John McLachlan (born 5 March 1964) is an Irish composer.

Life

McLachlan was born in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

, son of the writer

Leland Bardwell Constan Olive Leland Bardwell (25 February 1922 – 28 June 2016) was an Irish poet, novelist, and playwright. She was part of the literary scene in London and later Dublin, where she was an editor of literary magazines ''Hibernia'' and ''C ...

, and studied at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama (1982–6), the Royal Irish Academy of Music (1989–97), and Trinity College Dublin (BA 1988), where he received a Ph.D. in musicology in 1999 for a study of the relationship between analysis and compositional technique in the post-war

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

. He has also studied privately with Robert Hanson (1989–90) and Kevin Volans (1994–5). He now lives in Inishowen,

County Donegal County Donegal ( ; ga, Contae Dhún na nGall) is a county of Ireland in the province of Ulster and in the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town of Donegal in the south of the county. It has also been known as County Tyrconne ...

. He has written numerous articles for ''The Journal of Music in Ireland'' (2000–10; now the onlin
''Journal of Music''
. He was executive director of the Association of Irish Composers (AIC; 1998–2012), and in 2007 he was elected to Aosdána. McLachlan was the featured composer in the

RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra The National Symphony Orchestra (NSO; previously known as RTÉ Symphony Orchestra and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra) is the largest professional orchestra in Ireland. Housed at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, since January 2022, it used ...

's "Horizons" series in 2003 and 2008. He has also represented Ireland at international festivals, including the

ISCM World Music Days The ISCM World Music Days is an annual contemporary music festival organized by the International Society for Contemporary Music, originally created in 1923 as the ISCM Festival as a means to support the most advanced composition tendencies.

Slovenia Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...

in 2003 and

Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capit ...

in 2005. In 2006, his work ''Grand Action'' was commissioned as a test-piece for the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition.

Music

McLachlan's musical aesthetic is largely shaped by a desire to impart a sense of narrative and expectation to his music without recourse to pastiche rhetorical devices. A critic wrote of a recording of McLachlan's piano piece ''Nine'': "The style of each little piece sends one's imagination and musical memory reeling, some of them evoking French

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...

, some jazzy in feel, some reminiscent of the miniatures for piano of Webern, and none of them in any way, shape or form derivative."Rafael de Acha, in: ''Music for All Seasons'', 2015. Much of his music is structured in contrasting and suddenly changing block-like sections of homogeneous material. The material within these sections is propelled by a rigorous focus on subtle rhythmic and melodic permutations, which result in both surface opacity and gradually increasing tension.

Select compositions

Orchestral *''Concerto for Chamber Orchestra'' (1988) *''Here Be Dragons'' (2003) *''Triptych'' (2004) *''Octala'' (2007) *''Incunabula'' (2007) *''Taca'' (2011) *''The Inishowen Set'' (2013) Chamber music *''Two Lyric Sketches'' (1987; rev. 1991), for string quartet *''Heuristic Pieces'' (1990; rev. 2003), for clarinet, horn, violin, viola, cello *''Suspirations 1'' (1991), for 3 trumpets, horn, trombone *''Suspirations 2'' (1991; rev. 1992), for clarinet, oboe, horn, violin, cello, double bass *''Frieze'' (1993), for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, percussion, violin, cello, double bass *''Concords'' (1997), for clarinet, violin, cello, piano *''Meetings with Remarkable Men'' (2001), for 4 percussionists *''Filament of Memory'' (2002), for 4 guitars *''Radical Roots'' (2003), for violin, viola, cello escored for 2 pianos, 2005*''neo-plastic coloured shapes'' (2003), for string quartet *''The Metal Pig'' (2004), for clarinet, violin, cello, piano *''Ghost Machine'' (2004), for violin and piano *''Fragile'' (2004), for alto flute and guitar *''Leaves Loose'' (2006), for piccolo/flute/alto-flute/bass-flute, oboe/oboe d'amore/cor anglais, clarinet/bass-clarinet *''Wonder'' (2008), for clarinet, glockenspiel, organ, e-guitar, violin, double bass *''Extraordinary Rendition'' (2008), for violin, cello, piano *''Natural Order'' (2009), for violin, cello, piano *''Five Points, Manhattan'' (2010), for 7 percussionists *''Where we are'' (2012), for string quartet *''Fragment (After Lafcadio Hearn)'' (2016), for speaker and piano *''Deliquescence'' (

