Keyboard Studies

Barbara Dagg

Assistant Lecturer

MA (Teaching, Piano), MusB, HDipEd, LTCL (Teaching, Organ),

Performance Exam, Organ (State Conservatory Freiburg),

State Exam in Church Music (Rhineland State Conservatory, Dusseldorf)

Barbara Dagg is a music graduate of TCD. She studied piano with Rhona Marshall at the RIAM in Dublin, and with Eleonore Wunderlich in Dusseldorf. Her organ studies began with Peter Sweeney and Gerard Gillen in Dublin and continued with Ludwig Doerr in Freiburg and Almut Rössler in Dusseldorf. She also studied harpsichord with John Beckett at the RIAM, and harpsichord continuo with David Roblou in London.

She has given solo organ recitals at many venues in Ireland, England, Germany and Australia. In 2000, she premièred a new Irish organ work, by Dublin composer Melanie Brown, in the Basilica at St Blasien, Germany, and in St Michael’s Church, Dun Laoghaire.

During three years as Assistant Organist at Christ Church Cathedral Dublin, she accompanied the cathedral choir liturgically and in concerts at cathedrals and churches across Ireland, at the NCH in Dublin, and in the UK at Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, Canterbury and Durham Cathedrals. At Christ Church she participated in broadcasts for RTÉ radio and television, and in a Choral Evensong broadcast for BBC Radio 3. For five years, she was also Assistant Sub Organist at St Patrick’s Cathedral Dublin. For over three decades she has been involved in training parish organists of all denominations.

Barbara has provided organ accompaniments for concerts with many other choirs, including TU Dublin Choral Society, and piano accompaniments for instrumentalists in concerts, competitions and students’ examinations. As piano soloist, she contributed a programme item on square piano to a joint National Library of Ireland / TU Dublin / Heritage Music Productions concert in 2010; and as ensemble pianist she collaborated in the Piano Extravaganza concert given by Keyboard Studies staff at TU Dublin Conservatoire in 2024.

Since 2000 much of her performing activity has centred on organ and harpsichord continuo with orchestras and early-music ensembles. With Gillian Smith she shared organ continuo duties in the Orchestra of St Cecilia’s project, completed in 2010, to present all 200+ church cantatas of J S Bach over ten annual concert series in Dublin. Other works performed with OSC have included the Bach St Matthew and St John Passions, Vivaldi Gloria, and Fauré Requiem.

In 2015, playing harpsichord continuo, she appeared together with Conservatoire colleagues Julie Maisel (baroque flute) and Andrew Robinson (viola da gamba) in the Summer Music at Sandford concert series in Dublin.

Barbara has lectured in academic studies at TU Dublin and currently teaches piano in the Department of Keyboard Studies. She is keenly interested in current developments in keyboard pedagogy, especially in the area of teaching piano sight-reading. In 2012, she graduated (with Distinction) MA in Instrumental Teaching from the University of Reading, and in 2013 gave a presentation on her MA research project at St. Hilda’s College Oxford.

Barbara is a member of the European Piano Teachers Association (EPTA Ireland).