Thesis submission ID 983 | created
| last updated
Laura Sheils, Style, Tradition, and Innovation in the Choral Music of Rhona Clarke (b. 1958) and Eoghan Desmond (b. 1989)
Volumes, pp.: 1 (369pp.) Wordcount: 90000
Supervisor(s): Róisín Blunnie
Repository (online): https://doras.dcu.ie/
General specialism: Musicology: Analysis
Historical timeframe: 1991-present
Key terms, concepts: Critical score analysis
Key terms, persons: Rhona Clarke; Eoghan Desmond
Key terms, genres, instruments: Contemporary choral music
Abstract:
Rhona Clarke (b. 1958) and Eoghan Desmond (b. 1989) are internationally recognised contemporary Irish composers whose choral works are widely performed at home and further afield. This thesis explores the principal compositional techniques that characterise their distinctive styles. Given the dearth of research relating to these two composers, and Irish choral music more broadly, this study represents the first comprehensive investigation into the compositional styles of Rhona Clarke and Eoghan Desmond, elucidating the features of their respective choral outputs and capturing the striking blend of tradition and innovation evident in each case.
Chapter One presents biographical accounts of Clarke and Desmond, outlining their educational and other formative experiences, compositional influences, and career trajectories. Chapter Two addresses the available literature relating to Clarke and Desmond, referring also to the composers and musical eras that have impacted their respective compositional approaches. It also considers scholarship on style, text setting, allusion, and quotation, which are key components in the analysis of the music in this thesis.
The remaining five chapters present analyses of selected significant choral works by Rhona Clarke and Eoghan Desmond, respectively, articulating core characteristics of their compositional styles and their versatile approaches to setting a variety of sacred and secular texts. The analytical approach encompasses an exploration of each composer’s melodic idioms, use of quotation, textural structures, harmonic language, and timbral palettes, aiming to provide a comprehensive understanding of their creative voices. Across the analytical investigation, there is a particular focus on Clarke’s and Desmond’s synthesis of archaic and contemporary compositional techniques — a key feature of both of their styles — shedding light on their integration of past influences, and on how they forge striking individual compositional voices in the twenty-first century.
Related publications:
Sheils, Laura, ‘A Choral Meditation: Fusing Past and Present in the Sacred Music of Eoghan
Desmond’, Religions, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2024), 135 <https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15010135>
——, ‘Eoghan Desmond’s Amra Choluim Chille: A Contemporary Choral Setting of a Sixth-
Century Poem’, Studia Hibernica, Vol. 51 (2025), 141–168
<https://doi.org/10.3828/sh.2025.5>
Sheils, Laura, and Róisín Blunnie, ‘Style, Tradition, and Innovation in the Sacred Choral
Music of Rhona Clarke’, Religions, Vol. 16, No. 8 (2025), 984 <https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16080984>
Laura Sheils, Style, Tradition, and Innovation in the Choral Music of Rhona Clarke (b. 1958) and Eoghan Desmond (b. 1989)
PhD, Dublin City University, 2026
Volumes, pp.: 1 (369pp.) Wordcount: 90000
Supervisor(s): Róisín Blunnie
Repository (online): https://doras.dcu.ie/
General specialism: Musicology: Analysis
Historical timeframe: 1991-present
Key terms, concepts: Critical score analysis
Key terms, persons: Rhona Clarke; Eoghan Desmond
Key terms, genres, instruments: Contemporary choral music
Abstract:
Rhona Clarke (b. 1958) and Eoghan Desmond (b. 1989) are internationally recognised contemporary Irish composers whose choral works are widely performed at home and further afield. This thesis explores the principal compositional techniques that characterise their distinctive styles. Given the dearth of research relating to these two composers, and Irish choral music more broadly, this study represents the first comprehensive investigation into the compositional styles of Rhona Clarke and Eoghan Desmond, elucidating the features of their respective choral outputs and capturing the striking blend of tradition and innovation evident in each case.
Chapter One presents biographical accounts of Clarke and Desmond, outlining their educational and other formative experiences, compositional influences, and career trajectories. Chapter Two addresses the available literature relating to Clarke and Desmond, referring also to the composers and musical eras that have impacted their respective compositional approaches. It also considers scholarship on style, text setting, allusion, and quotation, which are key components in the analysis of the music in this thesis.
The remaining five chapters present analyses of selected significant choral works by Rhona Clarke and Eoghan Desmond, respectively, articulating core characteristics of their compositional styles and their versatile approaches to setting a variety of sacred and secular texts. The analytical approach encompasses an exploration of each composer’s melodic idioms, use of quotation, textural structures, harmonic language, and timbral palettes, aiming to provide a comprehensive understanding of their creative voices. Across the analytical investigation, there is a particular focus on Clarke’s and Desmond’s synthesis of archaic and contemporary compositional techniques — a key feature of both of their styles — shedding light on their integration of past influences, and on how they forge striking individual compositional voices in the twenty-first century.
Related publications:
Sheils, Laura, ‘A Choral Meditation: Fusing Past and Present in the Sacred Music of Eoghan
Desmond’, Religions, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2024), 135 <https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15010135>
——, ‘Eoghan Desmond’s Amra Choluim Chille: A Contemporary Choral Setting of a Sixth-
Century Poem’, Studia Hibernica, Vol. 51 (2025), 141–168
<https://doi.org/10.3828/sh.2025.5>
Sheils, Laura, and Róisín Blunnie, ‘Style, Tradition, and Innovation in the Sacred Choral
Music of Rhona Clarke’, Religions, Vol. 16, No. 8 (2025), 984 <https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16080984>
Thesis submission ID 983