Michael McGlynn (born 11 May 1964) is an Irish composer whose choral music has been the subject of sustained academic analysis for its fusion of medieval, Irish traditional, and contemporary musical elements.[1] Scholarly studies describe his compositional language as characterised by modality, drones, open sonorities, parallel motion, and rhythmic development through repetition, frequently engaging with Irish-language texts and concepts of landscape, ritual, and cultural memory within contemporary Irish art music.[2][3] His work has been discussed in academic literature on Irish choral nationalism and the transmission of cultural ethos through composition.[4]
McGlynn is the founder and artistic director of the vocal ensemble Anúna, established in 1987, through which many of his works have been premiered and recorded, and which has maintained a long-standing international performance and recording profile.[5][1]
Career
Michael McGlynn was born in Dublin and attended Coláiste na Rinne and Blackrock College.[6] He studied Music and English at University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1985 and a Bachelor in Music degree in 1986. He was a member of the RTÉ Chamber Choir and in 1987 founded the vocal ensemble ANÚNA, originally spelt “An Uaíthne”.[7] McGlynn is the founder and Artistic Director of the vocal ensembles ANÚNA, M’ANAM, and Systir, which together are known as the ANÚNA Collective.[8][9]
Although best known for choral music, McGlynn has also composed orchestral and instrumental works, cantatas, and masses. In 2007 he premiered the cantata St Francis, a work commissioned by RTÉ, presented in collaboration with University College Dublin’s Louvain Centre for Irish Studies.[10] His orchestral and choral music has been recorded in collaboration with the Ulster Orchestra on the album Behind the Closed Eye.[11]
McGlynn’s music has been performed and recorded internationally by professional vocal ensembles including the National Youth Choir of Great Britain,[12] VOCES8,[13] Apollo5,[14] Chanticleer,[15] the Phoenix Chorale,[16] the Pacific Chorale,[17] the Kansas City Chorale,[18] and the Finnish vocal ensemble Rajaton.[19]
In addition to concert and recording activity, McGlynn has written music for theatre, including productions of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters at the Gate Theatre in Dublin and the Royal Court Theatre in London.[20] He has worked internationally as a vocal and choral clinician and was an Eminent Scholar at Florida Atlantic University during the 2011–12 academic year.[21]
McGlynn received the University College Dublin Arts and Humanities Alumni Award in 2017,[22] served as Artistic Director of the Tampere Vocal Music Festival in Finland in 2021,[23] and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music by University College Dublin in September 2025.[24]
In 2015 McGlynn was invited to present on his music at the American Choral Directors Association National Conference in Salt Lake City, where he led a session titled “The Music of Michael McGlynn and Anúna”, addressing his compositional approach and rehearsal practice.[25] In 2022 he was invited to speak on the genesis of his compositions at the Nordic Choral Directors Conference in Reykjavík.[26] His film Mutability and Transcendence was premiered at the World Symposium on Choral Music in Istanbul in 2023 as part of the official symposium programme.[27]
McGlynn has also undertaken intercultural collaborations in Japan, creating contemporary vocal works in dialogue with traditional Japanese musicians and practitioners of Noh theatre. In 2017 he collaborated with Noh actor Genshō Umewaka on Takahime, a Celtic–Noh adaptation of W. B. Yeats’s At the Hawk’s Well, for which McGlynn composed the score and co-directed the production.[28] In December 2024 he composed, arranged, and directed Yuki-onna (The Snow Woman), a Noh-inspired stage work based on Japanese folklore, performed by ANÚNA in Tokyo with traditional performers including Reijirō Tsumura, Tamami Tōno, and Mitsuhiro Kakihara.[29]
Musical language
McGlynn’s musical language combines elements associated with Irish traditional music, including modal melodic writing, ornamentation, and the use of fixed and shifting drones, with a contemporary harmonic vocabulary characterised by open sonorities, parallel motion, and clustered chordal textures. Scholarly commentary has noted that these elements function less as acts of preservation than as a means of creating new sound worlds that evoke cultural memory and landscape through texture and resonance rather than quotation.[30][31]
McGlynn has repeatedly stated that he does not consider himself a traditionalist, emphasising that the vocal materials in his work are “impressions” rather than reconstructions of specific historical songs. Academic analysis situates this approach within a broader contemporary practice in which traditional idioms are reimagined through newly composed melodic material shaped for choral performance.[30][31]
