Andrew Robinson

Smoot scoring

Work— Smoot Scoring Service— Contact— Biographical— Compositions— Publications— Links— Interests— Songs— Rhymes

Current Work

Music typesetter and editor; see Smoot below
Player and teacher of the viola da gamba
Director of The Dublin Viols and occasional performer with other period-instrument groups including The Irish Baroque Orchestra
I teach the Viola da Gamba in The Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin, and The DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama as well as to private pupils, and
I also teach in the Orpheon summer schools in the Czech Republic, run by José Vázquez

Smoot

Using Sibelius music notation software, I offer my services as a music typesetter and editor, with special attention to lyrics in the major European languages.
Clients include:

The composer Eric Sweeney (orchestral score and parts for the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra)
The academic Barra Boydell (orchestral score of his edition of "Caractacus" by the Earl of Mornington, for the RTÉ Concert Orchestra)
Alexandra College Music Department (vocal and orchestral scores and parts)
The University College Dublin Choral Scholars (vocal and instrumental scores and parts)

Contact Information

Without spaces and with the usual conversions, Andrew at Robinson dot net will find me. Back to top

Biographical Information

Born 1948 in Dublin, educated Mountjoy School Dublin and Sevenoaks School Kent
BA Mod. in Mental and Moral Science and Mus B at Trinity College Dublin where I was taught Bach counterpoint by Joseph Groocock
LRAM in Guitar teaching, LTCL in Viola da Gamba teaching
MA in Renaissance Music at Queen's University Belfast under Ian Woodfield

Previous work has included

Playing, singing, and composing in a progressive poetry-and-music group Tara Telephone, with poets Peter Fallon and Eamon Carr, singer Lucienne Purcell, and guitarist/composers Declan Sinnott and Bernie Barrett. Eamon and Declan went on to invent Celtic Rock in Horslips, around 1970
Teaching guitar at the Royal Irish Academy of Music
Co-directing the Consort of St Sepulchre, a Medieval/Renaissance band that recorded two albums with EMI Ireland in the mid 1970s
Making stringed instruments (with Anthony OBrien)
Conducting (Dublin Youth Orchestras, Dublin Orchestral Players, and others; founding chairman of the Irish Association of Youth Orchestras)
Lecturing on Renaissance Music in TCD

I was founding director of Maoin Cheoil an Chláir, classical/traditional music school (chaired by Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin) in Ennis, County Clare, 1993-98. While there I formed and sang in the Ceol Miners Barbershop Quartet, winners of the Irish Association of Barbershop Singers' gold medal for best National Male Quartet in 1997 and 1998.

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Compositions

Incidental music for theatre:
- “Twelfth Night” Peacock Theatre 1976
- “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” Abbey Theatre 1987
- “Dark Lady” Peacock Theatre 1988
- “The Ring of Mont de Balison” Ranelagh Community Theatre 1988
Other compositions:
- “Zeralda's Ogre” for orchestra with narrator, performed by RTÉ Concert Orchestra Dublin Proms 1993
- “Fudge” for SATB or recorder quartet, published in "A Musical Tribute to Joseph Groocock", TCD School of Music, 1993
- String quartets for children: “Eileen Aroon”, “Ní Mór Dom É”, “Morning”, “In a Place”, “The Daniel Day”—for Dublin Youth Orchestras Summer Courses
Songs: see below

Publications

Transcriptions of traditional music in The Northern Fiddler (Blackstaff Press Belfast 1979)
Paper “Choice Psalmes: A Brother’s Memorial” in William Lawes: his life, times and work (Ashgate 1999)
Entry on “The Three Ages of Music” in The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, (Cork University Press 1999)
Viol consort music by William Cranford (Viola da Gamba Society, 1970s) edited from the part-books in Marsh's Library

Some Links

Tibet Ireland, the site run by Tibetans living in Ireland, giving up-to-date information and suggesting actions you can take

h2g2, a site started by Douglas Adams, being the Earth Edition of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy; where I am known as Recumbentman.

