Sources and Style in Moore's Irish Melodies

Una Hunt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315442983
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Música

Once regarded as Ireland's national bard, Thomas Moore's lasting reputation rests on the ten immensely popular collections of drawing-room songs known as the Irish Melodies, published between 1808 and 1834. Moore drew on anthologies of ancient music, breathing new life into the airs and bringing them before a global audience for the very first time. Recognizing the unique beauty of the airs as well as their symbolic significance, these qualities were often interwoven into the verses providing potent political commentary along with a new cultural perspective. At home and abroad, Moore's Melodies created a realm of influence that continued to define Irish culture for many decades to come.

Notwithstanding the far-reaching appeal and success of the collections, Moore has only recently begun to receive serious attention from scholars. Una Hunt provides the first detailed study of Moore's Irish Melodies from a combined musical and literary standpoint by drawing on a practical understanding and an unrivalled performance experience of the songs. The initial two chapters contextualize Moore and his songs through a detailed examination of their sources and style while the following chapters concentrate on the collaborative work provided by the composers Sir John Stevenson and Henry Rowley Bishop. Chapters 5 and 6 reappraise musical sources and Moore's adaptation of these, supported and illustrated by the Table of Sources in the Appendix.

1 Political reference and literary influence

Thomas Moore was not the first poet to write new words to old Irish tunes, as popular airs were continually updated by the addition of new lyrics to suit the era. Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) wrote English words to traditional harpers’ airs,¹ and Irish melody had also been employed for new songs in theatrical presentations such as John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) and The Shamrock, or St Patrick’s Day (1777) by the Irish actor and dramatist, John O’Keeffe (1747–1833). Of note is the fact that O’Keefe’s work came to a close with a triumphal procession replete with Hibernia and a song by the most celebrated of the harpers, Turlough Carolan (1670–1738).² Some of the airs from The Shamrock reappeared in O’Keeffe’s more successful piece, The Poor Soldier (1782, music by William Shield), which Moore would later utilize in the Irish Melodies. The English pastoral mode and the more populist street ballads circulating in Ireland would in turn influence Moore’s poetical style, but Celticism and political song would equally exert a significant bearing on his writing.

The growth of Celticism

The Scottish writer James Macpherson (1736–1796) led a growing interest in Celticism through his translations of The Poems of Ossian. Macpherson’s three poems, apparently compiled and composed by Ossian, son of Fingal, were taken from Scottish manuscripts in the Gaelic language. While these were soon considered fraudulent, this intelligence had little or no effect on their popularity as their influence continued to grow.

Macpherson’s Ossian was very definitely Scottish even though the stories had been based on Irish events and legends. As a consequence, challenges were soon mounted by those anxious to reclaim Ossian for Ireland. Joseph Cooper Walker (1761–1810), one of the early Irish musical antiquarians, repudiated Macpherson’s claims while the Gaelic historian Sylvester O’Halloran (1728–1807) called it ‘Caledonian plagiary’.³ The Macpherson controversy was not lost on Moore: Walker would later become a musical source and passages from O’Halloran’s History of Ireland may be seen in notes to the song texts.⁴

Macpherson’s translations had unleashed a new breed of antiquarian anxious to rehabilitate Ireland’s heritage. Furthermore, O’Halloran and writers such as his goddaughter, Charlotte Brooke (c1740–1793), embodied a growing sense of identity among the Anglo-Irish, supporting a convergence of patriotic beliefs between the country’s two cultural and religious divisions.⁵ Through works such as Walker’s Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (1786) and Brooke’s Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789), Ireland’s literary, musical and cultural history was rediscovered and redefined.⁶ These works also became catalysts for the development of overtly political ideology.

Propagating ideology through music

The Society of United Irishmen considered music to be an ideal vehicle for the propagation of political ideology. The organization was founded in Belfast in 1791 emerging as a more radical group from the earlier Volunteer movement. Members of the group issued broadsheets and published songs in their newspapers before the first of their songbooks entitled Paddy’s Resource was printed in 1795.⁷ Moore was certainly familiar with Paddy’s Resource, a fact he demonstrated through a note attached to ‘The farewell to my harp’ (‘Dear harp of my country’, VI.xii) where he named William Drennan’s song from that collection, ‘When Erin first rose’.⁸ Up to this point a ‘rebellious’ song had not been admired by Moore in print and it is surely noteworthy that this confession was made in connection with what was intended to be the last song in the Irish Melodies series.⁹ The song’s position at the end of the number and its valedictory subtitle, ‘The farewell to my harp’, can be read as symbolic gestures.