) (2016), for soprano, clarinet, piano *''Glad it Was the Sun'' (2016), for string quartet *''Venise en hiver'' ( Jeanine Baude) (1995), for mezzo-soprano, alto sax, piano *''Diomedea'' (2017), for saxophone and contrabass recorder doubling treble recorder *''Isola'' (2019), for flute/alto flute and piano *''Headland'' (2021), for violin, viola, cello, piano, flute, clarinet, bassoon and fixed media Solo instrumental *''Five Movements for Piano'' (1983) *''Four Short Pieces for Guitar'' (1988) *''Two Piano Studies'' (1994) *''From the Strings of a Rainbow'' (1996), for piano *''Fifteen Easy Miniatures'' (1998), for piano *''Archaeopteryx'' (1996; rev. 1997), for piano *''Here Be Dragons'' (2001; rev. 2003), for organ *''Nuance'' (2003), for piano *''Grand Action'' (2005), for piano *''Soft Landing'' (2009), for organ *''Nine'' (2011), for piano *''Drinking the Stars'' (2012), for piano *''Ex Machina'' (2013), for piano *''Filament(s) I to VI'' (2014-18), solo pieces for flute, trombone, cello, bassoon, guitar, clarinet *''Sweeney Exulans'' (2018), for Irish harp *''Under the Flagstones'' (2018), for organ *''fiaili ceoil'' (2019), for piano *''Stone Bell and Sandwave'' (2020), for piano Choral works *''Two Akhmatova Settings'' ( Anna Akhmatova) (1986), for mixed chorus *''Two Poems in Memoriam Stevie Smith'' (

) (1986), for mixed chorus *''Lord, What Love Have I'' ( Psalm 119) (1988), for mixed chorus and organ *''He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven'' (

W.B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...

) (1995), for mixed chorus *''The Eternal Rebel'' ( Eva Gore-Booth) (2016), for soprano, tenor, choir, piano, keyboard, harmonica Electro-acoustic works *''The Red Thread'' (2000), for guitar and electro-acoustics *''Golden Circle'' (2010), for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, electro-acoustics *''Dog Ear'' (2013) fixed media *''Aurora'' (2013), for flute/bass-flute, clarinet/bass-clarinet, cello, piano, electro-acoustics *''Sparsa'' (2015) fixed media *''Sympathetic Strings'' (2016), for guitar and electro-acoustics *''This is Real'' (2019), for violin, viola, cello, bass, string orchestra, electro-acoustics *''Twelve Celestial Objects'' (2020) fixed media

Bibliography

*Adrian Smith: "McLachlan, John", in: ''The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland'', edited by Harry White and Barra Boydell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013), p. 654–5. * Benjamin Dwyer: "Interview with John Mclachlan", in: ''Different Voices: Irish Music and Music in Ireland'' (Hofheim: Wolke Verlag, 2014), p. 178–191.

Discography

*''First'', CD of six of McLachlan's pieces featuring various musicians including RTE National Symphony Orchestra https://digital.farpointrecordings.com/album/first *''Filament of Memory'', Dublin Guitar Quartet, Contemporary Irish https://www.dublinguitarquartet.com/copy-of-deleted-pieces *''Nine'', Gothic, Mary Dullea, Metier Records https://divineartrecords.com/recording/gothic-new-piano-music-from-ireland/ *''Four Pieces for Guitar'', Islands, John Feeley, Overture Music https://www.cmc.ie/shop/islands-contemporary-irish-solo-and-ensemble-works-guitar *''Grand Action'', Maria McGarry, CMC CD 9 *''Here be Dragons'', David Adams, Irish Contemporary Organ Music *''Two Lyric Sketches'', Hibernia trio + Ken Rice quartet, AIC CD1

Writings on Music

*Articles by John McLachlan in the Journal of Musi