seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Darmstadt


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Birth of Jerome de Bromhead, Composer & Classical Guitarist

Jerome de Bromhead, Irish composer, classical guitarist, and member of Aosdána, is born in Waterford, County Waterford, on December 2, 1945.

De Bromhead studies with A. J. Potter and James Wilson at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, with further studies with Seóirse Bodley in 1975 and Franco Donatoni in 1978. He holds an M.A. in music, art history and English from Trinity College Dublin. As a guitarist, he studies with Elspeth Henry (1967–68) and at the Guitar Centre, London (1969).

De Bromhead’s compositions include works for solo guitar as well as orchestral, choral and chamber music. His Symphony No. 1 (1986) represents Ireland at the International Rostrum of Composers at UNESCO‘s headquarters in Paris. He describes his style as “neither a Postmodernist nor a deaf-as-a-postmodernist. Above all I am suspicious of anything that seems like dogma.”

De Bromhead’s harpsichord piece Flux (1981) is performed at the ISCM World Music Days in Germany in 1987 and is now published by Tonos Verlag of Darmstadt.

According to guitarist John Feeley, de Bromhead’s solo guitar composition Gemini (1970) is “a sophisticated work, both technically and compositionally. It has the dynamism of youth, with a sense of freshness and it projects an attractive, driving energy […] It is an effective concert work, which speaks well on the instrument and is particularly gratifying for the performer.”

De Bromhead works at RTÉ as a television news director and announcer, as well as a senior music producer for radio, until a serious accident forces him to retire in 1996. He currently lives in Dublin.

The Contemporary Music Centre (www.cmc.ie) provides scores and sample recordings of a selection of de Bromhead’s works, available here.


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Birth of Composer Gerard Victory

gerard-victoryThe prolific Irish composer Thomas Joseph Gerard Victory is born in Dublin on December 24, 1921. He writes over two hundred works across many genres and styles, including tonal, serial, aleatoric and electroacoustic music.

Victory is the son of shop keeper Thomas Victory and his wife, Delia (née Irwin). After schooling, he reads Celtic Studies at University College Dublin and Music at Trinity College Dublin, earning a doctorate in 1972.

In April 1948 Victory marries Geraldine Herity and they have five children: Alma, Fiona, Isolde, Raymond, and Alan.

In terms of composition, Victory is mostly self-taught, although he receives some formal training from John Francis Larchet, Alan Rawsthorne and Walter Beckett. He also attends the “International Summer Courses for New Music” in Darmstadt, Germany.

In 1948 he is joint composer of music for a song in a play by Irish playwright Teresa Deevy called Light Falling. This is performed by the Abbey Experimental Theatre Company in the Peacock Theatre, Dublin.

Victory’s career is primarily in music administration, serving as Director of Music for Ireland’s national broadcasting station RTÉ from 1967 to 1982. He is a president of UNESCO‘s International Rostrum of Composers, a Fellow of the Royal Irish Academy of Music and a recipient of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Gerard Victory Commission is a prize named in his honour that is awarded to the most promising individual composer.

Gerard Victory dies in Dublin on March 14, 1995. His papers are held in Trinity College and a number of his scores are held at the Contemporary Music Centre.