Cork Music Archive

The Cork International Choral and Folk-Dance Festival was founded in 1954 to encourage music-making at local level, to bring outstanding foreign choirs to Ireland and thus provide standards against which national choirs could measure themselves; to safeguard standards by having panels of Irish and foreign adjudicators; to provide entertainment for a large audience by combining competitive with non-competitive performances interspersed with Irish and foreign folk dancing.

The Festival organisers soon began to create incentives for the production of new choral music by Irish composers and to encourage Irish choirs to perform this music. Since the beginning of the Festival, competitors had been required to sing one work by a living composer from their own country, so new Irish music was urgently needed.

In 1956 a prize for the best choral arrangement of an Irish folk song was anonymously funded; in 1958 two competitions were introduced for Irish composers: one for a new part song; one for a new arrangement of the folk tune Rí an Domhnaigh, with text in Irish. In his introduction to the syllabus for the 1958 Festival, Aloys Fleischmann wrote:

In its attempt to deal with the dearth of Irish choral music for the use of our own choirs, the Cork Tóstal Council has been helped by the generosity of two patrons of the Festival, Signor Aldo Tanci of Milan, and another patron who wishes to remain anonymous, who have donated substantial prizes for competitions for the choral arrangement of Irish folk song, and for original choral composition. From the winning entries and from other compositions by Irish composers sung at the Festival it is hoped to make a wider repertoire ultimately available.

In 1962 came the establishment by Fleischmann of the Seminar on Contemporary Choral Music as part of the Festival: up to four Irish and foreign composers were commissioned every year to produce new choral works. One of the conditions was that the composer must attend the Seminar, which from 1962-2000 took place in the Music Department of University College Cork. The compositions were analysed and discussed during the Seminar sessions and then performed by choirs of the composers’ choice; the first public performance was given that evening at the Festival in Cork City Hall. The Seminar led to the creation of a significant corpus of new choral music; it had a remarkable effect on Cork audiences who progressed from indifference, if not outright hostility during the early years, to appreciation of new music.

In 1972 the Seán Ó Riada Trophy was established to encourage choirs to perform works in Irish by Irish composers, and the latter to create new choral music inspired by Irish poems; the winning piece was analysed and performed at the Seminar. Since 2010 the award-winning work is premiered by the Chamber Choir Ireland during the Festival. The competition has provided a most effective incentive and forum for Irish composers.

Ruth Fleischmann