The Beginning . . . An Uaithne

ANÚNA started life as An Uaithne on December 10th. 1987 in Trinity College Chapel in Dublin. It has been said that time shows no respect for the past, the future is its' constant goal. The past can quickly be forgotten and become distant memories as we press towards those future goals. The hard work and priorities force us to race toward the future, with hopeful dreams turning into sweet success. This beginning is in essence a foundation that will be the strength to which we will always stand on. It is for this reason that we should remember just how that foundation was laid and what the future holds for us to stand on.

Taking a walk back to those early beginnings the question arises, "What is An Uaithne?" In order to answer that question you have to look at the dream responsible for its creation. The person responsible for that vision is a man name Michael McGlynn.

Michael McGlynn was born in Dublin in 1964. He attended University College of Dublin and Trinity College of Dublin receiving degrees in English and Music. He has also received commissions from the BBC Singers, the RTE (Radio Teilifís Éireann) Chamber and Children's Choirs, the Ulster Orchestra and recipient of the Seán Ó Riada Memorial Trophy. One of the most consistent features of the musical calendar in Ireland is the Cork International Choral Festival, which takes place each year in May in Cork, Ireland's second city, which is located on the south coast. The Seán Ó Riada Memorial Trophy competition, which takes place during the main competitive section of the festival, provides funding for four Irish choirs to commission a setting of an original text in Irish by a young Irish composer. Past winners of the Ó Riada Trophy when they were at an early stage in their careers include Jane O'Leary, Jerome de Bromhead, Michael Holohan, Rhona Clarke, Michael McGlynn, Kevin O'Connell and Marian Ingoldsby. Michael has also acted as musical director for a production of Chekov's Three Sisters at the Gate Theatre, Dublin and the Royal Court Theatre, London; and for Jim Sheridan's production of The Risen People at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin.

All of these accomplishments speak for themselves to illustrate the drive and vision of the young composer and the foundation he has laid down to achieve one of his goals in music - to perform his compositions.

His early roots for the love of music started at home. "The musical side of my family is on my father's side. I am the first professional musician to come from my family. My mother used to play the piano for us and we sang from a book of American Nursery Rhymes. I still have it", says Michael. Michael has a twin brother, John who also is musically inclined. Michael notes, "John McGlynn entered the group in 1992, bringing a certain wildness to the proceedings. John is my identical twin, and is a qualified architect. He is also a truly original interpreter of guitar and a terrific singer. He was the one who persuaded sedate Irish singers into sexier clothes, and convinced us all that what we were doing was extraordinary. He also designs our shows". During Michael's studies of Music and English at UCD, followed by Medieval English studies at TCD, he began trawling for suitable material to write from. He has often had to work from severely damaged, sometimes illegible music manuscripts, which he has found in England and Scotland. "A lot of the finest Irish manuscripts are there, primarily because we didn't have the facilities at the time they were discovered to look after them," he notes. It is with this background in Medieval English and Music that Michael has set down the basis from which the group Anúna has evolved.

Origins & Influences

"I don't really know where my love of choral music comes from, says Michael, but I was a professional singer with the now defunct RTÉ Chamber Choir for about three years, from 1988 to about 1991 under the direction of Colin Mawby. Colin was great, he got my ears working. He gave me the chance to have some of my works performed and he also commissioned a work from me for the RTÉ Children's Choir called Gawain and the Green Knight. It was performed in 1991. This piece has formed the basis for many of the works subsequently performed by ANÚNA".

It is evident from the outsider looking at the construction of this foundation that it is truly comprised of many building blocks.

During a recent interview with RTÉ Guide, a remark was made that the deeply haunting harmonies at work on the classic Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares are in some of Anúna's work. Michael acknowledges an enormous amount of influence from this Bulgarian source, but points out the essential difference. Michael explains, "Anúna is an instrument, Le Mystere is an expression of a culture. Anúna comes from a culture with next to no choral or classical music tradition, so there's not much point in me trying to pretend that there is a part-singing culture in Ireland, there isn't". "I've been going to Mass for years, sitting, listening to what they're doing. It's so rare to hear anybody singing in more than two parts, and when they do you want to stand up and give them an ovation. There are people making a huge effort in the Catholic Church to try and revive part-singing. Vatican Two said music should be for everybody, but the problem with that is that much of the mystery and spirituality of the Catholic Church was based on the fact that there was mystery. "So when you sing in Latin, or you sing in parts, or in beautiful counterpoint, that's a glorification of God in itself. People don't have to bloody well sing along with it. So I'm torn between both things, I like people singing along, but I do think that it has been to the neglect and the detriment of much of the most beautiful music ever written for the voice in history."

While Michael acknowledges some "extraordinary" church choirs, such as the Palestrina choir in Ireland, he believes that the support is not coming from the church as much as it should. Furthermore, while he acknowledges that the folk mass seems to be dying on its feet, it is not being replaced with anything. However, the bastion and saver of much part-singing in this country is the Church of Ireland, who have maintained the tradition, "one of the reasons why I sang in choirs," says Michael.

