Anúna

Anúna (stylized in all caps) is a vocal ensemble formed in Ireland in 1987 by Irish composer Michael McGlynn under the name An Uaithne. Taking the current name in 1991, the group has recorded 18 albums and achieved a high level of international success, including a significant role in Riverdance from 1994 to 1996. Almost all of their repertoire is composed or arranged by McGlynn. Despite having been based in Ireland since their foundation and providing training to many Irish singers, McGlynn announced in December 2022 that the group would cease public performance in Ireland, while continuing in Northern Ireland and beyond.

The original name of the group, An Uaithne, "is the collective description for the three ancient forms of Irish music[...] the Goltraí (song of lament), Geantraí (song of joy) and Suantraí (the lullaby)". McGlynn reconstructed and arranged a substantial amount of early and medieval Irish music, as well as writing original pieces. Anúna do not work with a conductor in performance, and move throughout the venue at different points in concert. Their standard line-up is 12 to 14 singers from a pool of 25 to 30.

McGlynn has stated: "My interest in traditional song stemmed from my schooldays in Coláiste na Rinne (Ring College) in Dungarvan, and I also felt a need to explore and communicate my enthusiasm for medieval music, most particularly Irish medieval music, to the general public. The eclectic repertoire that characterises the music of Anúna was born in this way". McGlynn re-set and rearranged historical texts and reconstructions of medieval Irish music. These included the 12th-century pieces "Dicant Nunc" and "Cormacus Scripsit", both of which come from Irish manuscripts and featured in the repertoire of An Uaithne. Other reconstructions (including "Miserere Miseris" from the Dublin Troper and "Quem Queritis" from The Dublin Play) continue to feature in the repertoire of Anúna. McGlynn has said: "I think that one of the purposes of Anúna has been to open the door of obscurity to some of the many medieval pieces that we've recorded".

An Uaithne featured a number of traditional music arrangements done by McGlynn as part of their repertoire. He has stated: "One of the misapprehensions about my music is that I am not actually concerned with saving Irish traditional music; I am not a traditionalist. The only exposure I had [to traditional Irish song] was during my year at Coláiste na Rinne in Dún Garbhán. The songs that I set are not from a specific collection; they are more impressions of the songs I remembered." McGlynn also created new compositions that could be perceived as arrangements of Irish songs but were, in fact, new melodies composed to traditional texts. These works are not arrangements and they became a feature of An Uaithne's repertoire and continue to be part of the Anúna canon. McGlynn has stated: "People just assume that I have just found a “living” version. In fact I have done what has made solo traditional music so viable: I have created a new version. I take the songs and reinterpret them in a new way. My priority is always to create a choral version that works."

According to Stephen Eddins at AllMusic, "[...] with the intent that it would unite the discipline of classical choral singing with the unaffected spontaneity typical of Irish folk singing." McGlynn supports this in his blog:

I can now hear two types of singer on the recording. There are large, plummy voices favoured by the classically trained singers I had gathered around me for An Uaithne, but now I can hear the “others” – early music singers, traditional singers and untrained singers. There is a fight going on. The performances are rough, but hugely energetic. Many of the more classical singers or choral groupies are stuck to the inadequately learned sheet music, while the new people are singing without music and without affectation.

The genesis of the choir's vocal sound derives from a number of different sources including Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, although he has stated that Anúna are not an expression of their culture in the same way as the Bulgarian choir because, when creating Anúna, there was no point in his pretending that there had been a culture of part-singing in Ireland. McGlynn has stated: "What I have done is to try to always create an accessibility using the concept of fragility in the voice to allow the audience to access music that otherwise they might find overtly and harmonically complex or technically demanding to listen to."

Once a group of classically trained singers, Anúna in the early 1990s began to include untrained singers with experience in non-classical music genres thus achieving the more natural timbre that McGlynn was seeking. "This is the 'Anúna' sound – powerful and fragile, immediate and human. When I developed it, it was almost as a protest against the artificial nature of choral groups I had been part of, where singers appeared to sing for themselves, never as a genuine unit and never for the audience."