INVOCATION (1994)

Eirí Na Gréine / The Rising Of The Sun
Sleepsong
The Last Rose
Hinbarra
Quis Est Deus
Peperit Virgo
Heia Viri
Under The Greenwood
Siúil, A Rúin
Christus Resurgens
Innisfree
Goltraí
Song Of Oisín
Wind On Sea

ANÚNA

Artistic Director Michael McGlynn

Caron Hannigan
David Clarke
Emer Lang
Garrath Patterson
John McGlynn
Katie McMahon
Máire Lang
Mairéad Ní Fhaoláin
Miriam Blennerhassett
Monica Donlon
Patrick Connolly
Paul Byrne
Paula Byrne
Peter Harney
Richard Boyle
Sara Clancy
Shane Lillis
Stephen Kenny
Tara O Beirne
Tony Davoren

Percussion: Noel Eccles
Uileann Pipes: Declan Masterson
Violin: Aingeala de Burca, Caron Hannigan
Guitar: John McGlynn, Benjamin Dwyer, Padraic Carroll
Harp: Máiréad Ní Fhaoláin, Anne-Marie O Farrell
Recorder: Hilda Milner
Low Whistle: Michael McGlynn
Viols: Anne Robinson, Lucy Robinson, Mark Wilkes

Released in Ireland in 1994, Invocation is ANÚNA's second album (Danu 002).Released in the USA on Celtic Heartbeat/ Atlantic, number 82855 October 24th 1995 and worldwide on January 31st 1996. The international release excluded “Christus Resurgens” and added “Winter, Fire and Snow”.

All titles written by Michael McGlynn except The Last Rose (Thomas Moore, arr. M. McGlynn) and “Siúil a Rúin” (trad. arr. Michael & John McGlynn).

Produced by Michael McGlynn and Brian Masterson.
Recorded by Brian Masterson at Gort Muire, Ballinteer, The Royal Hospital Kilmainham and Windmill Lane Studios 1994.
Engineered and edited by Brian Masterson
Cover Artwork Brendan Donlon

_________________________________

Invocation (1994) is the album that is a summation of my past and the glimpse of the future of my compositions. It is a deeply personal statement that brings together disparate strands of inspiration and condenses it into a place that feels timeless.

In 1993, riding on the success of our debut album ANÚNA, I rushed into the same recording space at Blackrock College Chapel that November to commence recording our second effort. I brought in guitars, percussion, a recorder, and the full ensemble, assuming it was simply a matter of repeating what we had already done. Everything I had learned from the first recording meant I was no longer willing to accept the same kind of result. This vision was different. After four hours struggling to assemble pieces that were almost impossible to realise in that space and context, I stopped the session. As I was funding this all from my own meagre part-time teaching salary and my own singing, it was cripplingly expensive, but enormously educational. There was no template and no precedent for the kind of work Brian Masterson and I were attempting and in many ways such an early, catastrophic failure only strengthened my resolve to continue.

In early 1994 we moved to a religious centre, Gort Muire, close to where I lived and began again. This time we recorded using a very simple setup, essentially a stereo pair with one or two spot microphones, trying to capture a sense of unity rather than control. We were aided by a much drier acoustic, which brought clarity to the textures in a way that the Blackrock College Chapel acoustic would not. In retrospect, it was a slightly insane approach, but I remember the session vividly. We recorded Aingeala de Burca’s violin in a corridor so she would not overwhelm the space and with Hilda Milner’s shining recorder playing in the room with us.

“Sleepsong” stands out strongly in my memory. The singers were grouped together about ten metres from the stereo pair, two echoing soloists were placed on either side of the church at roughly fifteen metres, the central soloist at five metres, and the harp at three. Everything was sung together. I was a soloist as well, conducting and singing simultaneously, then turning my head over my shoulder towards the microphone in order to deliver what is actually quite a tricky solo to get right. We only did two takes of the entire piece, and there was something genuinely magical in that moment, a sense of serendipity that allowed complex contemporary harmonies to come together with unexpected ease. Despite the chaos of it all, what emerged was extraordinarily beautiful.

That initial session produced enough material for an album. I took it to America to a record company that had been keenly pursuing us. When they heard the first mixes a voice, the company’s PR agent said “how am I supposed to sell this?”. In the end, she didn’t have to. I returned home and added four additional tracks to soften the intensity of the album and released it myself on my own label Danú.

