A dream realised
‘THEY Made Great music’, a new book by Dr. Noel Culleton, will be officially launched by the chairman of Wexford Festival Opera Ger Lawlor in the Book Centre at South Main Street on Thursday, November 1 at 6.30 p.m.
The 220-page book on the extraordinary lives of 33 of the world’s great literary composers, is the ‘realisation of a childhood dream’ by the author, a former chief executive of Johnstown Castle and a native of Taghmon and Piercestown.
Noel has worked for most of his life as a scientist, and had a number of books and papers published during his time as an international specialist on soil and plant physiology and as an EU negotiator on climate change.
Although he says he cannot even play the spoons, he has had a life-long interest in classical music and the lives of the great composers from childhood when he ‘practically lived in the old Wexford library’.
His book is illustrated by another Wexfordman, David Mahon, an architect and native of Barntown who now works in New Zealand and the Fiji Islands. David’s caricatures of each of the 33 composers are produced in full-page size throughout the book. Noel Culleton’s chosen composers are from the 1700s to the 1990s covering a time-span of more than 200 years. The popular Beethoven, Britten, Hayden, Mozart, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Verdi and Wagner are among them.
‘Turn on the radio or the television, listen to a podcast, go to a film, hear any piece of music. Their creations influence everybody’, said Noel.
‘The classical literary composers were influenced by books that they had read and poems and plays that they had experienced. From this, they created glorious, beautiful, inspirational music and wonderful operas that excite and enthral and console and uplift millions of people.’
He has dedicated the book to the Wexford branch of Family Carers Ireland who ‘go about their work in a quiet, dignified, yet very efficient way and whose help has ensured that numerous families have a quality of life that would not be possible without them’, he said.
Noel and his wife Geraldine, a native of Clones, Co. Monaghan, live in Wexford town. Their son Jonathan is a lecturer in Waterford Institute of Technology and their daughter Collette is a solicitor in Wexford town. They Made Great Music by Noel Culleton is published by Three Sisters Press and will be on sale in bookshops nationwide.