O Cleirigh Institute

Strategic links were established with the O Cleirigh Institute at UCD in 2007 and the first event of the Louvain 400 programme was held in the Conservatory on 3 February 2007—Musical Journeys with the Flight of the Earls.

This symposium explored the historic background to the ‘Flight’, the musical culture in Ireland at the time and the musical experiences that the Earls would have encountered on their journey. It also explored how the ‘story’ has been recorded in poetry, drama and Irish traditional music. We had an excellent panel of speakers with a broad mix of disciplines and equally divided between those based at Irish and UK institutions. One of the papers will be published by Four Courts Press in Music and Culture in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Irish Musical Studies, volume 10) ed. Barra Boydell and Kerry Houston.

CD

As part of our performance practice based research profile a CD of music from the period performed by the our Traditional Music Ensemble and Early Music Ensemble was launched at the conference Flow my Tears: Musical journeys with the Flight of the Earls. This critically acclaimed CD presents music that the Earls would have been exposed to, and surrounded by, in Ireland, in their travels to the English court and their journey in 1607/8 across modern day France, Belgium, Austria and Italy. Irish traditional airs, songs and marches from the period are married with lute-song, madrigals, guitar dances and instrumental works from Spain, Italy and England, countries most associated with the Earls’ fight and flight.

For more information on availability of 'Flow my tears' contact Dr Kerry Houston at kerry.houston@dit.ie