Gerald Barry

Gerald Barry is one of Ireland's most admired composers, with six successful operas and a large catalog of other works to his credit. Some of his works are for indeterminate combinations of instruments, but he has rejected the use of new technology in his music. Barry was born on April 28, 1952, in Clarehill in Ireland's County Clare. He was inspired to become a composer when he heard an aria from Handel's opera Xerxes on the radio. Barry attended St. Flannan's College in nearby Ennis and then went on to University College Dublin, earning a music degree. His training as a composer was pan-European, including stretches with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel in the contemporary music hotspot of Cologne, Germany, with Peter Schat in Amsterdam, and with Friedrich Cerha in Vienna. Barry's first opera, The Intelligence Park, was commissioned by the influential ICA (Irish Countrywomen's Association) and first performed in 1990 at the Almeida Festival in London. The work has gone on to become one of Barry's most acclaimed. He has written five more operas, The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit (2002), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (2005, based on the same Rainer Werner Fassbinder play that the director later filmed), La Plus Forte (based on a play by Strindberg), The Importance of Being Earnest (2010, with a libretto by Barry himself, based on Oscar Wilde's play), and Alice's Adventures Under Ground (2015, again with a libretto by the composer, based on Lewis Carroll's works). Barry has also written more than 60 other works, including orchestral pieces, choral music, chamber music, and piano music; his Triorchic Blues, for piano (1991), was later adapted for solo trumpet and solo violin. He has written compositions suggested by the figures of Beethoven (Beethoven, for bass and large ensemble, 2008), and his mentor Stockhausen (Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1928-2007, for voice and piano, 2008). Barry has composed several concertos, including a Viola Concerto (2019). Barry's works have been performed both within Ireland and increasingly often outside it. He has been championed by composer/pianist Thomas Adès, who recorded his Lisbon in 2009, and his Piano Concerto, on a major release, also featuring Beethoven's first three symphonies, on the Signum Classics label in 2020.
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