Words for music perhaps? Irishness, criticism and the art tradition

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Notes

W. H. Grattan Flood, A History of Irish Music (Dublin, 1905). A photolithographic facsimile of the third edition (1913) was re‐issued by Praeger Publishers of New York and Washington with an introduction by Seóirse Bodley in 1970.

In the space at my disposal here, it is not possible to survey this literature in depth and I shall confine myself to mentioning some works that I regard as particularly important. There is a small number of seminal books and articles on Irish music by modern scholars, which stand quite apart in quality from the rest. Aloys Fleischmann (1910–92), who was Professor of Music at UCC from 1934 until 1980, made distinguished contributions to scholarship on several aspects of music in Ireland. As far as classical music in particular is concerned, his most important contribution is a splendid article on music in Ireland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ‘Music and Society 1850–1921’, which appeared posthumously in the sixth volume of A New History of Ireland: Ireland under the Union, II, 1870–1921 (Oxford University Press, 1996). Brian Boydell (1917–2000), who was Professor at Trinity College, Dublin, produced two very fine studies on music in Dublin in the eighteenth century, A Dublin Musical Calendar 1700–1760 (Irish Academic Press, 1988) and Rotunda Music in Eighteenth Century Dublin (Irish Academic Press, 1992). He also contributed a general article on this period to vol. IV of A New History of Ireland: Eighteenth Century Ireland 1691–1800 (Oxford University Press, 1986), ‘Music 1700–1850’ Dr Ita Margaret Hogan wrote a pioneering survey of music in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Anglo‐Irish Music 1780–1830 (Cork University Press, 1966), which is very valuable. More recent work is not of as high an order as these. Apart from the contributions of Harry White and Joseph J. Ryan, which are discussed in the text, Axel Klein has written a study of Irish music in the twentieth century, Die Musik Irlands im 20. Jahrhundert (Georg Olms Verlag, 1996). The ‘Irish Musical Studies’ series contains a number of articles on Irish music of some value, though the quality of these can be very variable indeed. Articles of interest will be found in the periodicals Soundpost and Music Ireland, both now defunct, as well as the Journal of Music in Ireland. A number of useful pieces, too numerous to mention here, are scattered in other publications.

The only exception worth mentioning is the Dublin critic Charles Acton (1919–99), who contributed some articles on Irish composers to Éire‐Ireland and other publications. These articles are rather superficial, however.

From his foreword to Hogan's Anglo‐Irish Music 1780–1830, p. ix.

In vol. 2, nos 2 and 3 of the Journal of Music in Ireland (January/February and March/April) I wrote a two‐part review of the collection of essays Musical Constructions of Nationalism (see n. 13 below), in which I discussed the views of White and Ryan at considerable length. I returned to the subject of their work in another article in vol. 3, no. 5 of the same journal (July/August 2003), entitled ‘Music and Nationalism: The Debate Continues’.

Corkery had a deep admiration for Bax's music and even delivered a radio tribute to the composer on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.

See the account in Geraldine Neeson, In My Mind's Eye: The Cork I Knew and Loved (Prestige Books, 2001), p. 83ff.

In his PhD thesis ‘Nationalism and Music in Ireland’ (Maynooth: National University of Ireland, 1991), Ryan avers that the ‘linear character and small structure of the music … left it unsuited [sic] as the basis for extended composition’ (p. 455).

See his PhD thesis ‘Nationalism and Music in Ireland’, p. 455ff., as well as his articles ‘Assertions of Distinction: The Modal Debate in Irish Music’, in Irish Musical Studies 2; ‘Nationalism and Irish Music’, in Irish Musical Studies 3; and ‘The Tone of Defiance’, in Musical Constructions of Nationalism: Essays on the History and Ideology of European Culture 1800–1945, ed. Michael Murphy and Harry White (Cork University Press, 2001).

See his article ‘The Divided Imagination: Music in Ireland after Ó Riada’, in Irish Musical Studies 7, p. 15.

See his comments in the article ‘Nationalism and Irish Music’, in Irish Musical Studies 3, p. 111. Ryan creates the impression that the national broadcasting station set up what he describes as a ‘generous scheme’ to commission works from Irish composers, but was poorly rewarded with a mass of undistinguished arrangements of folk music. This is completely misleading: the scheme in question was specifically set up to commission arrangements of folk music.

