John Kinsella (born 1932)

[Christo]

Christo, unless you meant listening to it live or on CD, did you see the link above. It included a YT video of the 11th premiere ?

Oh dear, really - had overlooked it, many thanks!!

[aligreto]

Oh dear, really - had overlooked it, many thanks!!

I hope that you enjoy listening to the new Kinsella symphony. 

[aligreto]

From The Irish Times [9th Jan. 1998]

Self-taught symphonist


John Kinsella is unusual among Irish composers for his concentration on writing symphonies. He was, however, something of a late beginner, not completing his First Symphony until 1984, when he was 52. On the other hand, you could argue he was exactly the opposite: as a teenager in the late 1940s, one of his first works was a symphony which he valiantly submitted as an entry for RTE's Carolan Prize.

"The adjudicator was Sir Arnold Bax that year. I remember when I got my score back that the pages were turned up to about half-way through, after which I think he lost interest. I remember I gave that score to Eamonn O Gallchobhair at one stage. I'm not quite sure where it is now. Just as well."

Kinsella is essentially self-taught as a composer, and O Gallchobhair's is the only name he mentions in connection with tuition. "I had a couple of composition lessons with him. He used to spend a lot of his time denouncing people like Beethoven for writing in short, motivic style. He said that long, flowing melodies are the essence of what music should be all about." When he was at the period in his life when he might have devoted himself to formal compositional study, Kinsella didn't really know who to study with. "I think I always secretly said to myself, you really have to make your own way in this area; it's not a subject you can study."

The work and the study became as one. And he was fortunate that his early passion for music evoked a very sympathetic response within his family. "I'm very grateful to my father for the fact that he used to buy me scores. I was always interested in listening to music. Even before the age of 10, I was always heavily affected by certain pieces of music. I built up a library of scores very quickly and I got into the habit of always having the score, if possible, when I was listening to something." This is where he got his schooling, soaking in, as he puts it, anything he could lay his hands on.

His early aspiration - and it sounds strange coming from a man so consistently soft-spoken and undemonstrative of gesture - was to cultivate a sense of the dramatic. "How far I went down that road or how much I achieved is, I suppose, open to debate. I like drama in music. I wouldn't say I prefer Handel to Bach, but I see characteristics in Handel that I would very much aspire to, if I could possibly get anywhere near them. Whereas Bach I just stand back from, and more or less wave the white flag."
He was stirred by Beethoven, too, and by Sibelius, whose name recurs more than that of any other composer. "You could hardly call him a dramatic composer, but there were certain things about the sounds he makes, the melodic turns and the kind of harmonic language he uses that I stuck to like a limpet straight away. I just loved it. It's an unquestioning kind of love that I have for his music, even though you can see the seamy sides at times. I don't mind about that. I didn't consciously model myself on anybody, but the influences are bound to show through."

The period of "apprenticeship" composition extended for a decade or more. The earliest work of Kinsella's that I've seen mentioned dates from 1959, and he talks musingly of deleting some of the earliest entries from his current work-list. By the mid-Sixties he found himself drawn by the attractions of serial composition, and some years later music became the centre of his career, when he moved from Player Wills (where he'd been a computer programmer) to the music department of RTE as a senior assistant. He rose through the ranks to become head of music in 1983, a post he held for five years before taking early retirement to concentrate on composition.

His work with RTE brought him exposure to a wide range of contemporary composition. "I was involved in going to the UNESCO Rostrum of Composers on behalf of RTE. I used to go to that every year in Paris for a week. On certain years you'd hear maybe up to 85 or 90 pieces of music. I had a surfeit of the `international' style that was coming through there; you weren't quite sure after a while whether you were listening to a North Korean composer or a Brazilian. And I began to lose an interest in the international style which was emerging from serialism. I tried to find my own path after that."

