Please note the three links directly above to the webpages for the New Belmont Consort, for DB’s BBC work and for his Ulster Orchestra years. At the bottom of this current page you will find a list of Selected Writings and also a Bibliography.
David Byers, born in Belfast, 1947, was a pupil at Sullivan
Upper School, Holywood, where music was valued and encouraged, especially by the then headmaster John Frost.
His first composition, a suite for piano, was broadcast live on the BBC’s Children’s Hour, presented by Cicely Mathews in October 1963.
His first composition, a suite for piano, was broadcast live on the BBC’s Children’s Hour, presented by Cicely Mathews in October 1963.
Alongside piano lessons with Daphne Bell and organ
lessons with R.A. (Bert) Megraw, he studied at Queen’s University,
Belfast, 1965-67, with
Raymond Warren for composition.
At this time he formed the Belmont Youth Choir which was invited to perform at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland [presumably in 1967].
Awarded the RAM’s Manson
Scholarship in Composition, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in
London, 1968-1972 (with James Iliff (1923-2014) for composition, Arnold Richardson (1938-1973)
for organ, Roy Jesson (1926-1972) for editing/musicology and Arthur Jacobs (1922-1996) for programme
notes).
He also participated in an exciting and argumentative masterclass with Nadia Boulanger (at the end, the room was cleared and he was asked to remain behind to defend his compositional approach in Music for Crazy Jane).
At the RAM he was awarded the Cuthbert Nunn Composition Prize 1971 (by Lennox
Berkeley), the Margaret and Sydney Lovett Prize for organ accompaniment
1971, the Cuthbert Nunn Composition Prize 1972 (by Herbert Howells), and
the Josiah Parker Composition Prize 1972 (by Anthony Milner).
Music for Crazy Jane, 1971
LH pic: DB in 1972
Following his post-graduate year at the RAM, David Byers was awarded the Irish Arts Council’s Macauley Fellowship in 1972.
The award of a Belgian Government Scholarship that same year enabled him to study with the composer Henri Pousseur at his Centre de Recherches Musicales de Wallonie at the Conservatoire royal de Liège (1972-1973). He also attended a studio session with Stockhausen in Cologne and participated in one of Pousseur’s major 'happenings' in Liège - this one based on the song Le temps des cerises. This was also the first year of married life to the long-suffering Dorothy Fisher and they rejoiced in their address - 58 rue César Franck!
Liége-born composer Franck (1822-1890) was honoured in 1892 by the new street being named after him. Another liégeois composer, André Grétry (1741-1813) is celebrated with a statue outside the fine Opera House.
After
his studies at the Liège Conservatoire, David and Dorothy returned to live in
Northern Ireland. David initially working as organist and choirmaster of Belmont
Presbyterian Church, Belfast (the PDF below details the history of the
church with pics of the organ from its earliest days; the thumbnail pics
give details of the 1964 Conacher rebuild). He was also a freelance
composer, part-time music teacher (Regent House Grammar School) and
teacher of organ, theory and aural at the City of Belfast School of Music.
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These were also the years of the thriving Belfast-based New Belmont Consort which David Byers founded in 1972. Up to 1985, it gave many public concerts (including
regular concerts at the Belfast Festival at Queen’s), radio and TV
broadcasts, including BBC Radio Ulster’s first-ever stereo broadcast.
The choir ceased its activities in 1985 because of DB’s BBC commitments.
See also the New Belmont Consort page. Below is an MP3 of the Consort singing John Hatton’s glee Over hill, over dale.
Hatton Over hill, over dale.mp3
After some part-time work in BBC Northern Ireland’s Music
Library, David Byers was appointed to the post of BBC Music Producer in
1977, becoming Senior Music Producer in 1981 and Chief Producer, Music
& Arts in 1997.
See details of this period on this website’s BBC page.
For details of David Byers’s work as a composer, please see Compositions.
See details of this period on this website’s BBC page.
