{"id":1306,"date":"2023-01-24T19:45:24","date_gmt":"2023-01-24T19:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.justsheetmusic.com\/blog\/?p=1306"},"modified":"2023-01-24T19:45:24","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T19:45:24","slug":"celebrating-ireland%e2%80%99s-recovery-with-its-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.justsheetmusic.com\/blog\/other\/celebrating-ireland%e2%80%99s-recovery-with-its-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Ireland\u2019s Recovery With Its Music"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Celebrating Ireland\u2019s Recovery With Its Music<\/p><\/div>\n

The best Eurozone economic news in a long time is that which has come out of Ireland in recent weeks. Ireland is well into recovery, the statistics all tell us, and the rating agency Fitch has upgraded the outlook on its sovereign bonds from negative to stable.<\/p>\n

The website of the U.S. news network CNN ran the above photo of some cheerful Irish folk when it noted this turnaround. They are clearly making music and celebrating, although I don\u2019t know if CNN was trying to tell us that these young happy people are celebrating a decision by Fitch!<\/p>\n

\"\"Certainly they are making and enjoying music and the occasion gives us all the excuse we need to write about some of Irish history\u2019s outstanding composers. The selection is my own, and entirely arbitrary, displaying as it does my personal bias for High Romanticism in music.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Stevenson and Moore<\/h3>\n

\"\"The composer John Stevenson<\/strong> (1761 \u2013 1833) and the poet\/lyricist Thomas Moore<\/strong> (1779-1852) together published \u201cIrish Melodies\u201d in 1808. Europe was deep into the Romantic era already. Amongst the men of letters to whom the R-word is most regularly applied: William Blake turned 51 in 1808, and Lord Byron turned twenty.<\/p>\n

But our concern is with music, and it is important that Thomas Moore was also known as \u201cAnacreon\u201d Moore, because he translated the works of a Greek bard of that name. In his work with Stevenson, as with that translation, Moore was playing to a quintessential Romantic impulse \u2013 the rediscovery of the real (or allegedly) buried wisdom of the past, especially of a folkish past.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Hayley Westenra<\/p><\/div>\n

The Stevenson\/Moore melodies, adaptations of folk tunes as the title of the book suggests, were not met with universal praise. Some critics thought they had done too much adaptation, depriving the folk tunes of their folksiness.<\/p>\n

William Hazlitt in particular said that they had transformed \u201cthe wild harp of Erin into a musical snuff-box.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, from a perspective two centuries later that sounds like carping. Why listen to grumpy old Hazlitt, anyway, when we can listen to Hayley Westenra and M\u00e9av N\u00ed Mhaolchatha singing one of the songs in the Stevenson\/Moore collection, \u201cThe Last Rose of Summer\u201d?<\/a><\/p>\n

Nocturnes and Operas<\/h3>\n

John Field<\/strong>, (1782-1837) another Irish musician of the early Romantic period, in sometimes credited with the creation of the Nocturne<\/a> <\/em>as a musical genre. <\/em> Field published his first Nocturne in 1812. The use of that word to refer to a particular sort of piano solo \u2013 generally one of a dreamy character– only developed slowly. Sometimes Field referred to works of this style as Nocturnes, sometimes not. It was of course Frederic Francois Chopin<\/a> who later perfected the style.<\/p>\n

But here is a link to Field\u2019s first Nocture, arguably the start of the form itself, as performed by Edith Lucey<\/a> (who has generously posted it for us.) Ms. Lucey is excessively apologetic there about her performance. She does a lovely job, and conveys to us exactly why such music came to be known by the, uh, nocturnal name is has. Here is the sheet music<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Michael W. Balfe<\/strong>, (1808-1870) composed operas, for example \u201cThe Bohemian Girl\u201d (1843). This opera featured the popular aria, \u201cI Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Balfe is also responsible for \u201cThe Rose of Castille,\u201d (sometimes spelt \u201cCastile\u201d) in which his music complements an English-language libretto by Augustus Harris and Edmund Falconer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Rose\u201d was composed and premiered in 1857, at the Lyceum Theatre, in London.<\/p>\n

\"\"Its slender plot involves a man claiming to be a simple muleteer, but who (the other characters suspect at once) may well be someone much more exalted in social standing. Here is the tenor\u2019s set piece, \u201cTwas Rank and Fame,\u201d<\/a> as sung by Jerry Hadley.<\/a> The Rose of Castille<\/em> also involves the rousing bacchanal, \u201cWine, wine, the magician thou art,\u201d and a ballad sung in a palace, \u201cOf Girlhood\u2019s Happy Days I dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

A half century later, James Joyce would pun on the name of this opera in his masterpiece, Ulysses<\/em>. His character Lenehan asks, \u201cWhat opera resembles a railroad line,\u201d and then answers \u201cThe Rose of Castille.\u201d [Rows of cast steel.]<\/p>\n

William Vincent Wallace<\/strong>, (1812-1865), a native of Waterford, Ireland, emigrated to Australia in 1835, and made his great impact there, like Balfe as a composer of operas. With his wife and his sister, (who had emigrated from Ireland with him) he opened the first school of music in Australia\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\"\"As a composer, he is best remembered for the opera Maritana, <\/em>created for a libretto by Edward Fitzball. <\/em>Among all the librettists of all the operas in the history of the world, I have to say, my favorite surname is this: \u201cFitzball.\u201d Also, how is this for a portrait, lovers of steampunk? <\/em><\/p>\n

Here you can hear two remarkable arias<\/a> from that opera: There is a Flower that Bloometh<\/em>, and Let Me Like a Soldier Fall.<\/em><\/p>\n

So as not to convey the misimpression that I live entirely in the 19th<\/sup> century, I present for your attention the work of an Irish songwriter alive and working as I write these words, Shay Healy, <\/strong>creator of \u201cWhat\u2019s Another Year,\u201d the song that won the 1980 Eurovision Song Contest. Here is Johnny Logan\u2019s<\/a> performance of that tune.<\/p>\n

More recently, Healy is behind a musical, The Wire Men<\/strong>, that premiered in Dublin\u2019s Gaiety Theatre in 2005,<\/a> giving musical and dramatic shape to the introduction of electricity in County Mayo in the 1950s.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

Shay Healy<\/p><\/div>\n

The musical plays up the preservationist\/progressivist conflict one might expect given such a theme, a conflict present no less among those of us who contemplate the history of music than among those who see wires being strung into their village for the first time by a rural electrification project.<\/p>\n

In cold truth there will always be a balancing act \u2013 the task of openness and the task of preservation will always make their competing claims. If there is any country that gets the balance right more often than does Ireland, I could not for the life of me name it. With that in mind, let\u2019s return to 1843 for a rousing conclusion.<\/p>\n

I Dreamt I Dwelt.<\/small>
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