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AN IRISH SONGBOOK r Avenging and Bright arr. Benjamin Britten [1.47] t Oh Men from the Fields arr. Herbert Hughes [3.02] y St Ita’s Vision Samuel Barber [3.25] 1 The Cloths of Heaven Thomas Dunhill [3.08] u The Minstrel Boy arr. Benjamin Britten [2.07] 2 Solitary Hotel Samuel Barber [2.41] i Tutto è Sciolto John Ireland [2.01] 3 Lean out of the Window (Goldenhair) Frank Bridge [1.47] o The Stranger’s Grave Herbert Hamilton Harty [3.45] 4 Bid adieu arr. Edmund Pendleton [3.08] p Sail on, sail on arr. Benjamin Britten [3.00] 5 The Roving Dingle Boy arr. E.J. Moeran [2.15] a The Desire for Hermitage Samuel Barber [3.24] 6 To Eire Arnold Bax [4.19] s At the mid hour of night arr. Benjamin Britten [2.43] 7 The Last Rose of Summer arr. Benjamin Britten [4.20] d The Salley Gardens arr. Benjamin Britten [2.52] 8 The Tinker’s Daughter arr. E.J. Moeran [1.39] 9 The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs John Cage [2.50] Total timings: [62.34] 0 Flood Herbert Howells [1.52] q Bahnhofstrasse C.W. Orr [2.28] w Marry Me Now arr. Herbert Hughes [1.26] AILISH TYNAN SOPRANO e The Lost Lover arr. E.J. Moeran [2.34] IAIN BURNSIDE PIANO www.signumrecords.com AN IRISH SONGBOOK Butler Yeats, who in 1898, alongside Lady composers in his teaching at London’s Royal that which has been lost’. The restoration Gregory and Edward Martyn, founded the Irish College of Music. Arthur Benjamin recalled his of national folklore and, musically, folksong, At the end of the nineteenth century there was Literary Theatre, for which Yeats wrote a series first lesson with Stanford in 1911: ‘Hardly was are therefore key elements of that spirit and a a growing movement in Ireland which sought of plays based upon Irish mythology, notably I inside the room when Stanford pointed a finger basis for the symbolism they wrought. to forge a sense of national identity; a sense around the legendary hero, Cuchulain. at me and said: “And what d’ye think of Home of self that had become diminished during Rule, me bhoy”’. Benjamin, fresh from Australia, Rather than merely introducing this mysticism centuries of English rule. In 1882 a National Ireland was not alone in its renaissance, similar knew nothing of it and found himself being into their work, as many composers did, a few Literary Society was formed, which aimed to revivals were taking place in England also, admonished: ‘Well, go home and learn about composers became thoroughly engrossed in publicise the literature and folklore of Ireland. with the rediscovery of Elizabethan and Tudor it, and ye’ll be a better composer’. This this world. In his obituary of E.J. (‘Jack’) Moeran, Two years later the Gaelic Athletic Association literature, drama and music, and a great deal encouragement, such as it was, wasn’t perhaps Arnold Bax observes that ‘During his first thirty appeared, reviving the games that were seen as of activity in the collecting of folksong. As in practised as deeply as might be by Stanford years he was an Englishman and a diligent an intrinsic feature of Irish culture; and in 1893 Ireland, this brought a generation of writers himself. Whilst he set numerous Irish poets collector of East Anglian folk tunes, whilst for the Gaelic League was convened, whose objective and composers who sought to create a purely and provided accompaniments for many Irish the remainder of his days he was almost was in part the revival of the Irish language, English identity in the arts, notably breaking folksongs, notably producing an edition of exclusively Irish’. The son of an Irish priest which was in apparently terminal decline. away from the dominant Teutonicism in Moore’s Irish Melodies in 1895, Arnold Bax serving in Norfolk at the time of Moeran’s music. However, during the process the Celtic accused him of ‘never penetrat[ing] to within birth, during the last two decades of his life Earlier in the nineteenth century, antiquarians revivalism of the Irish seeped eastwards over a thousand miles of the Hidden Ireland’. His Jack returned to Ireland regularly, seeking Edward Bunting and George Petrie had begun the Welsh Marches and into the minds of the were domestic pieces, in thrall to the German musical inspiration and solace in Kenmare to gather and publish collections of Irish Airs. English. This happened to such an extent that tradition, which didn’t touch upon the mysticism and its surrounding landscape, where he had During this time Thomas Moore also published it is notable that on this album only two of the found in the poetry by those English composers been accepted as a native by the local people. his collections of Irish Melodies, in which he composers and