Ep. 1 with Michael Gallen touched on his path from folk band to opera composer — in this second part, I dig into the actual music itself: his influences (Steve Reich, John Adams, Arvo Pärt's Fratres), the rhythmic idioms running through his work, and where his compositional voice comes from.
We talk about the Irish unaccompanied singing tradition and what it shares with a Mahler symphony — Michael's argument that ornamented, unaccompanied song carries the same emotional depth as any concert hall tradition, just through different means. We also get into his process: how he composes away from the piano when writing for orchestra so the instruments' own timbres shape the music rather than being filtered through piano voicing, the voice notes he leaves himself on walks, and the large hand-drawn maps he uses to plan a piece's structure before writing a note down. He also opens up about the physical toll of intense composition periods, and why he's shifted his focus toward longevity over creative extremes now that he has a family.
"I think it would be a shame then as an Irish composer in 2024 not to feel like that's part of the lineage of the composition tradition that I come from."
"What matters is what happens between the performer and the audience — that's a chasm of another world."
"I've learned now that the best thing to do is just to get up and work."
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