On October 14th, RTÉ lyric Live presents 'Who'd ever think it would come to this?' - the broadcast premiere of a new Cantata, based upon material from UCD Archives on the Irish Civil War, by composer Anne-Marie O’Farrell, featuring a libretto by author Ed Vulliamy, adapted by Kellie Hughes. Listen to A Civil War Cantata above, via RTÉ lyric fm.
Below, UCD Principal Archivist Kate Manning introduces a remarkable project...
As an archivist charged with the curation of many of the most important private paper collections concerning the Irish revolutionary period, the Decade of Centenaries has acted as a constant prompt when planning the work UCD Archives engages in, from collecting to cataloguing to creating exhibitions.
The large number of State and local commemorations during this period, including some controversial events, compels one to think about the nature and purpose of commemoration. What are we doing when we engage in acts of commemoration? How can the commemoration of an event that took place 100 years ago still move people, or cause anger or hurt? What do we mean when use words like 'remember' and ‘memory’ when we speak of events that no-one living can remember?
'Who'd ever think it would come to this?'
The documents in our revolutionary period collections range from official military reports to deeply personal letters and diaries; from maps, and photographs to coded cipher messages to smuggled instructions; from execution orders to memoirs. Our collections cover the gamut of feeling: pride, disgust, horror, certainty, fear, love, friendship, loss.
It has often struck me that the work of an archivist when cataloguing, is a literary endeavour. We respond to the language and form of the documents we catalogue. We live with the voices of those who created the documents.
These voices compete with each other, some are confident, some struggle to be heard. Some speak with authority for the many, some argue against the consensus. How do we represent this cacophony?
includes the testimony of Stephen Fuller, the only survivor of the Ballyseedy massacre.
Serendipity led me to meeting Ed Vulliamy in 2016, whose book The War is Dead, Long Live the War, I had recently read. A theme Ed explores in this book is the importance of commemoration to survivors of the war in Bosnia and the ongoing trauma caused by the pervasive absence of memorials and obstacles placed in the way of acts of commemoration. I thought about commemoration as an act of solidarity.
The result of all this thinking, is ‘Who’d Ever Think It Would Come To This?’ A Civil War Cantata.
In 2019 Ciarán Crilly, Head of UCD School of Music, and I received funding from UCD Decade of Centenaries to commission a cantata commemorating the Irish Civil War. Ed Vulliamy was engaged to write the libretto using civil war documents in UCD Archives and the composer Anne-Marie O'Farrell was engaged to write the music.
Despite the best efforts of the pandemic, the libretto was written and the music composed. It was an enormous undertaking and is an extraordinary achievement.
The performance took place in O’Reilly Hall in UCD on 30th September, featuring the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the chamber choir Resurgam, soloists Colette Delahunt (soprano), Sharon Carty (mezzo-soprano), Dean Power (tenor) and Benjamin Russell (baritone), conducted by Ciarán Crilly - and now it makes its radio debut on RTÉ lyric fm.
RTÉ lyric Live: 'Who'd Ever Think It Would Come To This?’ A Civil War Cantata, RTÉ lyric fm, Friday October 14th @ 7pm