For details of David Byers’s work as a composer, please see Compositions.
He served on the
Music and Opera Sub-Committee (later renamed as the Performance Arts
Committee) of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) for many years
(approx. 1979-1992).
He is an alumnus or Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar, participating in music-centred sessions, viz. Musical Ideas and Musical Institutions, April/May 1979, and Music for a New Millennium: The Classical Genre in Contemporary Society, December 1997.
RH pic: Flyer for the SPNM’s Belfast event 21 May 1990.
From
1981 to 1989 David Byers was Northern Editor of Soundpost and its successor, Music
Ireland, two joint Arts Councils-supported music magazines, contributing
many articles and reviews. Michael Dervan was the Editor of both magazines.
Launch speech for Music Ireland by Minister Ted Nealon, T.T., 1985:
Launch details:
Belfast launch details:
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David Byers was
- a founding committee member of Sonorities, Northern Ireland’s Festival of Contemporary Music, serving 1981-2007 (chaired, planned, booked and coordinated the 1995 Sonorities Festival);
- awarded an ARAM by the Royal Academy of Music in 1984 (an Associateship awarded to former RAM students who have made a notable contribution to the music profession);
- appointed in 1984 to the Irish Arts Council, An Chomhairle Ealaíon, for a five year term (a period of great rejuvenation for the arts in Ireland, including the founding of Opera Theatre Company and Music Network);
- a board member of Opera Northern Ireland for three years in the late 1980s; served on the European Music Year Committee for Northern Ireland (1985) and the Belfast Harp Festival Committee (1992);
- an ACNI-nominated member of the board of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, a residential centre for artists, from 1987 to 1994;
- a BBC-nominated board member of the Ulster Orchestra Society from 1981-2002, also serving on the Orchestra’s General Purposes & Finance sub-committee until 2000.
He conducted many Northern Ireland editions of Songs of Praise for BBC1 network television between 1980 (St Eugene’s, Derry/Londonderry) and 1992 (Causeway Coast).
These included Bangor, Enniskillen, Ballina (Co. Mayo), Craigavon, Wexford, East Belfast, Comber, Rostrevor, Magherally (Banbridge), Armagh, Castlecourt (Belfast), Lough Erne, Gracehill (Moravian Church) and Corrymela.
RH pic: DB at the Giant’s Causeway for Songs of Praise (August 1992).
These included Bangor, Enniskillen, Ballina (Co. Mayo), Craigavon, Wexford, East Belfast, Comber, Rostrevor, Magherally (Banbridge), Armagh, Castlecourt (Belfast), Lough Erne, Gracehill (Moravian Church) and Corrymela.
RH pic: DB at the Giant’s Causeway for Songs of Praise (August 1992).
In 1992 David Byers was appointed a Coulson Governor of the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. He retired from that role in May 2012.
From 1994 to 1999 he was conductor of the St George's Singers, a choir specialising in large-scale works such as Bach's St. Matthew Passion and B Minor Mass.
Below is a sequence of the St. George’s Singers’ Christmas concerts 1994-1997. Just click on the thumbnails.
From 1994 to 1999 he was conductor of the St George's Singers, a choir specialising in large-scale works such as Bach's St. Matthew Passion and B Minor Mass.
Below is a sequence of the St. George’s Singers’ Christmas concerts 1994-1997. Just click on the thumbnails.
In 1996 he was appointed a board member of the National Chamber Choir in Dublin, serving until 2006. It was renamed as the Chamber Choir Ireland in 2014.
He was a founding board member in January 1999 of the Ulster Youth Choir, now renamed the National Youth Choir of Northern Ireland – a position he relinquished at the AGM in March 2013.
In 2002 he was one of the judges for Belfast City Council’s Belfast Arts Awards.
In 2002 he was one of the judges for Belfast City Council’s Belfast Arts Awards.
On
his retirement from the BBC in 2002, David Byers was re-invited to
serve as an Ulster Orchestra Board member in his own right, resigning in
June 2002 to take up the post of the Orchestra’s Chief Executive
(2002-2010).
