Biography
David Fennessy first drew notice for an eclectic yet highly personal compositional voice, both in Ireland, his country of origin, and in Scotland, where part of his training took place. He went on to write a three-part orchestral cycle drawn from the journals kept by filmmaker Werner Herzog while shooting the ambitious motion picture Fitzcarraldo.
Born 23 July 1976 in Maynooth outside Dublin, Fennessy began his musical life playing guitar in a rock group; at fifteen he added classical guitar to his practice. The possibility of composing occurred to him after he arrived at band rehearsals with twenty-minute instrumental pieces that left his fellow musicians unmoved. He studied at the Dublin College of Music until tendinitis curtailed his guitar playing, at which point his focus shifted to composition. In 1998 he relocated to Glasgow and entered the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where he worked with James MacMillan. Upon completing his master’s degree he received an invitation to join the institution’s composition faculty, a post he has held since 2005.
Among the distinctions his music has received are a place among the finalists for the Philharmonia Orchestra’s composition prize in 2004 and a Dewar Arts Award that funded a twelve-month period of compositional study in Germany during 2006 and 2007. A decisive year arrived in 2010, when the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra—now known as the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra—commissioned the orchestral score BODIES and Ensemble Modern requested La Rejouissance – La Paix. Fennessy has remarked that his pieces do not pursue a single continuous line; instead each addresses its own particular questions, yet they remain connected through a shared sense of purpose and concentration. His orchestral piece Ground fused pibroch music, a traditional Scottish Highlands form, with a recording of the heartbeat of his unborn daughter. Conquest of the Useless, the triptych rooted in Herzog’s diaries, received its first performance in Dublin in 2019. By 2020 six of his works had been committed to disc, among them Panopticon, scored for cimbalom and orchestra and reflecting the architectural layout of early prisons in which every inmate remained visible from a single central point; the piece appeared on a 2019 NMC anthology devoted to his music.
Born 23 July 1976 in Maynooth outside Dublin, Fennessy began his musical life playing guitar in a rock group; at fifteen he added classical guitar to his practice. The possibility of composing occurred to him after he arrived at band rehearsals with twenty-minute instrumental pieces that left his fellow musicians unmoved. He studied at the Dublin College of Music until tendinitis curtailed his guitar playing, at which point his focus shifted to composition. In 1998 he relocated to Glasgow and entered the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where he worked with James MacMillan. Upon completing his master’s degree he received an invitation to join the institution’s composition faculty, a post he has held since 2005.
Among the distinctions his music has received are a place among the finalists for the Philharmonia Orchestra’s composition prize in 2004 and a Dewar Arts Award that funded a twelve-month period of compositional study in Germany during 2006 and 2007. A decisive year arrived in 2010, when the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra—now known as the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra—commissioned the orchestral score BODIES and Ensemble Modern requested La Rejouissance – La Paix. Fennessy has remarked that his pieces do not pursue a single continuous line; instead each addresses its own particular questions, yet they remain connected through a shared sense of purpose and concentration. His orchestral piece Ground fused pibroch music, a traditional Scottish Highlands form, with a recording of the heartbeat of his unborn daughter. Conquest of the Useless, the triptych rooted in Herzog’s diaries, received its first performance in Dublin in 2019. By 2020 six of his works had been committed to disc, among them Panopticon, scored for cimbalom and orchestra and reflecting the architectural layout of early prisons in which every inmate remained visible from a single central point; the piece appeared on a 2019 NMC anthology devoted to his music.
Albums
