Marian Ingoldsby [1965]
Struck By a Raindrop [1999]

Performed by the Calathea Quartet
Abbey Presbyterian Church, Dublin
18th January 2026

Struck By a Raindrop was composed during my time in York, where I studied for my PhD under the supervision of Nicola LeFanu. Dating from 1999, It was my first quartet, which was  inspired by an anthology of haiku poetry that I read around that time. The haiku is described as a starting point for a train of thought, which is expressed in an instant and grasped in a moment. 

'Struck by a
raindrop, snail
closes up.'

In the quartet there is a multitude of textures, inspired by  the ideas of raindrops on a shell and the more gruesome fate of the snail, bashed against concrete by a bird. The piece is not programmatic, but full of contrasts, and much of the musical material was the result of sets of hexachords which were randomly manipulated.  The form is loosely ABA, but it follows a principle outlined by Xenakis in an interview which resonated - 'The best solution is....to live with form. That is, one builds it day by day, bit by bit... Music is a kind of organism, it is slow to take shape, like the gestation of babies'. 

The string quartet medium has such a rich history, and at the time of writing, I was heavily influenced by Lutoslawski's famous quartet and the string quartets of Britten, Bartok and Ruth Crawford Seeger.  Note by Marian Ingoldsby

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Dr Marian Ingoldsby is a native of Carrick-on-Suir, Co.Tipperary. She began her composition study with Gerald Barry at University College, Cork, graduating with an MA in Composition and winning the Fleischmann Prize in 1995 for her outstanding contribution to music. In 2000 she graduated with a PhD in Composition from the University of York, having been awarded the first Elizabeth Maconchy Fellowship to study there. She is currently a lecturer in the Department of Creative and Performing Arts in SETU, formerly Waterford Institute of Technology, and is active as composer, pianist and repetiteur.

She has composed in excess of 50 works to date, ranging from choral, piano, vocal, chamber and orchestral, to opera and music theatre. Commissions include an opera by Opera Theatre Company, Hot Food with Strangers (premiered in 1991 in Dublin, and in 1992 at Covent Garden), the NSO, Cork International Choral Festival, the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition, and by the UO who premiered her Heron By the Weir in 2008.

She has written several works for young performers, notably, Lily’s Labyrinth, a children’s opera, Ivan Biddycup’s Ballet, for the Cork Pops Orchestra, a Lyric FM commission for RTE Cor na nOg, entitled This Is The Key, (2004), and her Creative Use of Classroom Singing, widely used by choirs of all age groups. Recent performances include Winter Sun by the RTE Symphony Orchestra, June 2022, music to the film The Reburial of Jackie Brett shown at the Butler Gallery as part of KIlkenny Heritage Week in August 2021, The Light that frightens us for solo piano, premiered by Finghn Collins in Canada and Ireland in 2023, and most recently Parlour Pieces commissioned by Mount Congreve Chamber Music Festival in 2025.