One frequently discussed example of this approach is Dúlamán, a choral setting of a traditional Irish text that employs alternating rhythmic groupings and layered textures. Rather than functioning as an arrangement, the work is cited as an original composition that draws on the structural energy of traditional song while remaining formally independent of any fixed source.[30][31]
In critical writing on McGlynn’s music, particular attention has been given to its meditative and ritual qualities. In an analysis of O Maria, Seán Doherty describes McGlynn’s compositional approach as privileging stasis, repetition, and suspended harmonic motion, creating what he characterises as a contemplative listening environment in which musical development unfolds through subtle transformation rather than goal-directed progression.[32]
This aesthetic orientation has also been framed in broader historical terms. In the citation accompanying McGlynn’s honorary doctorate, musicologist Harry White characterised his work as a significant reconfiguration of the relationship between Irish-language texts and musical soundscapes within Irish art music, noting its departure from both nationalist revivalism and commercialised “Celtic” idioms in favour of a distinct contemporary voice.[33]
Selected works
A selection of Michael McGlynn’s original compositions includes works for unaccompanied and accompanied choir, solo voice, instrumental ensemble, and orchestra. His output has been discussed extensively in academic literature on contemporary Irish choral music.[30][31]
Invocation (tenor and mixed-voice choir)
Four Tenebrae Responsories (mixed-voice choir)
Sensation (speaker, mixed-voice choir, and harp)
Celtic Mass (mixed-voice choir, soloists, and instrumental ensemble)
Silver River (oboe and vibraphone; also arranged for choir and orchestra)
Four Poems on Texts by Rimbaud (soprano and piano)
Wind on Sea (mixed-voice choir and violin)
Quis est Deus (mixed-voice choir)
O Ignis Spiritus (saxophone, mezzo-soprano, and mixed-voice choir)
Agnus Dei (tenor solo and mixed-voice choir, from And on Earth Peace: A Chanticleer Mass)
Behind the Closed Eye (choral - orchestral cycle)
Visions (three movements for soprano saxophone and piano)
O Maria (mixed-voice choir)
Brezairola (tenor solo and mixed-voice choir)
Dúlamán (male-voice choir)
The Sea (alto flute, flute, and mixed-voice choir)
Lux Aeterna / The Road of Passage (soprano solo and mixed-voice choir)
The Rising of the Sun (solo voice, mixed-voice choir, and orchestra)
Geantraí (mixed-voice choir)
Pie Jesu (mixed-voice choir and orchestra)
Maid in the Moor (women’s choir)
Cúnnla (women’s choir)
Dormi Jesu (mixed-voice choir)
My Songs Shall Rise (mixed-voice choir)
When the War Is Over (mixed-voice choir)
Victimae (male-voice choir)
Takahime (mixed voices, incidental music for Noh play)
Why Should I Sleep? (mixed voices)
Sunshine & Shadows (song cycle for mixed voices and piano)
Amhrán na Gaoithe / Song of the Wind (mixed-voice choir)
O pia virgo (ATBarB)
The Wind in the Reeds (song cycle for mixed voices and piano)
M’anam (for low voices)
Deyr Fé (for low voices and percussion)
Bitter Wind (for low voices and percussion)
Gunnarshólmi (for low voices)
Am gaeth i m-muir (mixed voices)
Rosc (mixed voices and percussion)
Tormán (mixed voices and traditional Irish instrumental ensemble)
Selected discography
McGlynn’s music has been recorded extensively, most frequently by the vocal ensemble Anúna, which has served as the principal vehicle for the premiere and dissemination of his work.[34]
Recordings featuring McGlynn’s music with Anúna
An Uaithne (1991; cassette only)
Anúna (1993; re-recorded 2005)
Invocation (1994; re-recorded 2002)
Omnis (1995; revised international version 1996)
Deep Dead Blue (1996; remastered 2004)
Behind the Closed Eye (1997; remastered 2003), recorded with the Ulster Orchestra
Cynara (2000)
Sensation (2006)
Celtic Origins (2007)
Christmas Memories (2008)
Sanctus (2009)
Illumination (2012)
Revelation (2015)
Transcendence (2018)
Evocation (2018)
Otherworld (2023)
Sanctum (2025)
Eilífð (2025)
Tochairm (2025)
Transcendence (reissued and remastered with new running order) (2025)
Recordings by other ensembles
McGlynn’s compositions have also been recorded and performed internationally by ensembles including Chanticleer, Rajaton, Cantus, Kansas City Chorale, Voces8, Apollo5, Phoenix Chorale, and Conspirare, appearing on releases such as And on Earth Peace: A Chanticleer Mass, Boundless, Artifacts: The Music of Michael McGlynn, Where All Roses Go, and Haven.[35]
Bibliography
Axel Klein. Die Musik Irlands im 20. Jahrhundert. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1996. Stacie Lee Rossow. The Choral Music of Irish Composer Michael McGlynn. University of Miami, 2010. Karen Marrolli. An Overview of the Choral Music of Michael McGlynn with a Conductor’s Preparatory Guide to His Celtic Mass. Louisiana State University, 2010. Seán Doherty. “Toward ‘Transcendence’: Music and Meditation in Michael McGlynn’s O Maria.” The Choral Journal 62, no. 7 (2022).
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