After 25 years of creative and spiritual unfulfilment, Peter Dunphy rediscovered and realised his dream of becoming a composer. Michelle McDonaghreports
For Peter Dunphy, the experience of "burning out" after working as a medical rep for 25 years was a blessing in disguise as it led him to rediscover himself and realise that he was born to be a composer.
Like so many men of his generation, Dunphy's dreams of being a composer were buried under the commitments of being a husband and father and having to work to pay the bills.
However, after 25 years of creative and spiritual unfulfilment, he began to fall apart mentally and emotionally.
"Burnout was the greatest experience of my life because I rediscovered myself. The only time you change your life is when you have nothing to lose. For most people in a career, it costs too much to change the system," he says.
A native of Crosshaven, Co Cork, Dunphy went to boarding school in Rochestown where his skill as a footballer earned him two Munster medals. He went to University College Cork to study dentistry but, after a short period, changed to music.
Although he had already started composing music at this stage, after a year studying music at university, he decided to give it up and take a job as a rep for a pharmaceutical company.
After two years on the road, he went back to study music and even managed to secure a recording contract with Polydor Records, which at the time represented acts of the calibre of the Bee Gees.
He explains: "I couldn't play, sing or write music down but I hired out part of the army band in Dublin, made a record with them and produced it myself.
"It was a pop record called The Penny Man. I performed under the stage name Jacques Raymond."
Despite getting airplay on Radio Luxembourg and being interviewed by Gay Byrne on radio, Dunphy found he did not have the necessary support behind him to continue in what was a very ruthless, commercially driven industry.
He returned to medical repping with the intention of studying music by night and progressing as a serious composer.
Music was in his blood as his grandfather, John Dunphy, was a composer of traditional music who wrote The Dunphy Hornpipe.
While he did enjoy his job as a medical rep in the early years, Dunphy did not find it soul satisfying.
He played tenor sax and clarinet in a jazz band for many years and studied traditional Irish music on the concert flute. He taught his children, Miles and Fleur, to play the concert flute, piano and recorder.
"I eventually started to get tension headaches from the stress of work, but they were easy enough to live with so I just accepted them. Then I began to get pains down my arms and chest and a few months later, I began to suffer vague memory loss.
"My memory started to diminish until I reached the stage where I couldn't remember what I had in my pocket," he says.
At this point, Dunphy was mentally and emotionally shattered and he had no confidence left in himself. He was unable to function in his job without his memory and found even driving stressful. He took medical advice from a psychiatrist and eventually took early retirement on sick leave.
"When you get burnout, you are psychologically shattered and feel completely obsolete in life; you have no role. There were positives and negatives of the burnout though.
"The negative was feeling worthless but the positive was that my ego was crushed so my mind was no longer being controlled by my ego. Also, I rediscovered music," he says.
When he felt well enough, Dunphy went back to studying music, this time to in-depth analysis of the subject. He began to understand that a musical composition is as meticulously planned out as an architect's drawing.
"Take Johann Sebastian Bach's Air on the G String. This three-minute piece contains 26 key changes and, for this reason, one will never tire of the 'Air'. It's so intense. On listening to it, one almost goes into a trance because of the concentration of modulations and it's almost possible to get a glimpse of the promised land before one returns to reality," he enthuses.
Dunphy is at present halfway through his composition of a Latin mass, which he hopes to get a choir to perform and record.
A Christmas song he composed at the age of 18 called Snow on the First Christmas Eve has just been released on CD sung by 87- year-old Gerard Moloney and the award- winning choir, the Crosshaven Singers.
Although he works on his music most days, sometimes getting up at 3am to work on an idea at the piano, Dunphy has to be careful not to overdo things and to avoid stressful situations.
"I now live every day with spiritual fulfilment. When I got burnout and my ego was crushed, I found my true self. I also learnt how to pray quietly every day. Using religion on a daily basis is what true religion is all about.
"The Indian mystics live on a bowl of rice a day and are spiritually fulfilled; what a huge contrast to our society where people are overweight and under spiritualised."
Looking back on his years as a medical rep, Dunphy says now he was "probably as creative as a cow in a field".
"My greatest success as a composer is that I am an absolute failure. My work is commercially valueless so I am free to write what I want, not to suit a market," he says.
My greatest success as a composer is that I am an absolute failure. My work is commercially valueless so I am free to write what I want, not to suit a market