I have contributed entries on

Recumbent bikes
Rainbows
Rimickles
The Three Ages of Music
My philosophical heroes, Berkeley and Wittgenstein
Sol-fa
Gambling

Personal Interests

Member of the Green Party; my wish is that all political parties become green, as voters increasingly compel them to
Member of the Gaudete Singers; I am a BWTSTP (baritone willing to sing tenor parts)
Recumbent cyclist; happy rider of a PDQ on which I have done a thousand-mile trip through France, a 1400-mile trip via Cherbourg and Copenhagen to Malmö, a longer trip up the east coast of Sweden, and shorter ones from the north of Spain down to Lisbon, from Dublin to Glasgow via Belfast, and up and down the Yorkshire Dales and Moors; all without a trace of saddle-sore, thanks to the wonder that is the Recumbent Bike Seat
Member of Dublin Cycling Campaign
- Read about the cycle-helmet question here
- —and my suggested answer here

Songs

Here are three songs that I wrote in 1968 or so and recorded in 1972, in Adam Skeaping's London studio, playing a £5 guitar.
Mark Wilkes, creator of WinTemper© historical-temperament software, has converted them to MP3s for your delectation.
Thank you Mark!

Rhymes

And finally, some little bits of verse I accept responsibility for:

To my fellow-motorists

When we've driven the last cyclist from his toe-hold on the street
Let us not become complacent, for the job is not complete
There's another class of person lining up for our attention
And he bends and breaks the law in every way that you could mention:
The pedestrian. His blind insouciance is past endurance
When it's WE who pay the taxes, pass the tests and buy insurance!
We are gentle, kind, forgiving, but he does his best to thwart us
As a heart-arresting jaywalker or traffic-jamming tortoise . . .
We invented good behaviour, he's determined to destroy it!
And don't tell me to stop ranting, it's my right! And I enjoy it!

A conductor's lot

with apologies to W. S. Gilbert

When a singer's not engaged in ululation
Or contributing his vocals to a chord
He indulges in delightful conversation
Just to save his friends from ever getting bored

When a tenor's tenor register's not ringing
He cracks a smile and perpetrates a pun
Ah, when singers are not actually singing
A conductor's lot is not a happy one

When disciplinary duty's to be done, to be done
A conductor's lot is not a happy one, happy one

When the altos are impatiently awaiting
A soprano cue that's not entirely there
And sectarian division's escalating
It can drive the mildest maestro to despair

When the soloists start resting on their laurels
When the orchestra packs up before you're done
When the basses exercise their baser morals
A conductor's lot is not a happy one

When disciplinary duty's to be done, to be done
A conductor's lot is not a happy one, happy one

Men

On the square are assembled two negative hordes
To fight to the death in the name of their lords

One faction may triumph or both may be shamed
But no man shows merit and none can be blamed
____________________

Pawns battle upward and never look back
Knights gad about cutting through to attack

Bishops adopt contradictory attitudes
Rooks set up strongholds enthralling new latitudes

Queens go in style with the trappings of fame
Kings back their champions to capture the game
____________________

One faction may triumph or both may be shamed
But no man shows merit and none can be blamed

Unmourned unenlightened we shuffle away
To face resurrection when gods stoop to play

Stabat Mater

Berkeley took a stab at Matter
Ran his mental blade right through it
And was Substance hard to shatter?
No, said he, there's nothing to it

Aisling

A poet called Andy McCann
Was inspired with a wonderful plan.
It was truly sublime,
So he put it in rhyme:

O Vision afforded to man,
Are you only a flash in the pan?
How fleeting my flashling—
I'll call you my Aisling . . .

My dream is
to have a
spare
van.

The above will only make sense to those with a passing acquaintance with Irish literature.
Apologies to the rest of the world, who can find the meaning of Aisling here.

to Paul Durcan

Your yawn-inducing monotone
Conveys the furrowed pain
Of one aggrieved, misunderstood,
And licensed to complain

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Last revised: June 2008
Andrew Robinson