At the age of four he went to the Christian Brothers’ School in Adare. His first teacher was Brother Long from Dingle, who set the foundation for his strong passion for the Irish language. At the age of seven he got his first violin lesson from Granville Metcalfe who used to come out to Adare from Limerick once a week to teach music. A year later he began to study the piano. When he was ten he joined the Limerick Club and performed with them until he left Adare to go to boarding school. During this period he also studied theory, counterpoint and harmony with Professor Van de Veld. In 1943 he won a scholarship to Farrenferris Seminary School in Cork, from where he matriculated in 1947, and, being too young to enter University, he spent the following year in St. Munchins in Limerick where he took his Leaving Certificate.
He entered U.C.C. in 1948 on a scholarship and read first Arts with Music as a subject. He also took Greek, Latin and Irish. U.C.C. in those days was small, and exciting because of the number of foreign students who flocked there after the Second World War. Ó Riada plunged into a wide course of reading and talking which was oriented towards the ancient and modern cultures of Europe. In 1957 he graduated with honours in Music.
In September, 1953 he married Ruth Coghlan and they had seven children, Peadar, Reitseal, Eoghan, Alasdar, Cathal, Sorcha, Liadh. The last two children were born after he had moved to the Gaeltacht but the whole family were brought up through Irish.
Also in 1953 he was appointed Assistant Director of Music in Radio Eireann.
Dr. Arthur Young was his Co-Assistant Director, and in those good old days they graciously attended symphony concerts and gave short shrift to various “trad fids” who came up for audition, and also to various deputations from the country, including a very persistent petitioner from Cuil Aodha, whose house Sean was destined to buy ten years later.
0 Riada resigned from Radio Eireann in 1955, and, in a logical extension to all of his classical reading and studies, took off to starve in a garret in Paris. Here he met many artists and musicians through R.D.T.F. But here also he turned towards the Aisling which had been hovering over all his life and he ended up by saying to his wife “I’d rather be breaking stones in Ireland than be the richest man living in Europe”.
Back in Dublin, he began the most prolific period of his life, starting with many arrangements for the Radio Eireann Singers and Light Orchestra, doing original compositions for Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra, writing for solo voice and for piano. During this time he was working as Music Director of the Abbey Theatre. This position gave him a good deal of spare time and allowed him to do many radio broadcasts and to work on incidental music for films.
Side by side with the flowering of 0 Riada’s European classical creativity another theme began to emerge during those seven years. The spirit of this theme was first expressed in the music which he wrote for the film Mise Eire. The impact of this particular music on the nation in 1959 was dramatic and immediate and it marked the beginning of 0 Riada’s rapport with the people of Ireland and their culture. He began a deep study of Irish traditional music which resulted in a radio series entitled “Our Musical Heritage”. He proceeded to experiment with combinations of musicians to evolve Ceoltoiri Chualann. This group was first presented to the public as a folk or traditional orchestra providing the incidental music for the Abbey Theatre presentation of the Honey Spike, a play by Brian Mc Mahon. Their first formal appearance as a stage group was at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin on ……….
While he was still in Dublin, he made his first contact with the Gaeltacht when he spent the summer of 1959 with his family in Bru na Gráige (Corca Dhuibhne) at the invitation of an tAthair Tadhg 0 Murchu. it was after this visit, which made a deep impression on them, that the 0 Riadas began to hold the now famous Ceilidhe at their home in Galloping Green, which brought together all the strands of Sean’s various interests – muintir na Gaeltachta, traditional and classical musicians, poets, diplomats, plumbers and business men.
Finally, and once more in a logical extension of his cultural development, he resigned from the Abbey in 1962 and moved to Corca Dhuibhne where he lived for a year doing freelance work for R.T.E. and writing for the “Irish Times”, until in October, 1963 he was appointed assistant lecturer in Music at University College, Cork.
On his appointment he moved to Cuil Aodha to live in An Draighean. Here, ten miles from where his mother was born, 0 Riada felt he had come home. Henceforth he regarded all trips to Cork, Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, London, Canada, America for lectures, concerts, recordings and festivals, in the nature of forages from his home base to bring back spoils and to further the interests of the Naisiun Gaolach. He made 16mm. films, wrote music, went fishing, studied Indian and Oriental Music, sat on National Commissions and committees, and generally was deeply involved in the community. He formed a choir and and wrote his first Mass for them. His fascination with things spiritual led him to write a further two Masses (Glenstall and an Irish Goverment commisioned Requem). He died on the 3rd of October, 1971 in Kings College Hospital after a short illness brought on by the effect of excessive alcohol use on an inhereited weak liver. He lies buried in Reilig Gobnatan.
His 20 years work includes:
Classical work:
(at some stage he switched from the word Opus to that of Nomos in numbering his work )
Setting for four poems by Ezra Pound “Lustra” (opus 1) (1953)
Settings of three poems by Thomas Kinsella (opus 2) (1954)
Suite for unaccompanied violin (opus 3)
Prelude and Fugue for Harpsichord (Opus 4) (BBC)
Sonata for Piano Forte, 9 short preludes for pianoforte (Opus 5) (Radiodiffusion Francaise July 1954)
Four songs for Baritone and Piano (opus 6) “Oh Mistress Mine” – Shakespeare, “D’une Prison” – Verlaine, “Atthis” – Pound, Song without words. 1955 RÉ
Symphony no 1 (opus 7) “L’homme Armé”
Overture (Opus 8) “Olynthiac”
Suite “Thomas Moore” (Opus 9)
Divertmento for wind quartet, voice and side drum (Opus 10)
Nomos 1 “Hercules Dux Ferrariae” (1957) 8 movements for String Orchestra.
Nomos 2 “Sophocles” on Theban cycle for Bar., Chorus and Orch. (1957 -’65)
Nomos 4 Solo piano and Orchestra. (1958)
Nomos 6 Triptyque pour Orchestre Symphonique (1960)
“The Lords and the Bards” (Text Robert Farren)
SATB,Mixed chorus and Symphony Orch.
5 Greek Epigrams (1958) (Agathias,Scholastikos,Leonidas, Anacreon, Teocratas, Antiphilos)
Mixed choir, flute and guitar.
Requiem for a soldier (1968)
Mixed choir, solo Sop.,Ten.,Bar., and organ
Requiem Mass (as above but with further pieces added) (1970)
“Overture Olynthiac” (1957) Orch.
“The Banks of Sulán” (1956) Orch.
“Seoladh na nGamhna” (1959) Orch.
“In memoriam Aloys Fleischmann” (1964) Bar. and Pianoforte
Text by H. C. Holderlin
Some 25 orchestral arrangments of traditional Irish tunes.
120 Chorale arrangments of Irish songs.
Other works:
Also over 700 arrangments of songs and dance music for traditional group, various lecture series, the most important of these being a series delivered on Radio Éireann in the early sixties entitled “Our Musical Heritage” and a short series of lectures on Irish music generally delivered in UCC some weeks before he died -, a play called “Spailpín a Rúin”, articles,essays and some songs. There is also a body of original Irish melodies compposed by him with the express purpose of letting them drift into the main stream of Irish songs and Melodies – the best know of these being “Mná na hÉireann” (text by Ó Dorinín).
Two Masses “Cúil Aodha” (1965) and
“Glenstall” (1968)
These masses were followed by the Requiem already mentioned.