The Conservatory has developed an active research profile in the areas of historic musicology, performance practice, pedagogy, source studies and composition in recent years. The diverse nature of the research and performance practice interests of the large staff at the Conservatory offers opportunities for specialist and interdisciplinary research projects which are not available in smaller university departments. The Conservatory has attracted several externally funded scholarships in recent years as well as being successful in attracting students who have been awarded internal DIT Scholarships.
In 2007 the Conservatory hosted a conference on the 'Flight of the Earls' in conjunction with the O Cleirigh Institute and also the annual conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland in May 2007 which is regarded as being one of the most successful conferences since the inception of the Society.
Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute
The Department established strategic links with the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute at University College Dublin in 2007 and the first event of the Louvain 400 programme was held in the Conservatory on 3 February that year: Musical Journeys with the Flight of the Earls.
This symposium explored the historic background to the ‘Flight’, the musical culture in Ireland at the time and the musical experiences that the Earls would have encountered on their journey. It also explored how the ‘story’ has been recorded in poetry, drama and Irish traditional music. We had an excellent panel of speakers with a broad mix of disciplines and equally divided between those based at Irish and UK institutions. One of the papers will be published by Four Courts Press in Music and Culture in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Irish Musical Studies, volume 10) ed. Barra Boydell and Kerry Houston.
For more details of research projects in the Department, click here.