The album was released late summer 1994. I remember playing it in the car on the way home from a festival with some of the singers. Their response to hearing the record for the first time was very telling. They didn’t recognise most of the songs. This was because I made full use of the digital editing tools available in their crudest form at that time. Many of the songs were recorded in fragments and stitched together in unorthodox ways. It drove Brian mad. He is an extraordinary technical artist and his work is stamped all over the unique textures of this record. Things that should not have worked, worked, and I have no idea how he achieved it. The fridge in the Chapel of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham was unhelpful in a later session. The most personal moment in these sessions was recording with the Viol consort who played so beautifully on two tracks. One of these, “Peperit Virgo” was one of the proposed haiku-like invocations I wanted to anchor the record, short pieces that were miniature sonic paintings. In 2002 when I recorded the entirety of the record again, another story for another time, “Ich am of Irlond” was recorded, a second invocation. You’ll find that on all streaming services. The second piece they recorded was another solo piece Bryd one Brere (more below on that title), which appears on Relics.

“The Rising of the Sun” was recorded earlier than the rest of the album. The percussion and vocal elements were recorded between 1990 and 1992, and it was the first professional studio recording I ever made with Brian. He later told me that I arrived at the session in Windmill Lane Studios, Ireland’s premier recording space which he had founded, with such confidence that when I asked to record the choral parts first, he didn’t question this. Only after the choir had gone home did he realise that the percussion was to be added later. This is the reverse of standard studio practice, where rhythm is laid down first and voices follow, and it is that shifting rhythmic foundation that gives the piece its extraordinary vitality and secures its place as the opening track on the album thanks to the stunning wonderful percussion of Noel Eccles. He kindly says today that it was probably genius that inspired me to do this…

The first draft of Invocation consisted entirely of original music and one song was responsible for rooting the entire set of pieces. “Wind on Sea”, the final track, contains a striking solo vocal from my brother John. His insight into what lay behind the piece allowed him to reach places that were simply too close for me to attempt myself. I sing the surrounding invocation, dismantled and reshaped from material on our debut album, while he sings the core of the text, an idea deeply influenced by Robert Graves and his masterpiece The White Goddess.

At that point the choir was far less classically trained than it had been a few years earlier, when we had been performing early and contemporary choral music ranging from Benjamin Britten to the work of my professor Seoirse Bodley. That shaped how I wrote for the group. Much of the album is built around texture, with a solo voice resting on top of the choral sections. The singers who formed this version of ANÚNA, which lasted for five years or so, were, in the main, not significantly classically trained. That allowed for an immediacy and accessibility that connected strongly with audiences, but it also imposed real limitations on me as a composer. John’s work with the individual soloists was very important in this respect and you can hear it on the singing of Katie McMahon and Sara Clancy in particular, both of whom used it to admirable effect during the later recordings made for the Riverdance project. It was not until Cynara in 1999 that I was able to return to writing music driven more decisively by choral texture.

Despite those constraints, Invocation remains, in my view, one of the most important Irish records released in that decade. Thanks to Riverdance I expect it was wrongly classified as Celtic on release, as the Eurovision Song Contest had resulted in an 18 week number one position on the Irish charts and a later Top 10 single placing in the UK. Indeed it was exactly at this moment that something very particular occurred.

Up to this point ANÚNA was a “classical” ensemble, reviewed by classical critics who viewed the ensemble as an amateur vocal group created by a composer whose music they sang. In Ireland from this point on this was no longer the case, with a few notable exceptions. Anúna was now a “Celtic Choral” group who sang arrangements of Celtic music and songs full of misty cliché. And I, as a composer, stood back into the shadows. My compositional voice was no longer what people saw. Instead it was costumed singers, candles, long-haired maidens etc. My view was that if that allowed people to access the music I could live with it. By stepping back I allowed the group to blossom and thrive. The attention was very much on the singers and that had good and bad consequences over time.

Invocation fell between every available critical framework on release, and that confusion is evident in the responses it received critically. With hindsight, I can see that it was this record that made it possible for me to continue composing over the decades that followed. Its closest parallels lie in much more recent work such as Sensation (2006) and last year’s Eilífð (2025). Today Ireland is no longer at the centre of my inspiration in the way it was then, but the colours and the internal sound-world remain the same. This is where it emerged first.

