Patrick Cassidy (composer)

Patrick Cassidy is an Irish orchestral, choral, and film score composer. Early life and education Cassidy was born in Claremorris, County Mayo in Ireland. He received a BSc in applied mathematics from the University of Limerick in 1985 and supported his early compositional activities with a day job as a statistician and technology analyst. Work Cassidy is known for his narrative cantatas – works he has written for orchestra and choir based on Irish mythology – and for the aria “Vide Cor Meum” originally composed for the film Hannibal, directed by Ridley Scott. The libretto for Cassidy’s “Vide Cor Meum” was taken from Dante’s first sonnet in La Vita Nuova. Cassidy’s opera Dante premiered at Theater Hof in Bavaria in 2024 The Children of Lir, released in September 1993, remained at number one in the Irish classical charts for a full year. It was the first cantata written in the Irish language. Other albums include Cruit (arrangements of 17th- and 18th-century Irish harp music with Cassidy as the soloist) and Deirdre of the Sorrows, another cantata in the Irish language, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Tallis Chamber Choir in 1998. In 2004, Immortal Memory was rele