The Irish composer Gerald Barry offers a considerable challenge to audiences in the musical idiom he has made his own. He studied composition with Stockhausen, Kagel and Cerha, and organ with Piet Kee, working at first in Cologne before returning to Ireland to teach at University College, Cork. He was soon able to devote himself full time to composition after appointment to the Irish state Aosdána. His music has been heard in many countries.

Stage and Orchestral Music

Barry’s opera The Intelligence Park was staged in London in 1990 and followed in 1995 by The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit. Here and elsewhere he has drawn on very varied sources. His Chevaux-de-frise takes material from the names of wrecked ships of the Spanish Armada; Hard D derives something from Bach and from Irish ballads; and other works have been conjured out of material as diverse as broadcast shipping forecasts and the passing-notes in Bach chorales.