John McLachlan

John McLachlan (born 5 March 1964) is an Irish composer.

Life McLachlan was born in Dublin, son of the writer Leland Bardwell, and studied at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama (1982–6), the Royal Irish Academy of Music (1989–97), and Trinity College Dublin (BA 1988), where he received a Ph.D. in musicology in 1999 for a study of the relationship between analysis and compositional technique in the post-war avant-garde. He has also studied privately with Robert Hanson (1989–90) and Kevin Volans (1994–5). He now lives in Inishowen, County Donegal.

He has written numerous articles for The Journal of Music in Ireland (2000–10; now the online Journal of Music). He was executive director of the Association of Irish Composers (AIC; 1998–2012), and in 2007 he was elected to Aosdána.

McLachlan was the featured composer in the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's "Horizons" series in 2003 and 2008. He has also represented Ireland at international festivals, including the ISCM World Music Days in Slovenia in 2003 Croatia in 2005 and New Zealand in 2022. In 2006, his work Grand Action was commissioned as a test piece for the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition.

Music McLachlan's musical aesthetic is largely shaped by a desire to impart a sense of narrative and expectation to his music without recourse to pastiche rhetorical devices. A critic wrote of a recording of McLachlan's piano piece Nine: "The style of each little piece sends one's imagination and musical memory reeling, some of them evoking French Impressionism, some jazzy in feel, some reminiscent of the miniatures for piano of Webern, and none of them in any way, shape or form derivative." Much of his music is structured in contrasting and suddenly changing block-like sections of homogeneous material. The material within these sections is propelled by a rigorous focus on subtle rhythmic and melodic permutations, which result in both surface opacity and gradually increasing tension.

Select compositions

Orchestral Concerto for Chamber Orchestra (1988) Here Be Dragons (2003) Triptych (2004) Octala (2007) Incunabula (2007) Taca (2011) The Inishowen Set (2013)

Chamber music Two Lyric Sketches (1987; rev. 1991), for string quartet Heuristic Pieces (1990; rev. 2003), for clarinet, horn, violin, viola, cello Suspirations 1 (1991), for 3 trumpets, horn, trombone Suspirations 2 (1991; rev. 1992), for clarinet, oboe, horn, violin, cello, double bass Frieze (1993), for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, percussion, violin, cello, double bass Concords (1997), for clarinet, violin, cello, piano Meetings with Remarkable Men (2001), for 4 percussionists Filament of Memory (2002), for 4 guitars Radical Roots (2003), for violin, viola, cello [rescored for 2 pianos, 2005] neo-plastic coloured shapes (2003), for string quartet The Metal Pig (2004), for clarinet, violin, cello, piano Ghost Machine (2004), for violin and piano Fragile (2004), for alto flute and guitar Leaves Loose (2006), for piccolo/flute/alto-flute/bass-flute, oboe/oboe d'amore/cor anglais, clarinet/bass-clarinet Wonder (2008), for clarinet, glockenspiel, organ, e-guitar, violin, double bass Extraordinary Rendition (2008), for violin, cello, piano Natural Order (2009), for violin, cello, piano Five Points, Manhattan (2010), for 7 percussionists Where we are (2012), for string quartet Fragment (After Lafcadio Hearn) (2016), for speaker and piano Deliquescence (Leland Bardwell) (2016), for soprano, clarinet, piano Glad it Was the Sun (2016), for string quartet Venise en hiver (Jeanine Baude) (1995), for mezzo-soprano, alto sax, piano Diomedea (2017), for saxophone and contrabass recorder doubling treble recorder Isola (2019), for flute/alto flute and piano Headland (2021), for violin, viola, cello, piano, flute, clarinet, bassoon and fixed media Atalanta (2023), for viola and piano

Solo instrumental Five Movements for Piano (1983) Four Short Pieces for Guitar (1988) Two Piano Studies (1994) From the Strings of a Rainbow (1996), for piano Fifteen Easy Miniatures (1998), for piano Archaeopteryx (1996; rev. 1997), for piano Here Be Dragons (2001; rev. 2003), for organ Nuance (2003), for piano Grand Action (2005), for piano Soft Landing (2009), for organ Nine (2011), for piano Drinking the Stars (2012), for piano Ex Machina (2013), for piano Filament(s) I to VI (2014–18), solo pieces for flute, trombone, cello, bassoon, guitar, clarinet Sweeney Exulans (2018), for Irish harp Under the Flagstones (2018), for organ fiaili ceoil (2019), for piano Stone Bell and Sandwave (2020), for piano

Choral works Two Akhmatova Settings (Anna Akhmatova) (1986), for mixed chorus Two Poems in Memoriam Stevie Smith (Leland Bardwell) (1986), for mixed chorus Lord, What Love Have I (Psalm 119) (1988), for mixed chorus and organ He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven (W. B. Yeats) (1995), for mixed chorus The Eternal Rebel (Eva Gore-Booth) (2016), for soprano, tenor, choir, piano, keyboard, harmonica

Electro-acoustic works The Red Thread (2000), for guitar and electro-acoustics Golden Circle (2010), for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, electro-acoustics Dog Ear (2013) fixed media Aurora (2013), for flute/bass-flute, clarinet/bass-clarinet, cello, piano, electro-acoustics Sparsa (2015) fixed media Sympathetic Strings (2016), for guitar and electro-acoustics This is Real (2019), for violin, viola, cello, bass, string orchestra, electro-acoustics Twelve Celestial Objects (2020) fixed media A fine example of how (not) to live (2023) for clarinets and fixed media, texts Leland Bardwell Le dernier bourgeon de l'avenir (2023) fixed media