, bassoon and fixed media *''Atalanta'' (2023), for viola and piano Solo instrumental *''Five Movements for Piano'' (1983) *''Four Short Pieces for Guitar'' (1988) *''Two Piano Studies'' (1994) *''From the Strings of a Rainbow'' (1996), for piano *''Fifteen Easy Miniatures'' (1998), for piano *''Archaeopteryx'' (1996; rev. 1997), for piano *''Here Be Dragons'' (2001; rev. 2003), for organ *''Nuance'' (2003), for piano *''Grand Action'' (2005), for piano *''Soft Landing'' (2009), for organ *''Nine'' (2011), for piano *''Drinking the Stars'' (2012), for piano *''Ex Machina'' (2013), for piano *''Filament(s) I to VI'' (2014–18), solo pieces for flute, trombone, cello, bassoon, guitar, clarinet *''Sweeney Exulans'' (2018), for Irish harp *''Under the Flagstones'' (2018), for organ *''fiaili ceoil'' (2019), for piano *''Stone Bell and Sandwave'' (2020), for piano Choral works *''Two Akhmatova Settings'' (

Anna Akhmatova Anna Andreyevna Gorenko rus, А́нна Андре́евна Горе́нко, p=ˈanːə ɐnˈdrʲe(j)ɪvnə ɡɐˈrʲɛnkə, a=Anna Andreyevna Gorenko.ru.oga, links=yes; , . ( – 5 March 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova,. ...

) (1986), for mixed chorus *''Two Poems in Memoriam Stevie Smith'' (

) (1986), for mixed chorus *''Lord, What Love Have I'' (

Psalm 119 Psalm 119 is the 119th psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in the English of the King James Version: "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord". The Book of Psalms is in the third section of the Hebrew Bible, the ...

) (1988), for mixed chorus and organ *''He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven'' (

W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (, 13 June 186528 January 1939), popularly known as W. B. Yeats, was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer, and literary critic who was one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the ...

) (1995), for mixed chorus *''The Eternal Rebel'' (

Eva Gore-Booth Eva Selina Laura Gore-Booth (22 May 1870 – 30 June 1926) was an Irish poet, theologian, and dramatist, and a committed suffragist, social worker and labour activist. She was born at Lissadell House, County Sligo, the younger sister of Co ...

) (2016), for soprano, tenor, choir, piano, keyboard, harmonica Electro-acoustic works *''The Red Thread'' (2000), for guitar and electro-acoustics *''Golden Circle'' (2010), for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, electro-acoustics *''Dog Ear'' (2013) fixed media *''Aurora'' (2013), for flute/bass-flute, clarinet/bass-clarinet, cello, piano, electro-acoustics *''Sparsa'' (2015) fixed media *''Sympathetic Strings'' (2016), for guitar and electro-acoustics *''This is Real'' (2019), for violin, viola, cello, bass, string orchestra, electro-acoustics *''Twelve Celestial Objects'' (2020) fixed media *''A fine example of how (not) to live'' (2023) for clarinets and fixed media, texts Leland Bardwell *''Le dernier bourgeon de l'avenir'' (2023) fixed media

Bibliography

*Adrian Smith: "McLachlan, John", in: ''The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland'', edited by Harry White and Barra Boydell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013), p. 654–5. *

Benjamin Dwyer Benjamin Dwyer (born 3 August 1965) is an Irish composer, guitarist and musicologist. Life Dwyer was born in Dublin and studied the classical guitar at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, Dublin, and at the Royal Academy of Music, London. ...

: "Interview with John Mclachlan", in: ''Different Voices: Irish Music and Music in Ireland'' (Hofheim: Wolke Verlag, 2014), p. 178–191.

Discography

*''Drinking The Stars'' (2023), a double CD of piano music performed by Mary Dullea, in farpoint recordings https://jmclachlan.bandcamp.com/album/drinking-the-stars *''First'', CD of six of McLachlan's pieces featuring various musicians including RTE National Symphony Orchestra https://digital.farpointrecordings.com/album/first *''Filament of Memory'', Dublin Guitar Quartet, Contemporary Irish https://www.dublinguitarquartet.com/copy-of-deleted-pieces *''Nine'', Gothic, Mary Dullea, Metier Records https://divineartrecords.com/recording/gothic-new-piano-music-from-ireland/ *''Four Pieces for Guitar'', Islands, John Feeley, Overture Music https://www.cmc.ie/shop/islands-contemporary-irish-solo-and-ensemble-works-guitar *''Grand Action'', Maria McGarry, CMC CD 9 *''Here be Dragons'', David Adams, Irish Contemporary Organ Music *''Two Lyric Sketches'', Hibernia trio + Ken Rice quartet, AIC CD1

Writings on Music

* Articles by John McLachlan in the Journal of Musi