IrishMusicInfo
The Sunday Tribune Weekly Traditional Music Column by Fintan Vallely
990221
The sheet music of Thomas Moore's Last Rose of Summer sold 1.5 million copies in the US during the last century. His 'Irish Melodies' appeared in ten volumes from 1808 on, and were translated into every European language. Of their 124 songs, 41 used pre-18th century Irish airs, many taken from the material published by Edward Bunting following the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792. Yet his work is generally decried as 'parlour' music, the result of its phenomenal uptake by the polite society of early 19th century Britain wherein he lived, and it is not regarded as being of any significance in Traditional music's society. American tenor James Flannery's book Dear Harp of my Country questions all this and claims Moore as an heir to bardic tradition. In a beautiful production with illustrations and two CDs he sings thirty nine of the lyricist's pieces set to Janet Harbison's harp, and a substantial text places Moore in his political times. Born in 1779 of a Kerry father who was an associate of Napper Tandy, and raised in a period which had initiated the political significance of 'Irish Studies' by setting up the Royal Irish Academy, Moore was educated at Trinity where his closest friends Robert Emmet and music collector Henry Hudson were members of the United Irishmen. Such associations explain the nationalistic zeal of Moore's songs, which Flannery explains could paradoxically also be absorbed by the British upper classes because, in the manner of modern Popular music, they could strongly appeal to individual angst and personal dissatisfaction. This too in an era where Robert Burns had 'noble savage' appeal, and Celticism had become a curiosity. Flannery holds that Moore thus opened up British minds to justice for Ireland, and, too, that the later Gaelic Revival was critically informed by the huge empathy which the sentiment of his songs enjoyed in Ireland. One can dispute the unexplained contention that the 1792 Belfast Harp Festival "contained seeds of division that have continued to mar the cultural development of Ireland to the present day". And one may wonder why the author approves of Moore's support for the United Irishmen, yet dismisses the 1842 Young Irelanders' song, and denounces the 1893 Gaelic League, for both of which he introduces the term 'cultural nationalism', the 'dirty' word of modern political complacency. Nor does he reference either the extant 19th century song in the Irish language, or the thoroughly-participated-in indigenouis music received directly in an oral tradition. But even if Flannery shops with upper-class snobbery and two centuries of political hindsight, the central importance of this book is not diminished. For by placing Moore in a detailed historical setting it can clarify him as a Popular (and influential) icon, an artistic lyricist for whom political idealism and Romanticism were also his media. In print and on disc it makes available for the first time a large representative chunk of his repertoire. And at £16 it is considerably cheaper than the original volume of the ten which in 1808 cost fifteen shillings, (perhaps three hundred pounds today?).
İFintan Vallely, IrishMusicInfo.com
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