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Track Listings
| 1. Gra Agus Bas |
| 2. That The Night Come: He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead |
| 3. That The Night Come: The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water |
| 4. That The Night Come: The White Birds |
| 5. That The Night Come: These Are The Clouds |
| 6. That The Night Come: Her Anxiety |
| 7. That The Night Come: That The Night Come |
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Audio CD
The song cycle based on poems by Yeats is ready to enter the regular cannon at the Wigmore Hall and is part of the great tradition of Song Writing. I would have liked to have had a little more expression from the cool but beautiful Dawn Upshaw.
Gras Agus Bas is full of fire regret and passion, harking back to the great Celtic / Irish Song tradition but also comes forward into the present day. Iarla O'Lionaird sings with passion, regret, loss The end of the work leaves you in no doubt that this work is a triumph for the singer and it's Composer Donnacha Dennehy
The Seven Steps to Mercy
Gras Agus Bas is full of fire regret and passion, harking back to the great Celtic / Irish Song tradition but also comes forward into the present day. Iarla O'Lionaird sings with passion, regret, loss The end of the work leaves you in no doubt that this work is a triumph for the singer and it's Composer Donnacha Dennehy
The Seven Steps to Mercy
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Incredible New Work by Donnacha Dennehy
18 May 2011
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
It's not often these days that I am grabbed immediately by modern classical works. But Donnacha Dennehy's latest release, Grá agus Bás, stands as a firm exception. Of course, there are plenty of pieces I enjoy from an intellectual standpoint, like Steve Reich's Four Organs. I find that as the piece evolves, so does my understanding of it. But unlike Dennehy's work, there isn't anything about it that really strikes me in the first few seconds.
Dennehy's titular piece is a twenty-five minute odyssey that grabs the listener and maintains that grip right to the end. Its sonic landscapes are a barren depiction of Dennehy's native Ireland, and they are reminiscent of the spectral works of Murail and Grisey particularly in orchestration. The piece opens with Irish folk singer Iarla Ó Lionáird and develops slowly but gorgeously. While the presence of minimalist traditions is undeniable, so is Dennehy's transcendence of the genre's limitations. The strings provide a rippling sound which allows Ó Lionáird's voice, punctuated by the winds, percussion, and the perhaps unexpected electric guitar, to soar.
I know little about the traditional Irish music "sean-nós" to which Dennehy attributes his inspiration for his piece. Still, the album's liner notes explain how he drew lines from two sean-nós and manipulated them to form the text for Ó Lionáird. There are more hints of spectral music here as he explains how he used pitch-analysis software to analyze the singer's voice and derive melodic material from the overtone series of the bass.
Also included on the new release is a recording of That the Night Come, a more recent song cycle based on W.B. Yeats' poems. The songs were written for American soprano Dawn Upshaw, remembered by many for helping rocket Henryk Górecki's third symphony to fame in the early 90's. Their character is very different from "Grá agus Bás;" the pieces are driven along in a quasi-minimalist manner with pulsating metric shifts. The piece noticeably lacks the electronic alterations contained in "Grá agus Bás" which it may be better off without. Yeats's beautiful texts, paired with the pure voice of Upshaw, result in a very organic sound. The presence of an accordion in the cycle is curious but not unpleasant.
The album as a whole is remarkably solid. Although "Grá agus Bás" is undeniably the powerhouse track, the six songs comprising That the Night Come are actually the bulk of the album and they do not feel simply like filler tracks which increase the length of the CD.
Review from The Sound Post News: [...]
Dennehy's titular piece is a twenty-five minute odyssey that grabs the listener and maintains that grip right to the end. Its sonic landscapes are a barren depiction of Dennehy's native Ireland, and they are reminiscent of the spectral works of Murail and Grisey particularly in orchestration. The piece opens with Irish folk singer Iarla Ó Lionáird and develops slowly but gorgeously. While the presence of minimalist traditions is undeniable, so is Dennehy's transcendence of the genre's limitations. The strings provide a rippling sound which allows Ó Lionáird's voice, punctuated by the winds, percussion, and the perhaps unexpected electric guitar, to soar.
I know little about the traditional Irish music "sean-nós" to which Dennehy attributes his inspiration for his piece. Still, the album's liner notes explain how he drew lines from two sean-nós and manipulated them to form the text for Ó Lionáird. There are more hints of spectral music here as he explains how he used pitch-analysis software to analyze the singer's voice and derive melodic material from the overtone series of the bass.
Also included on the new release is a recording of That the Night Come, a more recent song cycle based on W.B. Yeats' poems. The songs were written for American soprano Dawn Upshaw, remembered by many for helping rocket Henryk Górecki's third symphony to fame in the early 90's. Their character is very different from "Grá agus Bás;" the pieces are driven along in a quasi-minimalist manner with pulsating metric shifts. The piece noticeably lacks the electronic alterations contained in "Grá agus Bás" which it may be better off without. Yeats's beautiful texts, paired with the pure voice of Upshaw, result in a very organic sound. The presence of an accordion in the cycle is curious but not unpleasant.
