Future Plans 

This project was time based, in that it was a project to create the Irish language art song website. The future plan was to ensure that classical singers around the world interacted with this website, enabling them to sing art songs in the Irish language. This is happening on a regular basis.

Legacy 

The legacy of this project is a permanent website hosted by the Contemporary Music Centre in Ireland accessed at http://www.cmc.ie/IrishArtSong

The creation of the website was the essential tool with which to promote and propagate the Irish language in classical music worldwide. On this website, the song recordings, music scores, and spoken word recordings of the new Irish language art songs are available to the world to download. The project was conceived because of the small number of existing Irish language art songs in the Irish classical music canon. With the specific pronunciation guide within each music score, any classical singer across the world can download one of the songs and sing it in the Irish language. Within the project, there are additional notable international dimensions. Out of the 17 composers commissioned, 5 of them were non-Irish. They were Serbian, Argentinian, Ukrainian, Persian, and Chinese. This was a strategy to open up the Irish language in classical music outside of Ireland and to make sure that the Irish language art songs feature in the canon of composers in the international classical music world. There has been significant interaction with the website from classical singers resulting in selections of songs being performed across the world, including in the U.S., Canada, England, Australia. The expectation is that there will be continued interaction with the website and subsequent programming of the songs for many years to come.