Books in the Carysfort Press Ltd. series

Sedirse Bodley is one of the best-known senior figures of contemporary music in Ireland. This book seeks to examine his engagement with the poetry of Micheal O'Siadhail and the making of these song cycles. It assesses the joint contribution to Irish art song and seeks to understand its roots in and departure from European tradition.This apograph is the first publication of Bodley's O'Siadhail song cycles and is the first book to explore the composer's lyrical modernity from a number of perspectives. Lorraine Byrne Bodley's insightful introduction describes in detail the development and essence of Bodley's musical thinking, the European influences he absorbed which linger in these cycles, and the importance of his work as a composer of Irish art song. She asks an array of questions: Does song play a new role in twentieth-century music or was this the age, as many have insisted, that bears witness to the «death of song»? How does contemporary Irish art song inscribe individual concerns and mirror the influence of dominant social trends through its music and its texts? She demonstrates that the answers to such questions illuminate the context in which these cycles were created, and how they were valued and viewed. Through a blend of close analysis of Bodley's songs and wide-ranging engagement with both poetry and music, this book sheds new light on Bodley's integral part in fashioning Irish art song. It analyses the way Bodley's song has been harnessed both to legitimate and to challenge national art song. And it identifies elements of Bodley's musical style which are shaped by European tradition.Beyond such musico-poetic analysis, Lorraine Byrne Bodley's reading of the threefold roles of continuity, gradual change, and revolution opens up a «braided history» of Irish art song, where song is not an aesthetic given but a means to understanding the changing patterns of life. She argues convincingly that an understanding of the way in which Irish society has perceived song in recent centuries is available through a consideration of song as social document, and in her appraisal of Bodley's O'Siadhail settings she considers the importance of these song cycles as a reflection of Ireland's rich cultural history.

The essays collected in Edna O'Brien: New Critical Perspectives illustrate the range, complexity and interest of O'Brien as a fiction writer and dramatist.

Modern Death is written in the form of a symposium, in which a government agency brings together a group of experts to discuss a strategy for dealing with an ageing population.

This informative and incisive collection of essays sheds new light on the literary interrelations between Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic. It charts an under-explored history of the reception of modern Irish culture in Central and Eastern Europe and investigates how key authors have been translated, performed, and adapted.

As Ireland changes, how should we think about the works of familiar figures - writers like Synge, O'Casey, Friel, Murphy, Carr and McGuinness? Is the distinction between popular and literary drama tenable in a Celtic Tiger Ireland where the arts and economics are becoming increasingly intertwined.

Articles: «The Cries of Pagan Desperation»: Synge, Riders to the Sea and the Discontents of Historical Time by Christopher Collins; Scenographic Interactions: 1950s Ireland and Dublin's Pike Theatre by Siobhan O'Gorman; Uneasy Bedfellows: Culture, Commerce and the Rise of the «Production Hub» Paradigm in Irish Theatre by Lisa Fitzgerald; Respond or Else: Conor MacPherson's The Weir at the Donmar Warehouse by Eamonn Jordan; Gay Masculinities in Performance: Towards a Queer Dramaturgy by Cormac O'Brien; Perform, or Else! Reflections from an Irish theatre maker by Neil Watkins.

Billy Roche - musician, actor, novelist, dramatist, screenwriter - is one of Ireland's most versatile talents. This anthology, the first comprehensive survey of Roche's work, focuses on his portrayal of one Irish town as a microcosm of human life itself, elemental and timeless.

Ireland on Stage: Beckett and After, a collection of ten essays on contemporary Irish theatre, focuses primarily on Irish playwrights and their works, both in text and on the stage, in the latter half of the twentieth century.

In Synge and the Making of Modern Irish Drama, Anthony Roche draws on twenty-five years of engagement with Synge's plays to present ten chapters on the unfolding of a double narrative. It will be of considerable interest to students of Irish drama both in Ireland and worldwide.

Since the late 1970s there has been a marked internationalization of Irish drama, with individual plays, playwrights, and theatrical companies establishing newly global reputations. This book reflects upon these developments, drawing together leading scholars and playwrights to consider the consequences that arise when Irish theatre travels abroad. Essays discuss some of Ireland¿s major theatre companies ¿ Druid, the Abbey Theatre, Rough Magic, Blue Raincoat, Field Day and others ¿ while also exploring the presence of Irish drama in the UK, the USA, Germany, and throughout Ireland. The volume also presents the views of key playwrights, featuring essays by Elizabeth Kuti and Ursula Rani Sarma, and including a new interview with Enda Walsh.

In this fascinating reappraisal of the non-literary drama of the late 19th - early 20th century, Christopher Fitz-Simon discloses a unique world of plays, players and producers in metropolitan theatres in Ireland and other countries where Ireland was viewed as a source of extraordinary topics at once contemporary and comfortably remote.

With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners, Interactions explores and celebrates the Dublin Theatre Festival's achievements since 1957 featuring essays on major Irish writers, directors and theatre companies, as well as the impact of visiting directors and companies from abroad.

The central subject of the play is the quest a character at the point of emotional and moral breakdown for some source of meaning or identity.

It aims to stimulate further enquiry, research and critical reflection, in sceptical, analytic or celebratory modes, on the riches of Irish literary texts and traditions. The collection discusses texts from the early 18th century to the present.

Brian Friel's Dramatic Artistry makes an important contribution to our understanding of the work of Ireland's greatest living playwright. The fifteen essays collected here provide us with new perspectives on Friel's most familiar works.

This book, edited by Christina Hunt Mahony, presents twelve essays that trace the development of Sebastian Barry's career and the individual achievement of his works, concentrating largely, but not exclusively, on the plays.

In this edition, the first in which all Beethoven's Irish folksong settings are published together, the late baritone, broadcaster and musicologist, Tomas O Suilleabhain, selected texts, mostly by Burns and Moore, which he felt were more appropriate to the airs and to Beethoven's settings.

The book is remarkably well-focused: half is a series of production histories of Playboy performances through the twentieth century in the UK, Northern Ireland, the USA, and Ireland. The remainder focuses on one contemporary performance, that of Druid Theatre, as directed by Garry Hynes

This book is a literary tour de force, where 28 Irish plays are examined and their rich cultural context exposed in a way that educates and excites.

The Drunkard is a wonderfully eloquent play.'Young Edward Kilcullen's life is blighted by alcohol.

This thought-provoking volume of essays, wide-ranging in scope and interdisciplinary in its approach, engages with questions surrounding the many meanings ascribed to death and the memorialisation of the dead.

The author looks at the gospels from a modern angle. Was Jesus a person like us? He investigates these issues conscientiously and opens up a new way in which the modern Christian, despite everything, can confidently be a believer.

Poems 2000-2005 is a transitional collection written while the author - also known to be W. J. Me Cormack, literary historian - was in the process of moving back from London to settle in rural Ireland. It is also a vigorous contribution to the age-old dialogue between Sacred and Profane themes, questioning beliefs and pleasures, guilts and landscapes, poetic methods and prosaic realities.

Lecture proceedings including the essence of theatre; Ireland's contribution to the art of theatre; the potential of drama in the classroom; the relationship between drama and film; and on opera and its history.

This is a book of considerable historical importance, offering an authoritative account of Liszt's teaching methods as imparted by two of his former students. It contains much valuable information unavailable elsewhere: none of the reminiscences of Liszt published by his students discuss technical matters or interpretation in comparable detail.