Instrumentalising Folk Song explores the idea of the musical setting of language in, perhaps, its purest humanistic form. The works presented use Irish folk song as a basis for three very different kinds of composition. Folk song has played an important role throughout classical music history; most overtly in the Romantic-era Russian, Czech and Hungarian folk melodies in works by Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Bartok, respectively; but also had earlier influences, such as Beethoven's little known 179 settings of Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English for voice(s) and piano trio, and Mozart's 12 variations on the French folk song Ah, Vous Dirai je Maman, known in English as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. On the subject of folk music, Béla Bartók writes, "peasant music is the outcome of changes wrought by a natural force whose operation is unconscious; it is impulsively created by a community of men who have had no schooling... the single tunes – are so many examples of high artistic perfection. In their small way, they are as perfect as the grandest masterpieces of musical art. They are, indeed, classical models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed... in the very best possible way, in the briefest possible form and with the simplest of means."

While these "perfect" songs, are in some ways know to every person on the street, their origins, history and exactness are often highly illusive, predominantly due to the fact that folk song is passed on through an oral tradition. John Larchet's documentation of Irish Airs through his instrumentation for violin and piano, reinvents the original material through lush romantic harmonisation. As Director of Music at the Abbey Theatre from 1907 to 1934, Larchet worked with many of Ireland's leading literary figures, and he was an influential teaching figure as professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

Sebastian Adams' new work for piano trio takes every letter of an Irish folk song (whose name remains a secret!), and wrings it through a cipher to create an enormous row of pitches to use as the timeline and seeds for his music. On his new work, he writes:

"Suddenly, it became clear to me that this pitch-based structure could be overlaid with others, and this is where Beckett (who was always hovering in the background of my thoughts for this piece) came explicitly into it: a second structure, based on the proportions of the play Happy Days, would define the shape of the piece. Finally, on top of this, two further ideas came from Happy Days, and one from Waiting for Godot: the musical material (which is programmatic, based on the stage directions of Happy Days' first page), the concept of reducing everything to fragments, and the idea that both halves of the piece should be basically the same. This web of connections between language and music is made of components which are on the verge of arbitrariness, but feel exactly right to me, and also seem to fit with the broad but focused aims of this festival. Most importantly, they are like a block of fine marble, a rich quarry from which I am now excavating this piano trio!"

Swiss composer Frank Martin's musical style encompassed French impressionistic tonality, neo-Classical Bach references and a later interest in Schoenberg's twelve-tone techniques. Martin'sTrio sur des mélodies populaires irlandaises ​did not begin its life well. The commission was withdrawn seemingly due to the commissioner finding little that was recognisably Irish in the new work. Following this setback, Martin studied collections of Irish folksongs at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and included a number of authentic traditional Irish melodies in his new composition. The result is something uniquely engaging – firmly rooted in Irish folk song, yet with a tonal language that is somewhat French.