He sees his large-scale choral and orchestral work A Selected Life (1973, setting words by his brother, the poet Thomas Kinsella) as the last big work of his serial period. "In writing A Selected Life, there were certain techniques which I'd acquired which made it very easy to build up textures which seemed to work quite well. But I was always drawn to softening the edges of the music and asking it to say something simple. You'll even find in that work there are moments like that - which I regard as the more successful ones. I saw it as a very easy style to create works in, which maybe didn't draw out anything from yourself. The problem was to try and find a language where you were actually saying something individual, or you were actually giving something of yourself to it, rather than simply writing music. "I think the first work in my turnaround was a commission from the Arts Council to write something for the Pearse centenary in 1979. I wrote a piece based on the poem The Wayfarer. It was a 15-minute, orchestral dissertation on the poem, which was guided by the shape of the poem itself. I suppose I understood the nature of the commission to indicate that perhaps the style shouldn't be too way-out; and it just came at the moment when I was looking for something else. It was at a fortunate moment. That was the start of the more melodic style."

It was the conductor Albert Rosen who pointed out that an orchestral work called Essay was symphonic enough to work as the first movement of a symphony. The composer took the hint and finished his First Symphony in 1984 and his Second in 1988, reaching his Seventh last month (a commission from the Cork School of Music Symphony Orchestra) and is already raring to go on his Eighth.

He clearly feels at home with symphonies and quotes the American doyen Elliott Carter's alignment with the baroque for clarification. "I was reading Carter recently, who says he's more of a concerto grosso man than a symphonist - not that I would bracket myself with Carter, by a long shot. But I could see myself as more of a symphonist than a concerto grosso type."

The traditional symphonic crafts of motivic development and tonal tension are high among Kinsella's concerns. "The Fourth Symphony is based on one five-note motif, which is just a little turn. I tried to keep it going for 46 minutes, based on this little turn. The work is out on a Marco Polo CD now, so if anybody wants to follow it up, they can see what I'm talking about."

The Third Symphony, also on the CD, is being heard at the National Concert Hall tonight. "The Third fell into what I think is a kind of unique structure - two movements framed by an epilogue and prologue with an intermezzo binding the whole thing together, commenting on what's happening, summing up what's happened and setting out the pattern before it happens. The unfortunate person there is the first bassoon; all the weight falls on him to do all that. That particular symphony was written very quickly, which seems to be a good sign."

Since leaving RTE, Kinsella has been largely out of the public eye, although he has served on the board of the NCH and was a member of the group which produced the PIANO Report. He often sounds pessimistic about the state of musical life in Ireland, particularly as regards education, but he's more upbeat about the outcome of PIANO. "I think it's gotten somewhere, certainly in the orchestral end of things, insofar as the standing of music and the orchestras in RTE will be upped. That's some achievement, which I suppose is a kind of compromise game. You're not going to publish a report and have everything implemented and end up either in Valhalla - or wish you hadn't written it. I think a lot of it has been taken on board by RTE."

The members of the PIANO review body went on a fact-finding mission to Finland, a country of comparable population and period of independence to Ireland. "On a three-day visit there it was quite a sobering experience to find the standing that music had in the society at large." He lists the activity in schools, the Sibelius Academy, the choirs, and the fact of "finding 25 symphony orchestras in a country of five million people - and everything else in proportion to that! One could see straight away that in Ireland we hadn't even left the starting block as regards music."

[aligreto]

From The Irish Times [9th April 2012]

A lifetime of obsession with symphonies


Irish composer John Kinsella has had a lifelong fascination with symphonies. Just turned 80, he discusses the process in preparing his eleventh, and which symphonies he thinks are the greatest.

What marks John Kinsella out from the crowd is the fact that he's an Irish composer obsessed with symphonies. It's not that there haven't been other Irish composers who've written symphonies. But nobody else has done so with the tenacity that Kinsella has shown. He didn't complete the work he numbered Symphony No 1 until 1984, the year he turned 52. His 10th was premiered earlier this year by the Irish Chamber Orchestra under Gábor Takács-Nagy, and given rousing receptions in Limerick and Dublin. And Kinsella, who turned 80 yesterday, is raring to get going on No 11.