See details and highlights of these years on the Ulster Orchestra page.
There’s also much archival material about the Ulster Orchestra on another page on this website: Orchestras in Northern Ireland.
See details and highlights of these years on the Ulster Orchestra page.
There’s also much archival material about the Ulster Orchestra on another page on this website: Orchestras in Northern Ireland.
LH pic: The Ulster Orchestra’s billboard campaign, September 2007, featuring Kenneth Montgomery.
David Byers was invited to join the board of Wexford
Festival Opera in 2004, retiring at the AGM in December 2015. It was an exciting period, not least during the years 2006-2007 when Wexford commissioned and delivered the first
custom-built, award-winning, opera house in Ireland, in time for its 2008 season. In 2015 the building was renamed as Ireland’s National Opera House.
In 2005 David Byers was elected a member of the Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain.
That same year he was a member of the Irish Arts Council’s Opera Review Group looking at the future of opera in Ireland with the then expectation of increased funding – something which didn't materialise at that time, but in recent years (and with a different Council membership) has really produced an exciting and vibrant opera scene.
That same year he was a member of the Irish Arts Council’s Opera Review Group looking at the future of opera in Ireland with the then expectation of increased funding – something which didn't materialise at that time, but in recent years (and with a different Council membership) has really produced an exciting and vibrant opera scene.
In 2006 David Byers was appointed to the board of directors of Dublin’s National Concert Hall
for a five year term to June 2011. This was another exciting time, planning
for a major expansion of the facilities with a major new 2,000 seat hall
and a new arts strategy for the venues. The expansionist plans were postponed in 2010 because of the global economic climate of recession.
LH pic: The fine Kenneth Jones organ in the National Concert Hall, Dublin.
Photo © NCH.
RH pic: Caricature of David Byers from Jim Cogan’s portrait of the retiring NCH Board, May 2011.
© Jim Cogan.
He became a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts in 2008 and, between 2008 and 2010, he was a member of the N.I. Employers' Skills Group for Creative and Cultural Skills, the Sector Skills Council for Craft, Cultural Heritage, Design, Literature, Music, Performing, and Visual Arts.
He was invited to join the board of the Irish Baroque Orchestra in February 2011 and was its chairperson from February 2012 to August 2014 when he resigned to concentrate on other areas of interest.
He was invited to join the board of the Irish Baroque Orchestra in February 2011 and was its chairperson from February 2012 to August 2014 when he resigned to concentrate on other areas of interest.
David Byers represented BBC Radio 3 at the
He has served on the juries of many international festivals, including
- International Rostrum of Composers in Paris, 1981, 82 and 83;
- and the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1987 and 88.
He has served on the juries of many international festivals, including
- the Hungarian Radio & TV International Conductors’ Competition in 1986;
- Cork International Choral Festival;
- Dublin International Piano Competition;
- Dublin International Organ Festival;
- the John McCormack Competition (1996, Chairman of the Jury in 1998, and 2000);
- the UTV School Choir of the Year 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2002;
- and the Adilia Alieva International Piano Competition in Gaillard, France, in 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010.
Caricature © Pekka Vuori: the jury at the Adilia Alieva Competition in Gaillard, France, from the Helsingin Sanomat, 10 June 2006.
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LH pic: June 2006 - DB with composer Rodion Shchedrin. Side-faced is Vesa Sirén, Finnish music journalist (on the staff of the Helsingin Sanomat). The lady in the background is unidentified.
David Byers was a contributor to the New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), BBC Radio 3’s Fairest Isle book (1995), several BBC Northern Ireland booklets, Marcus Patton’s The Opera Hat of Sir Hamilton Harty (2003), etc., along with record/CD sleeve notes for various companies (Lyrita, Unicorn-Kanchana, Linn Records, Naxos, etc.), and articles for a range of magazines (including The Listener, The New Hungarian Quarterly and Sound Post (Musicians' Union of Ireland quarterly)), newspapers and specialist publications (including poems for an Ulster Orchestra publication in the 1970s). He contributes occasional music reviews to the Irish Times (most recently of Irish National Opera’s This Hostel Life in September 2019 - see here - and Northern Ireland Opera’s Tosca in September 2023).
