Brutalising the Banal

The Music of Gerald Barry and the Late Theatre of Samuel Beckett

Abstract

Abstract: The late impact of musical modernism in Ireland in the 1960s and 70s meant that many young Irish composers looked instead to the legacy of Irish literary modernism and, in particular, to the figure of Samuel Beckett for inspiration. This is nowhere more apparent than in the music of Gerald Barry whose first significant piece Lessness (1971, since withdrawn) was a setting of Beckett’s short prose text for soprano and orchestra.

While Beckett’s influence on Barry has been noticed in passing by several commentators, this article argues that it is Barry’s choice of familiar materials and their subsequent reanimation through a variety of ruthlessly objective procedures that demonstrates an affinity with the late theatre of Samuel Beckett. This essay will discuss these techniques and explore what implications they have for interpretation in Barry’s stage works, particularly his setting of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.