A Pack of Fancies for a Travelling Harper (1970): Context, Performance and Reception

The harp is well represented in the composition catalogue of Brian Boydell and features significantly in the composer’s concert programmes in his lifetime, most notably in musical celebrations for his seventieth and eightieth birthdays presented at the National Concert Hall, Dublin. He collaborated with many of Ireland’s leading harpists, including Gráinne Yeats, Mercedes Bolger [Garvey], Sheila Larchet Cuthbert, Una O’Donovan, Caitríona Yeats, Denise Kelly and Teresa Lawlor, to produce solo works for Irish harp and pedal harp, voice and Irish harp, chamber ensembles and orchestra.

The main focus of this essay is the performance history and reception of his work for solo pedal harp, A Pack of Fancies for a Travelling Harper (1970), written for Una O’Donovan for a performance at the Dublin Festival of Twentieth-Century Music on 13 January 1971. In five movements, it is written in tribute to the Irish harper and composer, Turlough O’Carolan (1670–1738) in the tercentenary year of his birth. In addition, the context and style of the work is considered in terms of Boydell’s compositional output for the instrument.