Noel Duggan, who has died aged 73, was a founding member of the band Clannad, who became famous far beyond Irish folk music circles after they wrote the theme music for Harry’s Game, a 1982 Yorkshire Television miniseries set in Belfast during the Troubles. The hymn-like quality of the song contrasted with the violence of the programme’s theme.
The song had an immediate impact, and when it was first played on BBC Radio 1 by the DJ Noel Edmonds, the station was inundated with calls, and he had to play it again. It won Clannad an Ivor Novello award as well as chart success and a television appearance on Top of the Pops: Clannad were the first band to sing in the Irish language on the show.
The members of the band came from the parish of Gweedore in County Donegal and were from the same family. Noel and his identical twin, Pádraig, were the youngest of six children of Aodh and Máire Duggan, who were the headteacher and class teacher, respectively, of the local primary school. Their older sister Máire, known as Baba, was a music teacher who married the publican Leo Brennan. Three of Baba and Leo’s children, Pól, Ciarán and Máire (Moya) Brennan, formed Clannad with Noel and Pádraig: all five were of similar age.
Initially known as Clann As Dobhar (the family from Dore), soon shortened to Clannad, they competed at the 1970 Letterkenny folk festival. They won first prize, which was to record an album for Philips Ireland.
There was an eclectic mixture of musical influences on the band. Baba gave her children a good grounding in music, while Leo’s membership of the Slieve Foy Irish showband exposed the wider family to cèilidh, pop and country music. Pop music of the 1960s influenced Clannad’s distinctive harmonies; closer to home they could hear traditional Irish folk songs. Gweedore (Gaoth Dobhair in Irish) is in the Gaeltacht, the Irish-speaking area of north-west Donegal, and it was Noel and Pádraig’s mother who encouraged the band to sing in Irish.
Noel’s influences also extended to the new wave English folk bands such as Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention and, especially, Pentangle, whose gentle jazz-infused style with guitars and double bass accompaniment were an early inspiration for Clannad. Noel had taken piano lessons as a boy but, looking for something more modern, turned to the guitar, becoming the band’s lead guitarist.
While on the lookout for traditional songs, the Duggans and Brennans visited older members of the community, who would sing songs into Clannad’s tape recorder and tell them “go now and sing it your own way”, which they did.
Their first and eponymous album, released in 1973, featured songs in Irish and English, mainly traditional but also including Liza, written by Pádraig and Pól and sung in Irish, a pop song, according to Pádraig, with influences from the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Two German music promoters visited Leo Brennan’s bar and signed them for a tour of Germany, its success encouraging them to turn professional.
Gradually Clannad’s style and repertoire changed, with fewer traditional songs and more songs they wrote themselves, some in Irish. The ethereal and mystical singing style that became the band’s trademark was heard on the song Mhòrag’s Na Horò Gheallaidh on their 1981 album Fuaim and this caught the attention of the producers of Harry’s Game. After Theme from Harry’s Game had been released as a single, it was included on the 1983 album Magical Ring, which Noel regarded as the crossroads between the old and new Clannad sound.
Moya’s voice had an otherworldly quality which, combined with electric instrumentation and the use of a synthesiser, placed the band at the forefront of new-age and Celtic music. Another Brennan sibling, Eithne, better known as Enya, joined the band briefly before pursuing a highly successful solo career.
Following Harry’s Game, Clannad provided the soundtrack for the 26-episode television series Robin of Sherwood, which earned them a Bafta; a selection of the music appeared on the album, Legend (1984). Their next album, Macalla (1986), included Bono, lead singer of U2, singing on In a Lifetime. When the album Anam was released in the US, in 1992, it included Harry’s Theme, which was featured in the film Patriot Games, and then in a TV advert for Volkswagen. There were reportedly more inquiries about the music than for the cars. The album entered the Billboard charts and established the band in the US.
The Brennan siblings wrote most of the new songs, but Noel contributed Sunset Dreams for the album Banba (1993), Trail of Tears, about the plight of Native Americans, for Lore (1996), and The Bridge of Tears, about the pain of emigration, for the Grammy-winning album Landmarks (1997).
The band then took a long break, and in 2005 the twins released Rubicon, an album of their own songs, including a new version of Liza. Noel related that his songwriting was inspired by the Donegal landscape, as well as Irish phrases and sayings from an older generation. He wrote much of the music, while Pádraig wrote the lyrics. Noel and Pádraig also joined Norland Wind, a multinational band led by the Clannad fan Thomas Loefke, which toured Europe.
Clannad returned in 2007 with a concert at Celtic Connections in Glasgow, further international touring and a new album, Nádúr, in 2013. Recently, the band had resumed a farewell tour begun in 2020 but interrupted by Covid, with the final concert scheduled to take place in Dublin in December.
Pádraig died in 2016. Noel is survived by Baba and his brothers Eoin and Columba.
• Noel Duggan, folk musician, born 23 January 1949; died 15 October 2022
• This article was amended on 23 October 2022, to change mentions of “Gaelic”, in reference to language, to “Irish”.