The album was released in 1995 by Celtic Heartbeat Records, an offshoot of Atlantic, shortly after our debut album to capitalise on the success of Riverdance. It opened up a completely new audience for us across the world. We had effectively bypassed the Irish music infrastructure entirely. This was good and bad, but ultimately I never believed that infrastructure would be able to accommodate what I was trying to do and I still don’t.

The few voices who recognised what this recording truly was at the time were soon drowned out by what followed with Riverdance, where ANÚNA became associated with something fixed in a particular moment in time. Unfortunately that is the fate of the group in Ireland today and a frustration for those here who have followed us at home on every step of this long journey since then.

Michael McGlynn, January 2026

Eirí na Gréine/The Rising of the Sun

Music by Michael McGlynn
Solo vocal Katie McMahon,
Violins Aingeala de Burca, Caron Hannigan
Percussion Noel Eccles
Uileann pipe Declan Masterson.

The first version of “The Rising of the Sun” was commissioned by the Project Arts Centre in Dublin for its 25th anniversary in 1991. I remember that concert very clearly. It brought together music spanning roughly a thousand years, from early chant through to contemporary work by living Irish composers. It was also the first concert in which my brother John sang, and it felt entirely appropriate that “The Rising of the Sun”, with its breakneck speed, energy, and rhythmic drive, should be part of it. That concert marked a decisive turning point. It was effectively the moment when An Uaithne became Anúna, as many of the singers involved at that stage, most of them drawn from the RTÉ Chamber Choir, chose to move on afterwards.

What makes this piece unusual is the collision of influences layered on top of one another. Irish traditional material sits alongside medieval polyphony and the asymmetrical Eastern European rhythms that Andy Irvine had introduced to Irish audiences. The original incarnation of the piece was quite different from the version heard here. In 1990 I reworked it with a strong focus on a solo voice answered by the ensemble, and this version was recorded around 1992. For the percussion I asked Noel Eccles and Declan Masterson to play uileann pipes. Both of them would later go on to perform with Riverdance the Show. My instinct was simple: if you are going to attempt something like this, work with the very best. It is one of those pieces that can easily be mistaken for something traditional if the melodies are taken in isolation, yet the construction is entirely its own. In any case, it opens the record with a bang.The lightness and joyousness of Katie McMahon’s solo carries this deceptively difficult line brilliantly.

This traditional text tells the nonsensical story of a cockerel and hen who become outlaws, and eventually are eaten. The story is probably an allegory and this version comes from the Petrie collection (1843).

Cearc agus coileach a d’imi’ le chéile
Shiúladar Éire gur briseadh a gcroí,
Is chuadar go Gailimh le héirí na gréine,
Gur cuireadh an péire isteach ag an dlí.

‘S ag Uiliam Ó hUileáin a bhí siad ar féar,
D’ith mónóga sléibhe’gus chodail sa bhfraoch,
Gur tháinig an sirriam go lúfar’s go haerach,
Is scuab sé an péire isteach go B’l’Áth’n Rí.

Dá bhfeicfeása ‘n coileach lá aonaigh sna sráide’,
Hata breá laistiar is lámhainní buí,
Ceithre spor fhada den airgead Spáinneach,
‘Gus fuip ina láimh ‘s é ‘tiocht mar an rí.

Thug siad isteach é gur scar siad a chnámha,
‘S gur chaith siad an lá sin sách spóirtúil go leor,
‘S nárbh fhearr dóibh an spóilín a cheannach ar fónamh
Ná an chaoi ‘ndeachaigh a gcáil ar fud Chontae Mhaigh Eo.

A hen and a cockerel went away together
They walked all of Ireland until they broke their hearts;
They went to Galway at the rising of the sun
Until both of them had a run in with the law

It was at William Ó hUileáin's that they were on the grass,
They ate frocken* berries and slept on the heather
Until the sheriff came quickly
And took them away to Athenry.

If you saw a cockerel on the day of the fair in the road
A West-cocked hat and yellow gloves
Four long Spanish spurs of silver and a whip in his hand
You would think he looked like a king.

They brought them inside and ripped their bones apart
And they spent that day having a lot of fun,
But wouldn't it have been better for them to buy the bobbin at a better price
Than the way that they went about it and gained a reputation throughout County Mayo.