He'll have to wait a while, though. His most recent project was a work for solo double bass. "Which is very current, because it's to do with the Titanic. The double-bass player David Daly, who plays in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, his uncle was Eugene Daly, who was on the Titanic. He was a piper. He boarded at Queenstown with his wife and sister, and is reported to have played a tune called Erin's Lament as he went on board.

"David has found this tune by referring to the current Athlone Pipe Band. They dug it out for him, what they thought was the actual tune. I've written a sort of graphic thing about the whole Titanic experience, weaving this into it. I even heard reference to Eugene Daly on Newstalk last night. There's a new book out about the Titanic and it gave much more detail about his experiences, where he saw passengers being held in steerage, and a lot of them drowned as a result of that, and some of them were even shot by the crew.

"I've just finished that piece, and he's going to do it this year. And I've just started on a string quartet now, for the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in Bantry 2013. I'm very much at the beginning stages there, so it's kind of fraught. Slow progress, digging. That'll keep me going for about six months. Then I'd love to do a No 11."

Kinsella picked up the symphony bug as a youngster, when his father encouraged him and his older brother (the poet Thomas Kinsella), and he soaked up all the music he could through radio and live concerts.

Symphonies were always a big excitement. "The idea of these big structures, and the sense of adventure at the beginning of the work as to where you were going to go on this long journey and what you were going to hear and imagine. And then the culmination, perhaps, or the sorrow at the end. It just tapped into my nerve ends, the idea of a large piece of orchestral music like that. I simply couldn't get enough of classical music. But the symphony, being what it is, was the core of this experience. Going on from there, I always had the urge to write music, although I really knew nothing about it at all."

What makes a symphony a symphony for Kinsella is "the feeling that something important is to be said, rather than something entertaining, in the very best sense of the word". He muses over issues of providing contrast, balancing everything into a satisfying whole, getting the pacing right, finding novel formal solutions in a way that makes clear that the fascination is unending. When he talks about the great figures in the history of the symphony he often talks in terms of heaven and special degrees of love.

Haydn he cherishes for, "Optimism, endless energy, and an imagination that, within the terms he was dealing with, knew no bounds. A tremendous sense of fun, and one can pick that up from his string quartets as well, which parallel the symphonies." Mozart is "a voice from heaven. I can never understand Mozart. As time goes on he's just more and more of a mystery to me. He's the exact opposite to Beethoven, a man who dug his way through everything and echoes the human condition very clearly. Mozart seemed to rise above all that. I know he worked very hard, he revised a lot. But the spontaneity of the whole thing is incredible. And if you take his last three symphonies, that's still a pinnacle that people coming after him are very aware of and which in certain senses has never been equalled.

"Beethoven is the one I understand most. I've been reading a book recently by Barry Cooper on his compositional methods. It's an examination of the notebooks, divining from them how he went about the work of composition, including methods that I'd worked out myself – fairly mundane things, I'm not talking about anything on Beethoven's level, but working methods, I see that they're kind of paralleled in his way of trying to put things together. The slogging at ideas, the shaping and re-shaping.

"But there's a mystery in Beethoven to me. You get the sketchbooks and you have all these pregnant phrases which are ready to go. There's nothing about the actual work itself. There's nothing left behind about the intermediate stages of composition through a certain work. But he's still the one to aspire to, he really is. If I was made pick my hero, he's obviously the one. It's everlasting music. And he's totally indestructible, in the sense that if you hear amateur performers doing Beethoven, there's always an awful lot left at the end of it." And Beethoven gets Kinsella's vote for greatest symphony ever written. He sees Beethoven's Seventh as being "of a Grecian perfection".
Also on the shortlist would be Schubert's Ninth: "The freshness of melody, the rhythms, and then in the Ninth Symphony the overwhelming power of the whole thing still has the power to leave me completely flat." Schumann is "a special love", cherished for his melodic invention and his individual approach to form, and he has a grá, too, for Mendelssohn. "The Fourth Symphony, the Italian, is something I'd love to be able to write, I really would. I envy the man his skill. It's such an amazing work.