The album as a whole is remarkably solid. Although "Grá agus Bás" is undeniably the powerhouse track, the six songs comprising That the Night Come are actually the bulk of the album and they do not feel simply like filler tracks which increase the length of the CD.
Review from The Sound Post News: [...]
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
An Album of Discoveries
27 Oct 2011
Format:Audio CD
Though everyone knows the name and reputation of the brilliant soprano Dawn Upshaw and may approach this album because she is singing a work written for her, it is unlikely that as many have heard of or are aware of the immensely interesting Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy. Born in Dublin in 1970 he studied Music at Trinity College, Dublin and later pursued graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Upon returning to Dublin he founded the Crash Ensemble in 1997, an ensemble of young players performing minimalist music and pieces incorporating electronics and multimedia. Of note, the Crash Ensemble is composed of piano/ keyboards, flute, cello, guitar, viola, percussion, trombone, clarinet, double bass, and violin and in addition to works by Dennehy has performed works by the most well known minimalists - Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Louis Andriessen, Gavin Bryars, and Terry Riley. The sounds Dennehy creates are a blend of Irish folk tunes enhanced by energetic rhythms, hard-edged sounds (both acoustic and electronic) and an infectious sense of melody.
The major work (in length) on this album is the Grá agus Bás (meaning "love and death" in Gaelic). Using a vocalist - this time the Irish singer Iarla Ó Lionáird - combined with the Crash Ensemble, the singer's plaintive cries sound very much like phrases from Irish folk music, while the accompaniment features a kind of pulsating minimalist shimmer. Dennehy has remarked 'I need a kind of vehicle for my music and I need an ensemble that can do it, people I can trust. I don't want to be this kind of old-fashioned composer waiting around for commissions for instrumentations that don't really trigger something in me. I was very lucky, though, because the Crash group is great. There's a great collaborative spirit among them. It feels like a band. I can ring them up and they'll come 'round to my house, even. We can record things to see -- in the middle of a composition -- how it works. It's like a lab, you know? It's like Haydn having his orchestra at Esterhazy. It's really helpful.' The work follows the Sean Nós tradition - "old style" Irish song and dance - yet placed firmly in today's classical climate of post-minimalism.
The second work is a song cycle Dennehy wrote for soprano Dawn Upshaw on texts by William Butler Yeats from his collection 'That the Night Come'. The songs speak of love and death, with plenty of angst thrown in. The accompaniments ripple appealingly, with a slight nod to John Adams, while Upshaw gets at the heart of Yeats' sad, haunted beauty.
This is a beautifully recorded and packaged album of new music that deserves wide attention. It is another star in the crown of Upshaw and a very fine introduction to the music of Donnacha Dennehy. Grady Harp, October 11
The major work (in length) on this album is the Grá agus Bás (meaning "love and death" in Gaelic). Using a vocalist - this time the Irish singer Iarla Ó Lionáird - combined with the Crash Ensemble, the singer's plaintive cries sound very much like phrases from Irish folk music, while the accompaniment features a kind of pulsating minimalist shimmer. Dennehy has remarked 'I need a kind of vehicle for my music and I need an ensemble that can do it, people I can trust. I don't want to be this kind of old-fashioned composer waiting around for commissions for instrumentations that don't really trigger something in me. I was very lucky, though, because the Crash group is great. There's a great collaborative spirit among them. It feels like a band. I can ring them up and they'll come 'round to my house, even. We can record things to see -- in the middle of a composition -- how it works. It's like a lab, you know? It's like Haydn having his orchestra at Esterhazy. It's really helpful.' The work follows the Sean Nós tradition - "old style" Irish song and dance - yet placed firmly in today's classical climate of post-minimalism.
The second work is a song cycle Dennehy wrote for soprano Dawn Upshaw on texts by William Butler Yeats from his collection 'That the Night Come'. The songs speak of love and death, with plenty of angst thrown in. The accompaniments ripple appealingly, with a slight nod to John Adams, while Upshaw gets at the heart of Yeats' sad, haunted beauty.
This is a beautifully recorded and packaged album of new music that deserves wide attention. It is another star in the crown of Upshaw and a very fine introduction to the music of Donnacha Dennehy. Grady Harp, October 11
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Heard an excerpt on NPR and went to my computer immediately
1 Jun 2011
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is simply one of the most interesting and engaging discs I have bought in a long time. While you can hear the influences of quite a few streams in current contemporary (classical) music, the music is never derivative. Dennehy has absorbed them and made them his own. The Irish singer on the title track is phenomenal, and the quality of his voice gives the whole piece an unworldly (and slightly cross over) feel. Dawn Upshaw is wonderful as always, and you can't go wrong with Yeats. This is music that will grab your attention from the opening bars, hold it throughout and then stay with you afterwards. In a good way.
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