See a more detailed listing in Selected Writings below - including the recent online essays celebrating the centenary of the Belfast Music Society - established in 1921 as a branch of the British Music Society.
In 2012 he was commissioned by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland to write a Troubles Archive Essay on composers’ responses during those grim years. It was published online in 2015 and may be read here.
He
has long held strong views on programme notes for concerts - as witness
this letter (see PDF on the right) from Maurice Miles, conductor of the City of Belfast
Orchestra, dated 8 October 1963!
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David
Byers wrote all the programme notes for BBC Northern Ireland’s
Invitation Concerts with the Ulster Orchestra from 1985 to 2002 (and
also those for Radio 3 chamber music concerts from Belfast).
Between 2002 and 2015 he wrote the programme notes for the Ulster Orchestra’s concerts. He also wrote programme notes for the Badke Quartet, Chamber Choir Ireland and the Irish Baroque Orchestra. He continues to write notes for the Ulster Youth Orchestra, the BBC (Invitation Concerts with the Ulster Orchestra since 2016) and the Queille Festival. See his notes here (uncredited) for an Ulster Airs concert which he curated on 19 June 2018.
Between 2002 and 2015 he wrote the programme notes for the Ulster Orchestra’s concerts. He also wrote programme notes for the Badke Quartet, Chamber Choir Ireland and the Irish Baroque Orchestra. He continues to write notes for the Ulster Youth Orchestra, the BBC (Invitation Concerts with the Ulster Orchestra since 2016) and the Queille Festival. See his notes here (uncredited) for an Ulster Airs concert which he curated on 19 June 2018.
David
Byers has prepared many performing editions of 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th
century music, including piano concertos by Sterndale Bennett,
symphonies by William Crotch, music by Samuel Wesley (including the D
major Organ Concerto and the Trio for Three Grand Pianofortes), and organ
music by Pepusch (published by Universal Edition in Austria).
LH pic: DB portrayed in Marcus Patton’s Christmas party centre-spread for Music Ireland, December 1985. © Marcus Patton.
He has been a member of the Ina Boyle Advisory Committee since around 2015 and has prepared editions of Ina Boyle’s String Quartet, Still falls the Rain and No coward soul is mine (the latter for contralto/mezzo and string orchestra also arranged for voice and string quartet). The String Quartet in E minor was broadcast
by RTÉ in 2011 with the Callino Quartet, and it featured at the 2022 Three Choirs
Festival (Holy Trinity Church, Hereford, 28 July, 2.30pm) played by the Piatti Quartet who recorded it for release on CD in February 2023 (Rubicon RCD 1098).
The Piatti Quartet’s CD was reviewed in the Gramophone, March 2023, p.56 by Andrew Achenbach. Of Ina Boyle’s Quartet he thought it impressed ‘by dint of its pleasing assurance, innate good taste and strong poetic instinct (the wistful central Adagio is particularly affecting in its songful intensity). Make no mistake, this is a most gratifying discovery.’
In February 2017, he curated a concert in the First Presbyterian Church, Rosemary Street, Belfast, to mark 60 years of the Ulster Historical Foundation. In June 2018 he curated an Ulster Orchestra concert for the BBC, celebrating the BBC’s Ulster Airs scheme under the editorship of Norman Hay in the late 1930s.
In June 2019, July 2020 and April 2021, David Byers was a member of the judging panel for the Royal Dublin Society’s Music Bursary and the RDS Jago Award. The recipients, assessed on the basis of a short performance and an interview, were chosen from the winners of the five senior Feis Ceoil competitions.