"In my early 20s, I couldn't get enough Brahms. That wore off. And I'm now re-entering a stage where again I can't get enough of him. His four symphonies are huge areas of discovery and enlightenment, and individuality of technique."

Tchaikovsky is a master envied for "his sense of orchestration and harmony, and the cleanliness of his sound". He sees Tchaikovsky, even in depressive mood, as healthy. Mahler, on the other hand, is not, and his music is "a problem, for me. There's no doubt he's a composer of the first rank. But his message to me is too depressive. I can't live with his music. I can admire it, and appreciate it. But I don't listen to Mahler by choice." He struggled with Bruckner, too: "I can stand back from a Bruckner symphony now, and appreciate it in the whole, and know what he's doing. The effect can be totally overwhelming. I think Bruckner symphonies are, if you like, the ideal symphony, because they do say something very important and very profound, and even manage to get very trite ideas in, but they're in the right place, in the right mixture."

He praises Nielsen for his "tremendous, gritty music", and admires Shostakovich as "a great man who's held the flag for the symphony right through the 20th century.

But the key 20th-century figure for him is Sibelius. "A complete love. He's somebody I associate with very closely. I feel there's some Nordic blood in my veins somewhere. Everything he says seems like something I want to say myself, that I can totally appreciate, and I find very strong resonances in his sounds. Sibelius I put up there with Beethoven."

His favourite among his own symphonies is the Third. "I think the proportions are just about right, although I've met people who argue very strongly otherwise. But I'm happy enough with that. I was happy with the way the 10th Symphony went recently. The audience reaction took me completely unawares. They stood and clapped. I was completely unnerved by that. I wasn't expecting it at all. It was helped by a tremendous, vigorous performance in each case.

"From a formal point of view, the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies I'm very happy with. The Eighth has a problem. It's only had one performance. It was an experiment with form, which I may have pushed the boundaries too far on for the content. On the other hand, I'd reserve judgement on that until the work could be given enough rehearsal time to realise it. It's a work that I put so much effort and energy into that I was in reasonably bad health for a while after it. So there must be something in it somewhere."

And the 10th, written for chamber orchestra rather than symphony orchestra, seems to have marked a turning point. It wasn't commissioned, and there was no performance in prospect when he composed it. "I deliberately wrote in a vacuum. I deliberately took my time over it. The Arts Council gave me a small grant, I was able to buy a lot of scores and recordings of other music that I took time out to listen to. I just made my own space. It had nothing to do with deadlines or anybody.

"I'd like to do the next one in the same way. I'm very much a fan of the smaller orchestra now. I think the smaller orchestra can in its own way almost say more. You're forced to say something, rather than just cover up with a trombone blast. Coming back to my greatest symphony ever written, Beethoven's Seventh, he only had two horns. And he made a big enough noise with that. I'm a very big fan of that. It may be something to do with the austerity of today. Lean and fit."

[vandermolen]

From The Irish Times [9th April 2012]

Very interesting Fergus and thanks for posting this. I agree with him about No.3.

[André]

Fantastic articles, thanks a lot for posting them. I absolutely relate to his analysis of the great symphonists of the past, and of his own third, which I admire for its perfect symmetry and concise working out of the musical material.

[aligreto]

Cheers guys. I merely wanted to offer some insight and context into both Kinsella and his music.

[Symphonic Addict]

Extensive and interesting readings, aligreto. Thanks for sharing them. As Kinsella, I'm also a huge fan and admirer of symphonies, sometimes becoming obsessed with them. If I were a composer, they would be the meat of my creations. 

[vandermolen]

I found Kinsella's sibelian 11th Symphony to be one of his greatest.

[aligreto]

I found Kinsella's sibelian 11th Symphony to be one of his greatest.