arrangers represented are in on the Celtic fringe. Moeran observed that he found much similarity provided words to be sung to many Irish Airs fact Irish: Hamilton Harty and Herbert Hughes, between the Norfolk folksong he collected in which had lost their original Gaelic texts. who were born in what in 1921 became Northern Christopher Palmer has attempted to define the first half of his life and that he later However, in spite of this musical activity it Ireland. The remainder are English and American. this deeper Celticism, writing that ‘what lies at collected in County Kerry, the two counties seems to be the literary movement that lead to the root of Celtic mysticism and wonder is the being connected through the Yarmouth fishermen the emergence of a distinctly Celtic impulse. Some of this might, at least in part, be due sense of a great loss. [To those] possessed of who fished Irish waters and went ashore to the work of the Dublin born composer Sir the Celtic spirit, the material universe appears in poor weather. The three arrangements by One of the founder members of the 1882 Charles Stanford, whose greatest contribution a symbol of a lost kingdom; and art is an Moeran, The Roving Dingle Boy, The Tinker’s National Literary Society was the poet William to music was in the nurturing of so many incantation which can restore to a certain extent Daughter and the haunting setting of The - 4 - - 5 - Lost Lover, are taken from a set of seven Songs Benjamin Britten made numerous folksong Yeats noted that the poem was an ‘attempt to a friendship perhaps cemented in music. For a from County Kerry. They were arranged towards arrangements, many of which were written for reconstruct an old song from three lines time Joyce performed as a solo tenor, notably the end of his life, whilst staying with a tinker inclusion in recitals given with Peter Pears. imperfectly remembered by an old peasant performing Hughes’s arrangement of Down by family in County Kerry, although he had However, Britten’s approach to the songs is far woman in the village of Ballysodare, Sligo, who the Salley Gardens in 1904, and is known to collected them over a number of years from from the simple, modal approach adopted by often sings them to herself’. Those few lines have admired Hughes’s Cradle Song (‘Oh men around that county. some arrangers. He breathes an extraordinary are now known to come from an Anglo-Irish from the Fields’), from the 1913 set of Songs life into the songs with often economical, highly Ballad, The Rambling Boys of Pleasure. However, of Connacht to words by Padraic Colum. Bid Moeran’s Symphony in G (1924-37) is seen by characterful accompaniments that provide Yeats’s poem has in itself become established Adieu is based on a poem from Joyce’s Chamber some as a work that bridges his Anglo-Irish a striking canvas against which the song is as a folksong, paired with the Ulster air The Music (1907), also with an air by Joyce, for transition, spiritually. The writing of this work somehow cast into sharper relief than might Maids of Mourne Shore. which American composer Edmund Pendleton was encouraged by Hamilton Harty, to whom be with a plainer setting. His fourth published provided the accompaniment; a song that with it is dedicated. Harty is represented here with volume of arrangements is dedicated to songs This pairing of words and music was first made a tender eroticism marks the transition into The Stranger’s Grave, a setting of a poem by from Moore’s Irish Melodies; from the well by Herbert Hughes, as published in his first womanhood. Frank Bridge’s selection from Emily Lawless that commemorates a drowned known Last Rose of Summer, its unsettling volume of Irish Country Songs in 1909. Hughes Chamber Music, Goldenhair, drew from him man buried with three unbaptised babies on accompaniment heightening its evocation of was an important figure in Irish folksong, and a wonderfully fluid and uncomplicated setting, Inishmaan – one of the Aran Islands off the loneliness, to the bell-like tones of At the mid was one of the founder members of the Irish composed in 1925. coast of Galway that also inspired the work of hour of night and the purposefulness of Avenging Folksong Society in 1904. He claimed that Irish playwright J.M. Synge. and Bright, clamouring for vengeance. folk music had ‘more variety of mood than can In 1922 the publication of Ulysses brought be found in any other in Europe’. Hughes Joyce both fame and notoriety, the book being Bax would have seen himself in his description Given Yeats’s centrality to the Irish cultural collected hundreds of melodies and published banned in America for a decade.

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