*a type of wild blueberry

Sleepsong

Music by Michael McGlynn
Solo vocals: Katie McMahon, Michael McGlynn, Sara Clancy, Máire Lang,

“Sleepsong” comes from Tóraíocht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne (The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne), one of the central narratives of the Fenian Cycle. The story survives in several medieval manuscripts, most importantly the Book of Leinster (12th century), with later recensions in manuscripts such as the Book of Fermoy (15th century). The lullaby itself is generally dated on linguistic grounds to the 11th or 12th century and appears as a lyrical inset within the prose tale.

Gráinne binds Diarmuid to her by placing a geis upon him, a sacred obligation that could not be refused without grave dishonour. At this stage of the narrative there is no explicit declaration of love. Early Irish literature tends to express emotional bonds through action rather than direct statement. Gráinne keeps watch while Diarmuid sleeps because danger is close and Fionn and his men are approaching. Although her vigilance is necessarily self-protective, the implication of the scene is protection. What affected me most was the image of the natural world remaining awake and alert while she urges him to sleep. It is a moment of great stillness and tension, and I choose to place Gráinne in a dominant role as guardian.

The musical setting is deliberately simple when the text is sung. Around it sit two cloud-like outer sections, an introduction and a coda, intended to create distance in time and suggest a world we can never fully understand. These outer sections are based on one of my earliest choral pieces “Codail Begán” from 1988 and reflect how I do not see composition as fixed. I am happy to return to earlier material and reshape it. In this piece you can hear the embryonic nature of my compositional voice, direct and unadorned.

Codail begán beg, uair ní heagla duit a bheg;
Do dhen-sa t-foraire dhíot, a Dhiarmuid áin.

Sleep a little, a little, since there is no fear for you at all;
I myself will keep watch over you, O noble Diarmuid.

Sleep a little, a little,
for you need not fear the least;
I will keep watch over you,
O noble Diarmuid.

Far away there’s a linnet singing; her fear makes her loathe to sleep. Listen, a stag in the east is calling; his thoughts will not turn to sleep. Parting the two of us is as the parting of children from one home. Parting the two of us is as the parting of body from soul.

(Text adapted by M. McGlynn)

The Last Rose

Solo voice Sara Clancy

Thomas Moore (1779-1852) introduced Irish music to a worldwide audience in the 19th century. His poem “The Last Rose of Summer” was published in 1805 and later set to the traditional Irish air “Aisling an Óigfhir”. Moore’s method here is typical of his Irish Melodies: he took existing traditional tunes and supplied new English-language texts that could circulate widely in drawing rooms and concert halls while still carrying an Irish emotional charge. This features a fine solo from Sara Clancy.

‘Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes
Or give sigh for sigh.

I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them;
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves on the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.

Hinbarra

Music by Michael McGlynn
Soloists Garrath Patterson, John McGlynn, Michael McGlynn, David Clarke

The text of this song is made up of fragments drawn from a number of different traditional Irish sources. One of the things most often misunderstood about Irish traditional song is that the primary element is not the melody but the words. Our tradition prioritises text over melodic line, which is why a single text can exist with multiple melodic variants. In many ways this has given me licence to take traditional lyrics and reshape them, sometimes, as in Hinbarra, by breaking them apart and reassembling them.

When I wrote this piece there was no clear definition of what Irish choral music actually was. What you hear here is an attempt to create a musical language that marries the beauty of the Irish language with settings that emphasise the visceral energy of the landscape itself. The melodic impulse comes very firmly from sean-nós, not as imitation but as development, often placing multiple modes side by side. The text contrasts the men of the sea, the bog, the land and the farms. These were the people who travelled across the world and built great cities, the men of destiny that Jack B. Yeats painted, who emerged from harsh and humble lives and built the infrastructure of the 20th century. I still feel this setting connects directly with them, and although it is one of ANÚNA’s earliest pieces, I continue to include it in programmes whenever possible.

Hinbarra belongs to a particular strand of my compositional work, one that attempts to fuse sean-nós with my own compositional voice. When these pieces began to be performed by choirs internationally, I noticed a pattern. They were frequently grouped with folk songs and gradually began to be labelled as traditional songs arranged by Michael McGlynn. There are a number of explanations offered for this, usually without much thought as to the implications, particularly when the score clearly states that the music is composed.

The more generous explanation is that because the music is modal and written in Irish, it is assumed to belong to the traditional sphere. It is highly unlikely that original works by British, American, French or German composers would be classified as arrangements under similar circumstances.

