The best film music can change how an audience feels without announcing its presence. It draws people into a story, gives a scene its emotional weight and sometimes stays with them long after the credits. Sarah Glennane believes the composers who do that work should be visible to the industry, even when their music is at its most subtle.
Listen to the radio show here (September 29)
Glennane is CEO of the Screen Composers Guild of Ireland, which represents composers based across the island who write original music for film, television, games, advertising and other media. Its 124 full members work across a wide range of productions. Among those she mentions from Wicklow include Stephen Rennicks, who scored Normal People, and Stephen McKeon and award winning Anna Rice. Other successful composers from the around the country include Sarah Lynch, Eimear Noone, Die Hexen and David Holmes
The guild was founded in 2018. Glennane had previously managed bands and worked in music supervision, helping film and television productions license existing songs. That role brought her into contact with another part of the music industry: the composers asked to create something original for a particular story.
She became curious about how many were working in Ireland and secured funding for a study. It revealed a larger group than she had expected. Some were finding work here, while others were building careers with productions in the UK and elsewhere. Producers, directors and writers had guilds to represent their interests, so Glennane invited composers to a meeting and suggested they establish one too.
Screen Composers Guild
She was surprised when they agreed. Composers may be colleagues, but they also compete for commissions. The common interest was their craft and the conditions in which they practise it. Glennane wanted producers and directors to know whom they could commission, and wanted composers to have a voice in discussions about support for the screen industry.
“We’re dedicated to ensuring that that craft is valued, and that the people doing it are valued,” she says.
Public recognition is a more complicated question. A score works in partnership with the images, performances and story. Glennane says a composer may not want the audience to stop thinking about the film and start noticing the music. Yet that quiet contribution should not mean the profession is overlooked by the people making hiring and funding decisions. For her, the guild is a way to turn individual talent into sustained opportunity, including for those who hope to enter the field.
Generative AI has brought a new challenge to that work. Glennane describes this as an extraordinary time and sees the potential benefits of new tools. Her objection is to the conduct of companies she believes have used existing recordings and compositions to train music generation systems without first agreeing terms with their creators and rights holders.
She draws a distinction between the composition and a particular recording of it. Both involve people with rights in their work. She wants companies to disclose what music they have used and to seek licences where required, just as other businesses must when they use music commercially. She is particularly frustrated by what she sees as a rush to bring products to market while leaving those questions unresolved.
“The human behaviour behind the tool is really the threat,” she says.
Living Culture fostered by Music
Her concern extends to the music people may encounter online. Irish traditional music, she points out, belongs to a living culture of people playing together, passing on skills and adapting them. When a channel presents generated tracks as traditional Irish music, she worries about what is obscured: the musicians, the shared practice and the conditions that allow it to continue. The technology interests her; the choices made about its use demand scrutiny.
Those relationships between people are central to Glennane’s understanding of community. Composers often spend long periods working alone and are frequently self-employed. Along with representing them professionally, the guild gives them colleagues who understand the work. She sees that need for belonging well beyond music.
Glennane has lived in Arklow for three years and says her family has been welcomed. She is involved with the Arklow Arts Centre and recalls a Culture Night gathering where people shared food, visual art and performances. She also sees community in her sons’ football club and in the connections made through the guild’s European counterparts. These groups overlap, offering people different ways to contribute and find a place.
“My ideal would be for everyone to have some form of community,” she says.
Glennane believes those spaces need to be open to people arriving in Ireland, whether their shared interest is sport, music, art or something else. She also resists an easy division between online and offline life. Her sons spend time talking to friends from other parts of the country while gaming, and she recognises those friendships as part of their world. She hopes young people can have those connections alongside opportunities to meet, play and create in person.
Covid
Her second song choice comes from a period when that in-person contact was sharply restricted. During the Covid lockdown, her husband, Rónán Ó Snodaigh, wrote “Tá an tÁdh Liom”. After practising it at home, he sang it for his friend Myles O’Reilly, who recorded him and added an electronic accompaniment. The song eventually became a single. Glennane calls it tender and says its feeling reaches listeners whether or not they speak Irish.
She previously worked with Ó Snodaigh’s band Kíla and travelled with them to festivals, enjoying music by band members piper James Mahon, guitarist Seannan Brennan, bass Brian Hogan and drums Dave Hingerty. Ronan is joined by his two brothers Colm and Rossa. Hearing instruments and traditions from many parts of the world deepened her sense that Irish music is both distinct and connected to other cultures. It is made and renewed by people coming together. That thought also shapes her choice of a joyful Kíla tune, Yaka, to close the programme.
Three songs
- “Mandinka” by Sinéad O’Connor. Glennane remembers seeing O’Connor perform it on Top of the Pops as a teenager. The performance gave her a sense of pride and possibility, and she still hears courage in the song.
- “Tá an tÁdh Liom” by Rónán Ó Snodaigh and Myles O’Reilly. Written during lockdown, it is a tender song whose emotion, Glennane says, needs no translation.
- “Yaka” by Kíla. Glennane chose its energy and mischief to finish the show with the sound of musicians enjoying what they make together.
Three questions
What would you change about your life?
Glennane says fear can occupy more of her thoughts than she would like, from everyday worries to the possibility of something going wrong. She would like to feel less “paralysed by fear” and more open to what lies ahead. It is something she is thinking about, even if she has not worked out exactly how to change it.
What is your greatest achievement?
“I would say my biggest achievement is yet to come,” she says. Glennane is proud of the guild and the work she has done, but she does not see that as the end of her ambitions.
What would you wish for?
Glennane wishes that mothers in Gaza, Sudan, Israel and elsewhere could have a night when they know their children are safe. She hopes that one night would be followed by many more.
The wish brought an emotional close to the conversation before “Yaka” sent the programme out with joy. Both moments reflect what matters to Glennane: protecting the people around us and making room for them to create, belong and live without fear.