He has continued on occasion to produce chamber music and orchestral recordings for BBC Radio 3 and RTÉ Lyric FM, though the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted such activities in March 2020 and again in January 2021.
15 July 2022 was the launch date for the Kurt Weill CD featuring the Ulster Orchestra, produced by David Byers for SOMM Recordings (SOMMCD280). It was also the Linen Hall Library launch date for his book, Gatherings of Irish Harpers, 1780-1840, published by The Irish Pages Press, and commissioned for the Harps Alive festival (see also the more detailed ‘music feature’ on this website here).
The Waterfront Hall UO recording of Kurt Weill
The book - Gatherings of Irish Harpers, 1780-1840 (The Irish Pages Press)
As a postlude for this page, here’s my arrangement for the Badke Quartet of A Sad Pavan for these distracted times by Thomas Tomkins. This performance was recorded in 2012.
The arrangement was also played at the Pacific Baroque Festival in the Alix Goolden Performance Hall, Victoria Conservatory of Music, Victoria, B.C., Canada, on 17 February 2023 by Marc Destrubé and Kathryn Wiebe (violins) and Eva Lymenstull and Natalie Mackie (violas da gamba).
Selected Writings:
Passacaglia - repetitions on a theme (Ulster Orchestra Year Book, 1972-73, pp.34, 35)
Norman Hay: Odds-on favourite? (Soundpost, Issue 4, March 1982, pp.15-17)
International Rostrum of Composers 1983, (Contact, A Journal of Contemporary Music, Autumn 1983, pp.45-47)
Lord Chesterfield goes to Wexford (Soundpost, Issue 23, January 1985, p.10)
Music (Images: Arts and the People in Northern Ireland, NI Information Service, 1985)
A TV sponsored conductors’ competition (The New Hungarian Quarterly, Vol. XXVIII, No.105, Spring 1987, p.225)
Book Review: Brian Boydell - Dublin Musical Calendar, 1700-1760 (Music Ireland, May 1989)
Sons and Brothers - Charles and Samuel Wesley’s musical careers (The Listener, 29 June 1989, pp.44, 45)
Belfast (The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie, Macmillan Press Limited, 1992)
A Land without Music? (Fairest Isle, BBC Radio 3 Book of British Music, ed. David Fraser, BBC, 1995, pp.57-64)
The pictures you don’t see on radio (The Opera Hat of Sir Hamilton Harty, Marcus Patton,
Grand Piano Press, Belfast 2003, pp.7-11)
Book Review: 'The Life and Music of Brian Boydell', ed. Cox, Klein and Taylor (Classical Music,
20 November 2004)
Studio One (Broadcasting House – A Portrait, BBC, Belfast, 2011, pp.18-19)
Contemporary Composers (A Troubles Archive Essay, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 2015 –
online at the Troubles Archive)
Right person, right time - Norman Hay (The Invisible Art - A Century of Music in Ireland 1916-2016,
ed. Michael Dervan, New Island, Dublin, 2016. pp.33-39)
The Ulster Orchestra - Celebrating Fifty Years (Sound Post, Musicians’ Union of Ireland,
Vol.14, No.3, Autumn 2016, pp.7-8)
Monnier Harper, Irish-born virtuoso violinist, composer and aviation pioneer (Sound Post,
Musicians’ Union of Ireland, Vol.15, No.3, Autumn 2017, pp.11-12)
Book Review: 'Brian Boydell - Rebellious Ferment ...' (Sound Post, Musicians’ Union of Ireland,
Vol.17, No.1, Spring 2019, p.13)
The Feis Ceoil goes north - a tale of two cities (Sound Post, Musicians’ Union of Ireland,
Vol.18, No.3, Autumn 2020, pp.13-15) - see here.
Obituary: Paschal Allen (1932-2020) (Sound Post, Musicians’ Union of Ireland, Vol.18, No.4, Winter 2020, p.17)
Four quarter-century essays celebrating the centenary of the BMS
(online for the Belfast Music Society website, February 2021 - see here).