What may be closer to the truth is that this, and other pieces of mine such as “Geantraí”, “An Oíche”, “Na Coille Cumhra”, Fáilte don Éan”, “Siosúram Só”, “Cúnnla”, “Dúlamán”, “Rosc” or “Tormán” sit awkwardly outside established categories. They do not belong to any recognised school and resist easy classification, particularly in Ireland where there is no “school” (if that is the right word) for material such as this.

Yet they are undeniably distinctive. Their directness and, yes, their roughness stand in sharp contrast to much of the choral repertoire that dominates today. I may be wrong, but I am glad to say that choirs who choose to engage with pieces like “Hinbarra” tend to go on a journey that opens up unexpected and rewarding territory, and at the very least brings them into contact with the extraordinary lives and voices that lie within the texts.

'S óró mo bháidín
'S óró mo churaichín
Fir-a na farraige, fira na moina
Hinbarra bin ó hin bó
Fir-a na talamha, fira na feirme
Hinbarra bin ó hin bó
Crochfa mé seolta is gabhfa mé siar
Hinbarra bin ó hin bó
'S óró mo churaichín ó
Hinbarra bin ó hin bó hin ó ar í ó

Oh my little boat
Oh my little curragh
Men of the sea, men of the bogs
Hinbarra bin ó hin bó
Men of the land, men of the farms
Hinbarra bin ó hin bó
I'll raise the sails and off to the West
Hin barra bin ó hin bó
Oh my little curragh
Hinbarra bin ó hin bó hin ó ar í ó

Under the Greenwood

Music by Michael McGlynn
Recorder Hilda Milner
Solo Vocal Shane Lillis

The opening text of Under the Greenwood comes from a Latin passage best known as part of Saint Patrick’s Breastplate (Lorica Sancti Patricii), traditionally dated to the fifth century, though surviving in later medieval sources. This was the first time I set this text, and it would not be the last. Its power lies in the imagery it contains, which feels closer to nature poetry than to formal spiritual writing, and it is hardly surprising that this text has attracted layers of mythology.

The opening chant acts as a doorway into the piece. What follows is based on a poem written in Old Irish known by its opening line “Domfarcai fidbaide fál” (“I see the hedge of trees”). It is generally dated to the eighth or early ninth century. The poem survives in the St Gall Priscian, Codex Sangallensis 904, a manuscript written in the early ninth century and now held in the Abbey Library of St Gall. It describes a monk sitting in a great forest, writing his manuscripts while listening to the birds in the presence of God. As he speaks of the birds, the music shifts and is taken up by the recorder, echoing birdsong high above a moving harmonic palette similar to that of Debussy’s incidental music for Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien (1911).

Ad Temoriam hodie potentiam praepolentem invoco Trinitatis
Apud Temoriam hodie virtutem Nativitatis Christi cum eia eius baptismi
Apud Temoriam hodie virtutem amoris Seraphim in obsequio angelorum.

I bind to myself today the great power of an invocation to the Trinity
I bind to myself today the power of the incarnation of Christ
I bind to myself today the power of Seraphim’s love and the obedience of the angels.

A hedge of trees surronds me,
A blackbird’s lay sings to me.
May the lord shield me,
Well do I write under the greenwood.

Upon my lined booklet
The trilling birds chant to me.
May the lord shield me,
Well do I write under the greenwood.
In a grey mantle, on the top of the bushes, the cuckoo sings.

Heia Viri

Music by Michael McGlynn
Solo vocal Monica Donlon

The text of “Heia viri” is attributed to Saint Columbanus (c. 543 – 615), the Irish monk and missionary whose life was marked by constant travel across continental Europe. The poem is often linked to moments of departure and journeying in his life, and its language reflects that sense of movement, danger, and collective resolve. It is not a hymn in the usual sense, but an exhortation, urging courage and steadiness in the face of storm and opposition.

What makes the text unusual is its relationship to the celeuma, a Roman rowing chant used to coordinate effort in boats through loud, repeated calls. Columbanus appears to take that existing form and turn it into something devotional. The shouted exhortations remain, but they are redirected towards moral and spiritual endurance rather than physical labour. It is halfway between a work song and a hymn.

