Derek Bell was a pianist, oboist, musicologist, harpsichordist, composer, arranger, and conductor. He was best known as the long-standing harpist in The Chieftains between 1974 to his death in 2002, contributing to thirty-five albums with his various musical abilities. However, he was also an accomplished classical musician; occupying a unique position as both an Irish classical and traditional composer.

The opportunity to view and list his manuscripts piqued my interest as a classical musician as I was previously unaware of his achievements; attending the Royal College of Music in London and performing with the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra. Throughout this blog, I want to discuss some of his accomplishments outside of The Chieftains, as well as discussing my work at ITMA with his manuscripts and his Symphony No. 2 in D major. But first, I will provide some biographical information.

Bell was born George Derek Fleetwood Bell on 21st October 1935 in Belfast. He began studying the piano at nine years of age where it soon became apparent he was a young virtuoso. At twelve years of age, he composed his first piano concerto. His music teacher nurtured his talent and encouraged him to learn the oboe for the school orchestra.

When he was fifteen years old, he decided to become a professional musician. He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1951 and continued to receive classical training in piano and oboe, graduating from his studies in 1957. After completing a BMus in Trinity College, Dublin, Bell travelled around the world; appearing as a pianist with various symphony orchestras and performing principal oboe, horn and piano with the American Wind Symphony Orchestra in Pittsburgh.

What is fascinating about Bell was his relatively late adoption of the harp; only beginning to learn the instrument in his thirties. By the 1960s, he had become the manager of the Belfast Symphony Orchestra, through which he was introduced to the harp. He would later become proficient at the pedal harp, neo-Celtic harp, and wire-strung Irish-Bardic harp. He was appointed principal harpist and second oboist in the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra in 1965 and appointed Professor of Harp and Irish Music at the Academy of Music in Belfast in 1970.

Bell first met and performed with The Chieftains in 1972, performing Carolan’s Concerto with the BBC NI Orchestra for a televised St Patrick’s Day special. Chieftains’ leader Paddy Moloney was impressed with how the harp blended with the group’s sound and invited Bell to contribute to their 1973 album The Chieftains 4. He officially joined the group in 1974, regularly performing the Irish harp, oboe and tiompán (the Irish hammered dulcimer). He was affectionately known as ‘Ding Dong Bell’ by Moloney and gained a reputation of being an eccentric, never performing without a suit and colourful tie!

In the early years, Bell continued to perform in the BBC NI Orchestra where a clear divide between classical and traditional worlds existed. While requesting permission to travel with The Chieftains on a US tour, the BBC Head of Music described Bell as ‘running around with a tatty folk group’, causing him to resign from the orchestra in 1976.

This quote was taken from an interview with Derek Bell from the Late Late Show’s Tribute to The Chieftains, available on YouTube.

Bell also performed and recorded much of Carolan’s work, releasing several solo harp albums which reintroduced Carolan’s melodies to a new generation. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to traditional music in 2000. Derek Bell died suddenly following surgery in Phoenix, Arizona on 17th October 2002, aged sixty-six.

In October 2020, ITMA was awarded funding by the Heritage Council to re-house, preserve and enable public access to personal multimedia archives of several musicians under the project name Boscaí Ceoil: Preserving the legacy of traditional musicians. This funding enabled ITMA to purchase specialised archival equipment including acid-free archival boxes, binders, folders, and labels, to prevent deterioration and ensure documents and artefacts are preserved. ITMA Archivist Maeve Gebruers has written a detailed summary of the archival process which you can read more about here.

In 2015, a collection of Bell’s possessions was donated to ITMA by his widow Stefanie. This collection contains sound recordings, printed items, photographs, personal papers, artefacts, and various musical instruments, which Bell acquired during his life. The various music manuscripts comprise of original arrangements for The Chieftains and guest artists, and original traditional and classical compositions. These manuscripts had been categorised in 2016 by Stint graduate Casey Burgess and are contained across thirty-four A3 binders.

While ITMA had already sorted and catalogued the majority of Bell’s manuscript collection while creating box-lists in an Excel spreadsheet, his classical compositions had not yet been listed. My task was to identify the material held and complete the box-list for the four boxes housing these manuscripts, compiling a detailed inventory for each A3 binder.

When searching through these boxes, I was required to note titles, dedications and collaborators (if applicable), instrumentation, completion date if indicated, page length and additional content or comments on the manuscripts. This would help me to gather information on Bell for my personal research while providing vital information for ITMA, for when they will input each manuscript into their catalogue database. Bell was thankfully rather thorough with details on his title pages which made this process less difficult!

During his life, Bell composed two symphonies, four piano sonatas, three concertos for piano and orchestra, several études (studies) and various small scale works for oboe, violin and clarinet. Several manuscripts date from the early to late 1950s, composed while Bell was a student attending the Royal College of Music. I was surprised to find that he did not compose much classical material for the harp, most likely reserving these arrangements for his work with The Chieftains, which feature elsewhere in the collection. A working list of his manuscripts available through ITMA is available here.

The most significant work available across the collection, comprising of various manuscripts, recordings and ephemera, is Bell’s Symphony No.2 in D major ‘The Violet Flame; Compté de St Germain’, completed in 1990. The symphony was composed for large symphony orchestra, with harp obbligato (indicating the harp as an essential instrument), piano, organ and wordless SATB chorus.

The symphony comprises of five movements: “Invocation of the Violet Flame and the Golden Ray”, “Invocation of Pan, the God of Nature (Arabesques Étheriques)”, “Poeme d’Amour Cosmique”, “Danza Festiva” and “Procession to Shambhalla”. Bell was commissioned to compose the work by the Colchester Chamber Orchestra, an independent orchestra based in Essex.

Throughout the manuscripts, I found several parts for the Symphony, including individual parts for the solo instruments (piano, organ and harp) and multiple copies of SATB parts. I also found sketch material, including a sketch containing an early draft of the ‘Violet flame’ theme and a revised piano part. However, what is most valuable is three manuscript books for the full orchestral score, containing several movements each. I chose to digitise an excerpt from Book I, including the title page and first page, which you can view below.

The symphony received its official premiere on 7^th May 1990 at St. Boltoph’s Church Colchester, performed by the Colchester Chamber Orchestra and Bell featuring as harp soloist. While exploring the wider Derek Bell Collection, I found the original concert programme from its premiere which I chose to digitise. I also found a concert programme from a later August 1991 performance at Ulster Hall, Belfast featuring the Northern Ireland Symphony Orchestra.

These programmes provide extra information on Bell’s spiritual inspirations for the work, meeting a guide who allowed him to quote three mantramistic melodies. As we can see from Bell’s own words written on the manuscript title page:

Bell’s original typewritten programme notes are also available within the collection. These notes would later be redrafted before their inclusion in the printed concert programmes. Here you can see his annotations; correcting spelling errors, adding punctuation and omitting words, as well as his wish for the work to be easily accessible to all.

Through completing this project, I hope I have been able to compile a more complete chronology of Bell’s various compositions, as well as shed a light on his interesting double life as both a classical and traditional musician. I want to thank ITMA for the opportunity to view these wonderful handwritten manuscripts and documents to discover Derek Bell as a composer, as well as understand him outside of The Chieftains.

With thanks to ITMA Archivist, Maeve Gebruers, ITMA Librarian, Treasa Harkin, Casey Burgess (who categorised the original manuscript collection) and Stephanie Ford, MU Maynooth.

This blog was created in association the Department of Music at Maynooth University. Students undertook a five week placement as part of their course and gained experience in research and web publishing.