Bunting’s airs, graces and harps (Perspectives, Cruit Éireann/Harp Ireland’s online journal, April 2022 - see here).
Gatherings of Irish Harpers 1780-1840 (The Irish Pages Press, Belfast, July 2022).
Bibliography:
A Catalogue of Contemporary Irish Composers, ed. Edgar M. Deale, 2nd edition, MAI, Dublin, 1973, pp.22, 23
Dublin Festival of Twentieth Century Music, Jane O’Leary, Perspectives of New Music,
Vol.17, No.2, pp. 260-267, Spring-Summer, 1979
Music - A Local Composer, Philip Hammond, Fortnight, No.176, p.22, Fortnight Publications Ltd., May 1980
Music: Sonorous Occasions [Review of Sonorities Festival], Philip Hammond, Fortnight,
No.182, pp. 21–22, Fortnight Publications Ltd., 1981
Catalogue of Contemporary Irish Music, ed. Bernard Harrison, Irish Composers’ Centre, Dublin, 1982, pp 30-34
Cross-Border Music, Michael Dervan, Irish Times, April 1985, p.20
Belfast’s mixed Sonorities, Michael Dervan, Classical Music, 22 June 1985, p.29
Review of 20th Century Irish Organ Music, Priory PR178, GR [Gordon Reynolds], Gramophone, Sept. 1986, p.447
English Byeways, Arthur Jacobs, The Musical Times, Vol.131, No.1773 (November 1990), p.603
Review of Cipriani Potter Symphonies and Sterndale Bennett Piano ConcertosReview, Arthur Jacobs, The Musical Times, Vol.132, No.1782 (August 1991), p.399
Review of Sterndale Bennett Piano Concertos, 1 & 3, 2 & 5The Organ Works of David Byers, Dónal Doherty, M.A. thesis, N.U.I. Maynooth, 1991
Radio Drama [Review of Sweeney Astray by Seamus Heaney], Brian Baird, Theatre Ireland, 26/27, p.96, 1992
Beyond the Studio, Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 2000
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, OUP, 2001
Classical Music, Joe McKee, Stepping stones - the arts in Ulster, ed. Mark Carruthers & Stephen Douds,
Blackstaff Press, 2001, pp.148-169
The Encyclopedia of Ireland, ed. Brian Lalor, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 2003
Music in Northern Ireland since 1921, Roy Johnston, Chapter XXII, A New History of Ireland, Vol.VII,
ed. J.R.Hill, Oxford University Press, 2003
Beethoven in Belfast, Wesley McCann, The Vacuum, Issue 12, Down Mexico Way, Belfast 2004 Also online here.
Celebrating 80 Years of Music, (exhibition catalogue) BBC, Belfast, 2004 - see PDF below.
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Open House, Peter Rosser, Journal of Music in Ireland, Vol.9, No.1, p.15, 2009
The Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland, ed. Harry White and Barra Boydell, UCD Press, Dublin, 2013
Review of The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland, Richard Pine, Irish University Review, vol.44, no.2, p.402, 2014
The Invisible Art - A Century of Music in Ireland 1916-2016, ed. Michael Dervan, New Island, Dublin, 2016
Music in Northern Ireland [re Joan Trimble & Havelock Nelson], Alasdair Jamieson, Grosvenor House, 2017
Unfinished symphony - The story of the Ulster Orchestra, Alf McCreary, UO Foundation, 2019
The history of the harp that sheds light on ... Protestant history, David Dunlop, Belfast Telegraph,
book review, 15 April 2023, p.6
Book Review - Gatherings of Irish Harpers, Mary Louise O’Donnell, Sound Post, Musicians’ Union of Ireland, Vol.21, No.3, Autumn 2023, pp.13, 14
Review - (re Gatherings ...), Keith Sanger, West Highland Notes and Queries, Series 5, No,11, p.52, July 2024