In my setting, I wanted to echo that origin. The rhythmic drive is meant to suggest the movement of oars through water, and the vocal writing aims for the kind of collective shout that would have carried across a boat in rough seas. The piece owes a great deal to fourteenth-century English music and to aspects of Machaut’s writing, repertoire that formed the backbone of Anúna’s performances in the early 1990s. I have to single out the extraordinary solo singing of Monica Donlon, which gives the piece its urgency and edge.

Extollunt venti flatus, nocet horridus imber,
Sed vis adta virum superat sternitque procellam.
State animo fixi, hostisque spernite strofas,
Virtutum vosmet, armis defendite rite.
Heia viri nostrum reboans echo sonet heia!

The blasts of the winds rise up, and the dreadful rain causes harm,
but strength given to the man overcomes and lays low the storm.
Stand firm with fixed spirit, and despise the stratagems of the enemy,
defend yourselves properly with the arms of virtues.
Hey, men, let the resounding echo of ours cry out: hey!

Song Of Oisin

Music by Michael McGlynn
Solo Vocal Katie McMahon

This short Irish-language text comes from the Oisín tradition, part of the Fenian cycle. The material belongs to the medieval period, probably dating from around the 10th to 12th century, though the story itself is older and comes from a long oral tradition. The language reflects a later phase of Old Irish moving into Middle Irish.

This fragment forms part of The Song of Oisín, one of the last pieces written for the album. It is not narrative in the usual sense but reflective, giving voice to Oisín as an old man looking back on youth, love, and physical life. The piece was strongly influenced by the music of Pentangle, something that is particularly clear in the guitar part created by John McGlynn, which remains one of the defining elements of the track. It has always been a favourite of the singers. The self-penned lines were made up in studio and probably exemplify the worst aspects of spontaneous text creation.

Listen to the running of the wave.
Here the sound that carries on the wind.
Voices call, carry on the wind.
Ancient song, whisper to the end.

Is mé Oisín gem arsaidh do airrcis mé mná miolla
Léithi is goire don duinne cruime is goire don dirge.

I am Oisín, though now old. I have loved gentle women.
Grey is close to brown, and being bent is close to standing upright.

Quis Est Deus

Music by Michael McGlynn
Solo Vocals Miriam Blennerhassett, Monica Donlon, Michael McGlynn

This short Latin poem survives in the Patrician material associated with Bishop Tírechán and is preserved in the Book of Armagh, compiled in the late eighth or early ninth century. The text itself probably dates from the seventh century. It is built entirely out of questions. Who God is, where God is, to whom God belongs, where God might be found. Family, wealth, beauty, youth, age, heaven, earth, sea, rivers, mountains, valleys. Every question is asked but none answered. The questioning itself is the act of prayer.

On the recording, the three soloists, myself, Monica, and Miriam, were chosen very deliberately. This piece reaches backwards rather than forwards into the history of Anúna. The three of us first met in the late 1980s, and by the time this was recorded we had been singing together for nine years, largely classical and early music. All three of us were members of the RTÉ Chamber Choir, a semi-professional group whose singers formed the backbone of the original An Uaithne for its first three years. I think I wanted to show each of our strengths and the particular colour of our voices in this setting. That familiarity allowed me to write music that fitted the voices I knew best.

Quis est Deus
et ubi est Deus
et cuius est Deus
et ubi habitaculum eius?
Si habet filios et filias,
arum et argentum, Deus vester?
Si vivus semper,
si pulcher,
si filium eius
nutrierunt multi?
Deus vester?
Si filiae eius
carae et pulchrae sunt
hominibus mundi?
Deus vester?
Si in caelo
an in terra est?
In aequore,
in fluminibus,
in montanis,
in convallibus?
Dic nobis
notitiam eius:
Quomodo videbitur,
quomodo diligitur,
quomodo invenitur?
Si in iuventute,
si in senectute
invenitur?

Who is God,
and where is God,
and to whom does God belong,
and where is his dwelling?
If he has sons and daughters,
gold and silver, your God?
If he is always living,
if he is beautiful,
if his son
was nourished by many?
Your God?
If his daughters
are dear and beautiful
to the people of the world?
Your God?
If he is in heaven
or if he is on earth?
In the sea,
in the rivers,
in the mountains,
in the valleys?
Tell us
knowledge of him.
How is he seen,
how is he loved,
how is he found?
If in youth,
if in old age,
is he found?