See his article ‘The Tone of Defiance’, in Musical Constructions of Nationalism: Essays on the History and Ideology of European Culture 1800–1945, ed. Michael Murphy and Harry White (Cork University Press, 2001), p. 208.

‘Nationalism and Irish Music’, in Irish Musical Studies 3; ‘The Tone of Defiance’, in Musical Constructions of Nationalism.

As Flood describes Ireland in the Preface to his history.

See William Randolph Tyldesley, Michael William Balfe: His Life and His English Operas (Music in Nineteenth Century Britain) (Aldgate Publishing, 2003). An adequate reassessment of the achievement of Charles Villiers Stanford was long overdue. Two interesting biographies have recently appeared: Paul J. Rodmell, The Life and Works of Charles Villiers Stanford (Ashgate, 2002); and Jeremy Dibble, Charles Villiers Stanford: Man and Musician (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Patterson was a minor composer who wrote operas and other works, including fantasias and pot‐pourris of Irish airs. To judge from the few piano pieces I have looked at, it would seem that she was a competent musician but had no real creative talent to speak of. However, this impression could well alter on looking at other work. O'Dwyer and Butler are of significance as composers of operas on Irish subjects which were put on with considerable success in Dublin in 1909 and 1913, respectively. Palmer composed thirty‐two settings of poems by James Joyce, which were not discovered and premiered until 1982.

Very little of an extended nature has been written on any twentieth‐century Irish composers. Ruth Fleischmann has edited a volume of reminiscences and essays about her father Professor Aloys Fleischmann (Aloys Fleischmann (1910–1992): A Life for Music in Ireland Remembered by Contemporaries (Mercier Press, 2000)). In this, there is a long article by Séamas de Barra, ‘The Music of Aloys Fleischmann: A Survey’, which provides an excellent overview of Fleischmann's career and compositional achievement. It is notable that nothing of any comparable substance seems to have been attempted for anyone else. Two articles on music by Irish composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by Jeremy Dibble and Axel Klein, appear in a book published to celebrate the sesquicentenary of the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. This book, To Talent Alone: The Royal Irish Academy of Music 1848–1998 (Gill & Macmillan, 1998), unfortunately continues the tradition inaugurated by Grattan Flood in its attempts to create an impression that most important Irish composers were all in some way connected with the Royal Irish Academy of Music, when in fact many of the figures mentioned had only the most tenuous connections with the institution, if any. Axel Klein, for example, refers to Aloys Fleischmann as a Fellow of the Academy. Fleischmann had no connection with the Royal Irish Academy of Music whatsoever. He was, however, a Fellow of the scholarly body the Royal Irish Academy, which is, of course, a completely different organisation.

A study, The Life and Music of Brian Boydell, to be published by the Irish Academic Press under the joint editorship of Gareth Cox, Axel Klein and Michael Taylor, is forthcoming.

This appeared in the New English Weekly on 14 January 1943. Sorabji comments: ‘Here is a powerful original musical mind, a pregnant and serious thinker, an artist … I shall make a point of hearing more of Mr May’s music as soon as I can. He is very much of an acquisition.’ This can be found in a volume of Sorabji's collected reviews produced by the Sorabji Archive (The Reviews of Kaikhosru Sorabji, April 1992, unpaginated). The reviews are presented in rough chronological order and this particular one can be found towards the very end.

This was in the context of a special feature in the periodical Music Teacher and Piano Student, where, along with other distinguished musicians and writers, he singled out those musical events which constituted his ‘Strongest Musical Impression of 1952’. Anderson wrote: ‘Broadcast: unknown yet to most English people: Aloys Fleischmann’s setting for choir, orchestra and war‐pipes of Clare's Dragoons, by the Irish patriot‐poet Thomas Davis: a real thrill in this.’ Anderson also wrote a favourable notice of the work for the Musical Times.

Deane has contributed a forceful essay, ‘The Honour of Non‐existence—Classical Composers in Irish Society’, to Irish Musical Studies 3, in which he summarises some of the principal frustrations experienced by Irish composers.