Composer Donnacha Dennehy writes music inflected by the overtone harmonies of the French spectralists and the propulsive rhythms of American minimalism, a combination resulting in something all his own. It’s a captivating blend that perceives the hypnotic thread uniting two genres often considered at odds (and whose practitioners were frequently dismissive of one another). I talked to Dennehy, an engaging and self-deprecating speaker, by phone from his home in Princeton, New Jersey—where he’s a professor of music—about revision, the Irish view of the classical canon, and how the fact of death animates his art.
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