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Composer of the Month - June, 2004

Mary McAuliffe, b. 1947
by Daryl Lee

The Michael O'Neal Singers began the new millennium in March, 2000 with its first commissioned composition, Return to Old Ireland.  The composer, Mary McAuliffe, was chosen because she is an internationally acclaimed contemporary representative of Irish music. Born in 1947 in Cork, on the south end of the Emerald Isle, McAuliffe has achieved international stature as an artist with a gift for blending the old and the new into a seamless tapestry of music and text.  This gift is illustrated by the success enjoyed by Return to Old Ireland: ten performances internationally in its first three years, including its world premiere in Roswell, Georgia and its European premiere in the National Concert Hall in Dublin. The European premiere was conducted by Michael O'Neal in a joint performance with the MOS and Dublin's Culwick Choral Society.

McAuliffe received her formal training at Cork's University College, and entered into a career in teaching. Eventually teaching gave way to doing, as her publishing career began in 1983 with The Star of Bethlehem. Composition became McAuliffe's full-time focus in 1993, resulting in her becoming recognized as a talented composer and lyricist.  In Return to Old Ireland, she blended her own text with that of Walt Whitman and W. B. Yeats to produce a unified impression of what it meant to be an Irish immigrant in the New World. Her instrumental work is held in such high regard that in 2000 the Royal Irish Academy of Music added several of her pieces to its examination suite.  Her work continues to be performed frequently in Ireland, Canada, and the United States. She was selected as the composer for the Beatification of 17 Irish Martyrs in 1992. This is particularly significant because this beatification had been 87 years in the process; to be selected as part of the service is a high honor, indeed.

More recently, McAuliffe was the recipient of the Riverdance scholarship awarded by the Ireland Canada University Foundation.  She is creating a Canadian Irish choral suite for treble voices for the Newfoundland Youth Symphony Choir using texts by poets from Newfoundland and from Ireland.   The finale of the seven movement suite, an anthem, entitled Home, celebrating the historic Ireland Newfoundland connections, with text by McAuliffe and by the renowned Newfoundland writer, Al Pittman, will receive its world premiere by the NYSC in July 2004 at the same venue where Return to Old Ireland received its European premiere.  In the U.S., Mary has been invited by three universities to make presentations of her work.

Mary McAuliffe is represented by the Contemporary Music Centre of Ireland and her work is detailed in the select Directory of Irish Composers.  Her work spans a wide range of mediums, and as well as instrumental works and a vast body of adult choral compositions, includes soundtracks for documentary film, music for children and youth choirs, and opera.   Her work is now published with the Hal Leonard Corporation as part of the Henry Leck Choral Artistry series. 

For further reading on Mary McAuliffe:
- http://www.cmc.ie/composers/composer.cfm?composerID=77
- http://www.cmc.ie/composers/pdfs/77.pdf
- http://www.mosingers.com/recordings/ire_mcauliffe.html
- http://www.icuf.ie/scholars.html

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