John McGlynn stresses the absolute symbiosis that there should be between a choral group such as Anúna and the physical structure in which such a group sings. The church is their natural home. "I have yet to meet anybody other than an architect who understands it," he says. "I've gone into St Patrick's Cathedral, and I spent nearly a decade studying the place, so I know how it works. You know when you hit a tuning fork and it vibrates? The church has to be like that, it's got to be like a huge battery. When Anúna walk in, Michael brings in all this tradition that he's had for years, and I bring in this knowledge of the space. Now we're trying to transfer that into arenas and into concert halls, and it does work, it works really well, but churches were specifically designed for this kind of music."

Where did that name come from, what does it mean? "An Uaithne was the initial idea for the group name, along with a variety of far more ridiculous names", quotes Michael. "It's the collective name for the three types of ancient Irish music [suantraí (lullaby), geantraí (happy song) and goltraí (lament)]. In 1992 I changed the name to ANÚNA, due to the difficulties with pronunciation. I didn't get much support for the whole idea, as the purpose of a group such as An Uaithne was badly defined - it was just another bloody classical choir like thousands of others. I was really driven to get my own works performed, but looking back, I realize now that at the outset, I didn't have any idea where I was going".

One now begins to see the focus from which the many years collecting and studying Medieval manuscripts is slowly bringing forth a change in the groups initial "classical choir" title.

The material begins to change.

Michael remembers, "One beautiful concert we did of 16 - 17th century works and contemporary Irish works, had 33 people in attendance. I decided that I might as well dig out the medieval material I had been collecting, as well as the more unusual songs I had come across in my eight years of study". That proved to be the working key that would help define the group from its original beginnings as An Uaithne into Anúna. The first two pieces that changed everything were an arrangement of Media Vita and Jerusalem. Media Vita, written by Blessed Notker, is an early 10^th century work considered to be unlucky due to its subject matter, which concerns death. Irish monks such as Notker enriched the art of chant writing in the Middle Ages. The piece was banned by the Church for many centuries. It is a beautiful chant:

"In the midst of life we are in death.
To whom do we seek for succor,
but to thee O Lord.
Who for our sins art justly displeased."

Jerusalem is a traditional piece from the set of Kilmore carols. This song was reputedly written by an English Catholic priest on the day of his matrydom, in 1601. The chorus is arranged in a style known as heterophony, still practiced today in the western isles of Scotland. The song is voiced usually by 3-4 women in such a way that one part starts, followed shortly by another, then another, finally all voices coming together as one at the end of the verse. With the singers being separated physically as they sing, the effect is true "surround sound". Absolutely a moving piece to the listener as well as the singers. It is truly one of my all time favorites sung by Anúna.

"These two pieces, performed in Trinity College, blew the audience away. Suddenly people outside started taking notice, and the seats began to fill up. Many well known musicians began to turn up; Bill Whelan, Paul Brady, Mike Scott, Elvis Costello and Larry Mullen all showed up at our Christmas Concerts in December 1992 and 1993. That was really the start of the whole thing for me", quotes Michael.

We are dealing with a vision that alone does not completely describe the dream that has become Anúna. Michael's works are based on a foundation that was laid long ago by ancestral Ireland, in the root of the words and the Irish love affair with them. It goes back to the dawning of Ireland's history. The history helps explain the mysticism surrounding the group and the meaning behind the Medieval texts that Michael composes from.
Fertile Celtic minds, filled with mysticism and fantasy, created a great inventory of legends. Chanted by Druid priests, they were passed down orally. Later the Celtic poet or file was trained in his art for years and held in esteem as nowhere else in the world.   St. Columba became the first great poet of record, father, sponsor, benefactor, and defender of the legion of poets.

In monastic cities, production of manuscripts by scribes were carried out with the fervor of a waterfall. The Old Irish oral meanderings were updated and set down as written literature. This boundless wealth of material formed the cornerstone of the tradition. W.B. Yeats, for example, wrote five plays based on the adventures of the legendary hero Cuchulain. "The Story of Deidre" from the Book of Leinster has been the basis of classical romance and tragedy in countless modern works.

The Reformation, conquest, and Penal Laws brought on a dark age to the Old Irish. During much of this period, Gaelic was forbidden and the stories as well as the religion were carried on orally. Keeping the Old Irish culture alive fell to the storyteller. In every village and situation he was the man of stature just below the priest.

Illiteracy became universal. People learned to think without sight of the written word. This did much to sharpen mental agility, so that thoughts into words were honed to a diamond edge quality.

One can now begin to understand the feelings behind the many songs from that era. Songs from Notker, Amergin Glúngel, Cormac, St. Godric, St. Columbanus, St. Patrick, Thomas Moore, Bishop Tírechán, de Ledrede, to name just a few. A persons real identity, a peoples hope and compassion, personal thoughts and dreams are locked into the many verse that we now can hear expressively released and re-told by the works that Michael composes. The words have been transformed into song in hopes that their message will blossom into an image that all can see and understand. Amergin illustrates all this "imagery" for us in one of his great works titled "Wind on Sea":

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 as it 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 the place where hides away the Sun?

"I think that much of what is unusual and innovative about ANÚNA can be heard in Wind on Sea", says Michael.

more to come................Chapter 2 in progress.........................