Christus Resurgens

This is only the opening section of “Christus Resurgens”, which survives as a unison chant. The second part of the work, “Dicant Nunc”, is a two-part setting, but I did not complete that until some years later. That two-part section appears on the album Deep Dead Blue (1996). What survives of the piece gives a rare glimpse into an Irish medieval practice that moved confidently between unison chant and simple polyphony.

It was works like this, discovered through the writings of Frank Llewellyn Harrison, that formed the backbone of my desire to use Anúna as a vehicle to introduce Irish audiences to early Irish music. At the time there was remarkable resistance to the idea that medieval Ireland might have sustained a sophisticated musical life, particularly one capable of producing pieces as unusual as this, or the equally startling “Cormacus Scripsit” on our first album.

Christus resurgens ex mortuis, jam non moritur, alleluia
Mors illi ultra non dominabitur alleluia

Christ has arisen from the dead and dies no more, alleluia.
Death will no longer have dominion over Him alleluia

Peperit Virgo

Music by Michael McGlynn
Solo Vocal Máire Lang

This short Latin poem survives in the Book of Ossory, a late medieval manuscript compiled in Kilkenny around 1390 - 1410 under the direction of Richard de Ledrede. I first came across the text not through the manuscript itself, but through a striking reconstruction by Frank Llewellyn Harrison in Medieval English Lyrics, edited by E. J. Dobson and Frank Llewellyn Harrison. In that book, Harrison drew a parallel between Peperit Virgo and the Middle English lyric “Bryd one Brere” and the confidence with which he made it left a deep impression on me.

As a small homage to Llewellyn Harrison, whose writing shaped my early relationship to Medieval music scholarship more than almost anyone else, I set this text very simply for viol consort and voice. Máire Lang sings the solo. Her dark, grounded tone felt exactly right for this music, and it was a pleasure to include her here. I first sang with Máire in 1984 when I conducted UCD Chamber Choir and her voice is woven into my earliest compositions. This remains one of my favourite pieces.

When I was attempting to research Early Irish music in the 1980s I was repeatedly told it too academic for me to be pursuing. Eventually I wrote directly to Frank Llewellyn Harrison. His reply was generous and encouraging, offering help without reservation. That experience stayed with me. The best scholars I have known have always wanted people to look again, to listen again, and to trust their instincts when engaging with the material that has inspire their own life’s work. Thanks to people like Llewellyn Harrison, and later to scholars such as Dr. Anne Buckley these fragile jewels from the past continue to inspire us should we seek to travel that road.

Peperit Virgo, Virgo regia. Mater orphanorum, plena gratia. Alleluia.
Praebuit honorem vox angelica, regi angelorum cantando gloria. Alleluia.

She gave birth, the Virgin, the royal Virgin, mother of the fatherless, full of grace. Alleluia.
An angelic voice bestowed honour, singing glory to the King of angels. Alleluia.

Siúil, A Rúin

Arranged by John & Michael McGlynn.
Solo Vocal Katie McMahon

Dating from the late Williamite–Jacobite conflicts in Ireland around the late 17th century (1688–1691) this traditional song tells the tale of a woman whose love has fled to France. She laments his loss but vows to follow him. The sadness in this song is implicit in other versions of it. As a women in her position she was as social outcast, dying her petticoats for mourning, shunned by family.

I wish I were on yonder hill
‘Tis there I'd sit and cry my fill
And every tear would turn a mill

I wish I sat on my true love's knee
Many a fond story he told to me
He told me things that ne'er shall be

Siúil, siúil, siúil a rúin
Siúil go sochair agus siúil go ciúin
Siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom

Go, my love
Go quietly and go peacefully
Go to the door and fly with me.

His hair was black, his eye was blue
His arm was strong, his word was true
I wish in my heart I was with you

I'll dye my petticoat, I'll dye it red
And 'round the world I'll beg my bread
‘Til I find my love alive or dead

Goltraí

Music by Michael McGlynn
Solo Vocal Caron Hannigan

I first came across “Gol na dTrí Muire” through Nóirín Ní Riain when we performed with her some years before this recording. The darkness of the text immediately struck me, and it felt right for the colour of the musical setting I had in mind.

The music draws quite openly on flamenco, particularly in its rhythmic drive, set against a dark and lamenting colour palate. I play the opening whistle solo myself, on a Shaw C whistle. Before the Anúna recordings, I had never played tin whistle at all. I picked it up because I heard a sound I wanted, and learned only what was necessary to make that sound. I still can’t not play the instrument in any conventional sense, except in the few pieces where it appears in my compositions. The whistle, especially the softer, breathier instruments such as those made by Shaw, has always fascinated me because its timbre sits so closely to the human voice.

