It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our colleague and friend Arthur Sealy, on 22 December 2011. Arthur’s contributions both to the New School in particular and to Irish music education in general were both profound and far-reaching. From the time he first came to us with the idea of a new music appreciation course, The Joy of Classical Music, in Spring 1995, he was not only a font of interesting ideas but had the energy, enthusiasm and commitment to bring them to fruition. From that first course, which ran for six years and introduced hundreds of adults to Western classical music from the Middle Ages to the present day, Arthur went on to develop a comprehensive Leaving Certificate Music programme for the school that included both longer-term courses and a range of shorter courses and workshops, including our Preliminary Course (for students without Junior Cert. Music), our Easter Revision Course and our Pre-Exam Revision Workshop.

In 1998 Arthur developed the idea of Leaving Cert. Music ‘Weekend Workshops’ on the Prescribed Works, core composing and Irish music elements of the exam. The titles of the workshops alone provide an idea of the creative thinking that went into them: ‘The Sprit and the Flesh’ (Bach’s Cantata No. 78), ‘Death and Forbidden Love’ (Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture), ‘Brittle Extremes’ (Barry’s Piano Quartet No. 1), ‘To Live Forever’ (Mercury/Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’), ‘Past Presence’ (Irish music) and ‘Making It Your Own’ (core composing). Presented by the New School, the Weekend Workshops took place over several years, in colleges and arts centres in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Sligo, Waterford, Mullingar and Portlaoise, to combined audiences of over 4000 students and 400 teachers.

It was from the Weekend Workshops that Arthur developed the idea of writing the first Leaving Cert. Music coursebooks in Ireland. The Soundscapes series, published by Waltons in three volumes (The Prescribed Works Group A, The Prescribed Works Group B and Irish Music and Aural Awareness), have since been used by thousands more students and teachers. Always seeking new ways to engage with music students, Arthur also developed the idea of presenting a series of public ‘conversations’ with the composer Raymond Deane about his work Seachanges (with Danse Macabre) at the National Concert Hall and venues in Cork, Limerick, Athlone, Waterford and Kilkenny. These events in turn were attended by over 2000 students and teachers.

And finally, it was from these conversations that Arthur conceived the project of a film about Raymond Deane. Order and disOrder, a 183-minute double DVD, was a massive undertaking and includes extensive conversations between Arthur and Raymond about Raymond’s life, his work in general and Seachanges in particular, and also includes a superb performance of Seachanges by the Concorde Ensemble. Order and disOrder is now used in nearly every secondary school in Ireland.

It is safe to say that Arthur’s work made – and continues to make – an enormous contribution to music education in Ireland. His own life was all too brief, but his impact on the lives of so many young people in this country will continue to spread like ripples on water to encompass untold lives and life stories and the choices made within them, which in turn will spread out to affect other lives and choices, and so on to impossibly distant shores. It is another kind of immortality.

Rest in peace, Arthur.