Born in Dublin, John F. Larchet studied with Michele Esposite at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. His enthusiasm for Irish traditional music led to his appointment as Musical Director of the Abbey Theatre, where he worked with the leading Irish literary figures. From 1920 to 1955, he was professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and from 1921 to 1958, professor of music at the University College Dublin. It was a time of idealism and experiment, as Yeats’s essays, published under the title Explorations, on the Irish dramatic movement from 1901-1919 reveal. Every aspect of theatre, which included the role of songs and singers, was imaginatively reassessed