Byrne - Goethe

Otto Biba is Director of the Archives, the Library and the Collections of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. He has lectured at the University of Vienna and was Professor at the University for Music in Vienna from 1973 to 2002. He is a member of international musicological institutions (e.g. Zentralinstitut für Mozartforschung Salzburg, Joseph Haydn-Institut Köln) and member of managing and advisory committees of international publication projects (e.g. Johannes Brahms Complete Edition, München-Kiel). He has numerous publications, primarily on old-Austrian music history of the 17th to 20th century, and has prepared editions of over 120 compositions of the 18th and 19th century. He is responsible for the scientific organization of music exhibitions in Austria, Europe, USA and Japan.

Seóirse Bodley, Emeritus Professor UCD, was born in Dublin. Studies in Ireland and Germany led to a teaching appointment at the Music Department of University College Dublin, where he was awarded the degree of D.Mus.

Influences on his compositions include a range of musical styles from the European avant-garde to Irish traditional music. His works include five symphonies for full orchestra, two chamber symphonies and numerous orchestral, choral, vocal and chamber pieces. The many commissions he has received include his Third Symphony, commissioned for the opening of the National Concert Hall in Dublin, and his Fourth Symphony, commissioned by the Arturo Toscanini Symphony Orchestra of Parma, Italy. In addition to many performances in Ireland, his music has been broadcast and performed in North America, many European countries, Australia and China. Awards include the Arts Council Prize for Composition, a Travelling Studentship of the National University of Ireland, the Macauley Fellowship in Music Composition and the Marten Toonder Award. His is founder-member of Aosdána, Ireland’s academy of creative artists.

Recent works include: the piano-piece Chiaroscuro, premiered at the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition (2000). A Sinfonietta commissioned and premiered by the Irish National Youth Orchesta and included in their millennium tour of Ireland and Germany ending with a performance at the Konzerthaus, Berlin (2000). The first performance of Earlsfort Suite for mezzo Bernadette Greevy and orchestra, National Concert Hall, 2000. More recently: News from Donabate, a fifty-minute work for solo piano (2001); An Exchange of Letters for solo piano (2002) performed by Rolf Hind in the NCH; After Great Pain, song-cycle (2002) performed by Aylish Kerrigan (mezzo soprano) and Gabrielle Schimmerling (piano) in Stuttgart.

Seóirse Bodley’s first Goethe setting, that of Wandrers Nachtlied, was performed last year, leading on to his song-cycle Mignon und der Harfner, first performed in March 2004 at the conference, ‘Goethe: Musical Poet, Musical Catalyst’, NUI Maynooth. This cycle was the first of three new compositions premiered in the early months of 2004; the others are Metamorphoses on the name Schumann for orchestra, premiered at the National Concert Hall Dublin by the National Symphony Orchestra under Gerhardt Markson and the third string quartet Ave atque Vale, performed by the Vogler Quartet in Sligo.

Nicholas Boyle was born in London in 1946 and was brought up in Malvern and Worcester. He studied Modern Languages at Cambridge in Magdalene College, of which he has been a Fellow since 1968, and apart from spells working in Göttingen and Berlin he has taught German in Cambridge ever since. He was made Reader in German Literary and Intellectual History in 1993 and Professor in 2000 and from 1996 to 2001 was the Head of the Department of German. He is probably best known for his biography of Goethe, still in progress (volume 1, 1991, volume 2, 2000), which has been translated into German and has won several prizes. He is also the author of Who Are We Now?; Christian Humanism and the Global Market from Hegel to Heaney, a volume of essays on the contemporary world, and in 2002-03 delivered the Erasmus Lectures at Notre Dame University on Sacred and Secular Scriptures: a Catholic approach to literature, published in 2004. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and in 2000 was awarded the Goethe Medal of the Goethe Institute. In 1983 Nicholas Boyle married Rosemary Devlin, a lawyer, and they have four children.

Lorraine Byrne holds a PhD in German and Music from University College Dublin with primary degrees in Music, English and German. In February 2001 she was awarded the Goethe Prize by the English Goethe Society; in July 2001 she was awarded an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Post-Doctoral Fellowship to pursue full-time research in the Department of Germanic Studies, Trinity College Dublin; in June 2003 she was appointed Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Music, NUI Maynooth and in July 2004 she was appointed Head of the Department of Music at Mater Dei, a College of Dublin City University.

Dr Byrne’s book on Schubert’s Goethe Settings was published by Ashgate in 2003. Her piano reduction of the Schubert/Goethe Singspiel, Claudine von Villa Bella, was published by Carysfort Press in December 2002 and the first stage performance in English of this Singspiel took place in Dublin in April 2003. She is co-editor of Goethe and Schubert: Across the Divide (Dublin: Carysfort Press, December 2003), and is currently completing a critical translation of the discussion of music in Goethe’s letters to the composer, Zelter.

Dr Byrne has lectured extensively and internationally including Rhodes College, USA (2003); English Goethe Society, King’s College London (2003) and St Petersburg (2004). Her edition of Claudine von Villa Bella will be performed at the conference, Schubert and the Unknown, University of Regina, Canada in December 2004. She is keynote speaker at this conference and at the RAM Schiller Symposium in London, 2005.

Claus Canisius was born in Kolberg (Ostsee), Germany. He studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik, Karlsruhe, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and at Heidelberg University (Music, Musicology, Anglistics, Psychology). He wrote his doctoral thesis at Heidelberg on Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. In his professional career he has worked with Pierre Boulez in Basle. He has been a lecturer at Heidelberg University in Music and Literature, and editor of classical and contemporary music at the Südwestfunk, Baden-Baden and the Süddeutsche Rundfunk, Studio Karlsruhe. He is working at the Badisches Konservatorium für Musik, Karlsruhe and for Deutschland Radio, Berlin.