It's a name seen most frequently as it rolls up in the credits. As a composer and orchestrator for film and television, Fiachra Trench is regarded as one of the very best in the business, working most recently on A Love Divided starring Liam Cunningham and Orla Brady. It's a name which is also spotted regularly in the small print of sleeve notes where he appears in his other musical role, the person responsible for the string arrangements on everything from Have I Told You Lately That I Love You? to Fairytale of New York.
Born in Dublin, Trench first studied chemistry at Trinity but later pursued his musical ideas at the Royal Irish Academy. In 1962 he won first prize for composition at the Feis Ceoil and the following year he left to continue his studies in the United States attending the Universities of Georgia and Cincinnati.
In 1967 he moved to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and returned to live and work in Ireland only in 1991. Now living in Wicklow and working on the next Van Morrison record, he explains some of the many strings to his bow.
"Both my parents were keen amateur musicians and, for me, it must have begun with me listening to their collection of 78s. I don't know which records I'd single out because they had a reasonably eclectic mix, but there would have been Mendelssohn, Bach and Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony. There was also some traditional music like The Real Old Mountain Dew and The Cow that Ate The Piper and, of course, the songs that were hits when they got married like Number 10 Lullaby Lane. So I can thank my parents for the fact that they weren't musical snobs. That gave me licence to enjoy different types of music."
In the Trench household music was seen as both enriching and entertaining. His mother was to be his first instructor and a certain talent as a pianist was evident even then. Composition was another matter entirely, however, and, while Trench himself cannot recall the initial impulse to compose, it was a teacher called Eric de Courcey who nurtured his first efforts. Formal classical education apart, however, there were also other influences in the air which were to prove equally invaluable in that unknown career which lay ahead.
"I was aware of the pop hits of the day - Johnny Ray and Guy Mitchell and so forth. But then when I discovered jazz, that pushed a lot of other things aside. I didn't notice traditional Irish music so much, but only stumbled across it seriously much later on.
"Having said that, the first live musical experience was seeing the then Radio Eireann Symphony Orchestra when I was at boarding school in Waterford, and again it was Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony. To hear an orchestra live was such an overwhelming thing."
Trench sees himself as wearing two distinct hats in his current musical career. The first is that of composer, orchestrator and conductor for film and television. The second is that of "sweetener", the string arranger who "sweetens" the work of others.
In both scenarios, however, the work is externally generated and Trench must work to the very specific requirements of the job in hand - something quite far from the notion of the composer at work entirely alone and creating something from within. But for Fiachra Trench, perhaps surprisingly, there is no overwhelming desire to compose in the abstract. It's his primary role to ensure that his music serves its purpose.
"There are people who think I should set time aside to write for myself, as it were, but writing for film and television seems fully satisfying to me. We always have to remind ourselves that you're not just writing for yourself and that the music must serve the film.
"I heard Hans Zimmer talking about the music for The Mission and he said that the only thing he could remember about it was the wonderful music. And he's probably right - there's something wrong when the music is just so good! It would be wrong to come away from the cinema saying `what a wonderful piece of music!' and not know what the film was about."
Given the choice between scoring for films and arranging for records, Trench prefers the former. That said, some of his best known work is as an arranger on records by the Pogues, Van Morrison, the Chieftains, Elvis Costello, Thin Lizzy, Paul McCartney and many more. Indeed, some of the records Trench has worked on have been huge hits, among them Love is All Around which was interminably at number one for the smiling Wet Wet Wet. Trench explains the procedure.
"There are several scenarios here. One is when you're asked to do your own thing whatever you think. The next one is when they give you carte blanche but, when they hear it, they tell you it's not what they want. The third one is when the artist or producer has a very clear idea indeed and tells you.
"I did a track for Paul McCartney, for instance, and he gave me a very clear map of what he wanted. McCartney is not musically literate in the sense of being able to notate, but knew what he wanted right down to which part of the string orchestra might be playing which line. He'd hand it to me and say: right go and make it work - notate it and embellish it or whatever."
Trench chooses Fairytale of New York, one of his personal favourites, as an instance where the members of the Pogues had a very strong idea of what they wanted. He also rates a track he "sweetened" for Mary Coughlan called I Can Dream Can't I? Here he relished the chance to work in a late 1940s American style without being sentimental or lush. Each song, he says, throws up challenges of its own and calls for a different approach.
"I don't know if I can define what I do, but I tend not to do what used to be the pop thing, which was writing elaborate counter-melodies. I tend to build my strings from elements I hear within the track itself. In terms of the chronology, usually the track will be finished in all aspects except for whatever orchestral element I'm being asked to add. So the track has been laid down, the vocal, the backing vocals and so on, although I like to know if I'm working with the actual master vocal or just a guide. With Van, of course, that doesn't occur because he always sings live and that's it. I listen to the tape and decide notionally where the strings might go.
"And then I decide what sort of density it's going to be. I play the tape over and over again, going backwards and forwards over the same passage and maybe sing internal lines and so forth."
Citing Gordon Jenkins as perhaps his favourite arranger, and Bernard Hermann and Ennio Morricone as among his favourite composers for film, Trench still insists in dealing with each discipline separately. The only parallel he draws concerns circumstances where very particular services may be required of him.
"The director might have a problem with a scene in that it may not have the emotional impact that he may have hoped. He'll be looking to you as the composer to help it. Maybe something that can seem maudlin can be given some dignity or maybe something that's not quite emotional enough can be given more. "That's the power of music in cinema. In the world of rock and pop, there could be individual lines in a song that need to be reinforced or need help. Or it could be a need for just general support for the vocal or maybe the piano player didn't quite make the chords and we have a chance to reassert what the chords should be when we put the strings on."
Are there many such occasions where the composer/arranger is called upon to come to the rescue? Maybe even to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear? "Well, sometimes there may be a certain amount of remedial work."