I am tending to agree. It made an immediate and profound impact on me when I heard it in live concert recently. I thought that impression and impact may have been the fact that it was live but the more that one hears it the more powerful it becomes, for me anyway.

[kyjo]

Oddly enough, a couple months ago I listened to Kinsella's 3rd Symphony (Joie de Vivre), which is highly regarded on this forum by those with similar tastes as myself (), and came away rather underwhelmed. The music struck me a bit like watered-down Sibelius and Nielsen and not having too much memorable to say. I recall being more impressed with his 7th Symphony, which also bore the influence of these two composers but in a more inspired way IMO. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood when listening to the 3rd?

[Symphonic Addict]

Oddly enough, a couple months ago I listened to Kinsella's 3rd Symphony (Joie de Vivre), which is highly regarded on this forum by those with similar tastes as myself (), and came away rather underwhelmed. The music struck me a bit like watered-down Sibelius and Nielsen and not having too much memorable to say. I recall being more impressed with his 7th Symphony, which also bore the influence of these two composers but in a more inspired way IMO. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood when listening to the 3rd?

Try the 4th Symphony The Four Provinces. It's much more satisfying and memorable than the 3rd IMO.

[vandermolen]

Try the 4th Symphony The Four Provinces. It's much more satisfying and memorable than the 3rd IMO.

+1 for 'Try the 4th Symphony'.

I'm a great admirer of No.3 but when I lent the CD to the Head of Music at the school where I work he much preferred No.4. I'd also recommend 6 and 7 as well as the new Symphony 11.

[Christo]

I recall being more impressed with his 7th Symphony, which also bore the influence of these two composers but in a more inspired way IMO. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood when listening to the 3rd?

In that case - unthinkable with you, often the case with me - I must have been in the wrong mood many times, namely always while playing No. 3 and No. 7, as I happen to prefer the latter. 

Try the 4th Symphony The Four Provinces. It's much more satisfying and memorable than the 3rd IMO.

Perhaps it is, certainly it isn't less inspired than the Third, and together they make a wonderful cd, one of my favourite for many years, until the arrival of the coupling of No. 6 and 7, which I find equally succesful (a well-designed cd with a silly title):

[André]

I think the main difference in listening appreciation of the 3rd and 4th symphonies lies in the importance Kinsella gave to the former's structure. It is cast in 2 movements with prelude, interlude and postlude, giving it a carefully designed arch form. IOW the container draws attention to itself to the detriment of the content. Or it might give that impression vs the more immediately appealing material of the 4th symphony. Kinsella the architect and then the painter, as it were.

[kyjo]

Thanks for the responses, guys! I'll check out the 4th Symphony next.

[vandermolen]

Thanks for the responses, guys! I'll check out the 4th Symphony next.

Let us know what you think of it Kyle.

[Symphonic Addict]

I concur with all those who have listened to his 11th Symphony in thinking of its sheer greatness. My goodness, this is mindblowing, epic, intense, terrific stuff, with noticeable echoes of Sibelius and others of Holmboe, perhaps. The use of the timpani was one of the highlights for me. I loved this.

[aligreto]

 

I concur with all those who have listened to his 11th Symphony in thinking of its sheer greatness. My goodness, this is mindblowing, epic, intense, terrific stuff, with noticeable echoes of Sibelius and others of Holmboe, perhaps. The use of the timpani was one of the highlights for me. I loved this.

The live performance was simply wonderful. It was a real tour de force. I will be interested to see [if it ever happens] whether a studio recording could ever capture the essence of the work.

[Cato]

Here is the YouTube link, which does not explicitly state that Kinsella's Symphony XI is contained in the video:

https://www.youtube.com/v/Xg15YzJ2XQY

I happen to work with a lady from Ireland, and today asked her about the Latinate sound of Kinsella's name, and whether his ancestors might come from the survivors of the Spanish Armada.  She thought it highly likely, and also explained that the accent is on the KIN, not on the SEL.