The text “Gol na dTrí Muire” belongs to the late medieval Irish religious lament tradition. On linguistic and stylistic grounds it is generally placed between the 15th and early 16th centuries. Like many Irish devotional laments, it almost certainly circulated orally before being written down, so the composition itself may be earlier than the manuscripts that preserve it.

M'ochón ó is m'ochón í, is m'ochón uile mo Chailbheirí.
D'éirigh na dtrí Muire dhá uair roimh an lá
'gan tuama cloiche ar síneadh a ngrá
Go d'táinig an taingeal le solas a sáith
le scéal annsair Mhuire fá Rí na nGrás

Tchífidh tú Peadar 'gus Tchífidh tú Pól
Tchífidh tú Conall 'gus Tchífidh tu Eoin.
Tchífidh tú na Flaithis a's aingle go leor,
'gus an Mhaighdean Muire 'na suí ins an ghlóir.

Alas, alas, alas, all my Calvary.
The three Marys rose two hours before daybreak,
without a stone tomb on which their love was laid.
An angel came with a fullness of light
with sorrowful news for Mary about the King of Grace.

You will see Peter and you will see Paul,
you will see Conall and you will see John.
You will see Heaven and many angels,
and the Virgin Mary seated in glory.

Innisfree

Solo Vocal Katie McMahon

This was the final piece I wrote for the album, a setting of W. B. Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”. I remember composing it while looking out over the sea in Roundstone, County Galway. It is one of those pieces I have returned to repeatedly, reshaping it and adding an ending in an attempt to make it settle. Some poetry already sings in itself such as that of Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson or Wallace Stevens. Adding another musical voice risks getting in the way, which is probably why I felt compelled to try this setting in the first place.

I had originally intended to sing this myself, but on the day it was taken by Katie McMahon. Her delivery has a directness and simplicity that is appropriate for the lightness of the overall choral setting. The piece has the air of something unfinished, almost like an invocation placed between larger statements. What follows it on the album is the most substantial work on the record, and in that context “Innisfree” is in the correct place.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Wind on Sea

Music by Michael McGlynn
Solo Vocals Michael & John McGlynn

“Wind on Sea” holds a very particular place in my life. It is one of the very few times I have sung with my brother John. Our voices are, in some ways, very similar, and in other ways fundamentally different. I was originally meant to sing the entire solo myself, but I could not find the inflections in the central section that I knew instinctively he could.

I have written elsewhere about my relationship with this text, but one moment has stayed with me. In 1995, as Invocation was being prepared for its American release, we were in a photography studio in Dublin. As the session ended and the cameras were being packed away, a young assistant walked up to me and said simply, “”Wind on Sea” changed my life.” At that point, I had no sense of where who was listening to it, or what effect it might be having. I didn’t know how to respond. I thanked him, and I went away thinking about what that exchange meant. For me it mirrored my own feelings about how a song can be instrumental in changing your world view when you are very young. I feel that way about the music of Debussy, and the album Secrets of the Beehive by David Sylvian.

Over the years, when people have said similar things, I have come to realise that we do not own any of this. I was moved by the original text writer. In trying to transmit that, I set something in motion that creates a similar act of imagination in the listener, very much the way the woman singing by the sea in Wallace Stephens’ masterpiece “The Idea of Order at Key West” makes her own world through her song.

Ailiu iath nÉrenn (I am the land of Ireland)

I am the wind that breathes on the sea
I am the wave, wave on the ocean
I am the ray, the eye of the Sun
I am the tomb, cold in the darkness
I am a star, the tear of the Sun,
I am a wonder, a wonder in flower.
I am the spear that cries out for blood
the word of great power,
I am the depths of a great pool.
I am the song of the blackbird.
Who but I can cast light upon the meeting of the mountains?
Who but I will cry aloud the changes in the moon?
Who but I can find a place that hides away the sun?

From the breeze on the mountain to the lake of deep blue
From the waterfall down to the sea
Never changing or ending on the voice of the wind
Sing the dark song of Éireann to me
From the breeze through the heather to the lake of deep pools.
From the waterfall down to the sea
Never changing or ending on the voice of the wind
Sing the dark song of Éireann to me