A study of the political codes utilized in rebel songs at the end of the eighteenth century reveals that many of the most widespread and popular representations are also found in Moore. In his Songs of Irish Rebellion, Georges-Denis Zimmermann surveys the symbolism used in the United Irishmen’s songbooks, but still fails to recognize those same codes in the Irish Melodies. Zimmermann states that politically motivated songs account for about a third of Moore’s entire collection and Joep Leerssen suggests that some 85 are ‘primarily anecdotal or sentimental’, while only a few have a nationalistic thrust.¹⁰ This theory is further corroborated by Thérèse Tessier, who believes that the patriotic and nationalistic songs number less than 30.¹¹ But, at a distance of more than 200 years, it is clear that some of Moore’s symbolic allegory is no longer fully understood. There are, in fact, relatively few songs in the Irish Melodies which appear entirely without some form of patriotic or political intent, although this is often deliberately cloaked. A degree of passivity pervades Moore’s emotional expression and the Irish Melodies have been described as disconsolate and full of frustration and despair which may, at times, have obscured the poet’s true intention.¹² Furthermore, in almost every song such a wide range of ideas are covered that this, in itself, must have created additional misunderstanding.

Categories of songs

Organizing the songs into a neat set of groupings might serve to solve some of the confusion but, unfortunately, they rarely conform to this purpose as the categories frequently overlap. However, the following may at least demonstrate the range of themes explored in the songs:

• Patriotic and politically motivated songs; love of Ireland; freedom and slavery; liberation from across the sea; the emigrant’s farewell. Darkness, light and purity; the significance of the colour green; harp songs and bardic songs. The Aisling poem; moon and moonlight. Dead roses.

• Songs of remembrance, sorrow and loss, particularly lost youth and thoughts of absent friends.

• Drinking songs; songs of love, friendship and joy and the celebration of these.

• Story songs, from mythological legends and folk tales to distant historical events.

• Tribute songs to real people: Robert Emmet, Henry Grattan, Mary Tighe, Sir John Stevenson, and so on. Tribute songs to place; songs extolling the beauty of nature.

• Amorous songs.

• Songs about music, or the celebration of music as a central theme.

Songs which cover the tyranny of the oppressor and the righteousness of the Irish cause are overtly political songs which require little explanation.¹³ But a number of other categories listed above, such as the songs of remembrance and the drinking songs, may not appear to belong to the patriotic and politically motivated categories, but they too are related. Other texts may seem at first apolitical, perhaps masquerading as love songs or legends, until the significant ‘punch line’ is delivered and the true intent is betrayed. Such a mode of expression was prefigured by Charlotte Brooke in her translation of the Maid of the valley with its familiar echoes of wars, ancient Celts, and the muse’s harp.¹⁴ While the harp is entwined with the heroic story, the last verse confirms the song as an ode to Ireland, extolling love of country.¹⁵ The association of ideas seen in songs of the United Irishmen is often echoed by Moore; for instance, the camaraderie, friendship and celebration displayed in drinking songs are frequently aligned with remembrance.¹⁶

Political motifs and cloaked meanings

Notwithstanding the metaphorical references and the multiplicity of themes, the songs cannot be neatly categorized as particular political motifs appear deliberately obscured, as if written in some secret code. Seamus Deane names a ‘tactic of concealment’ which Moore has linked to some of his political allegories.¹⁷ The concealed nature of the songs has resulted in a distinct ambiguity and in certain cases, has caused considerable confusion which, in turn, has contributed to the pronouncements of Zimmermann, Tessier and Leerssen mentioned above. One song, ‘When he who adores thee’ (I.v), has been hotly debated on this score. Zimmermann, like many others, suggests it was intended for Emmet; however, Moore himself claimed Lord Edward Fitzgerald was the subject of the song.¹⁸ Nonetheless, as if to throw all off the scent, Moore gave the following note to the letterpress: ‘These words allude to a story in an old Irish manuscript, which is too long and too melancholy to be inserted here.’ Notwithstanding the conjecture concerning the real intent of the song, the inherent ambiguity was designed to pave the way for other more personal interpretations. This was aptly demonstrated by Moore’s reaction to his own performance of this same song shortly after his daughter’s death when he was so overcome with emotion he could barely refrain from sobbing at the sound of his own voice.¹⁹

The ‘Mr Hudson’ referred to in a note to ‘The origin of the harp’ (III.xii) was Edward Hudson, a friend of Moore’s from his days at Trinity College Dublin who was active in the United Irish movement. Moore visited him in Kilmainham Jail over a four- or five-month period when the artistically talented Hudson whiled away his time by making charcoal drawings on the wall of his cell depicting the fanciful origin of the harp.²⁰ Hudson’s illustrations became the inspiration for the song but Moore refrained from an exact description of these visits, no doubt fearing criticism or, worse still, finding himself associated with Hudson’s activities.²¹ It seems that the poet even deflected attention from the background to the song by describing Hudson’s ‘ingenuous design’ as being ‘prefixed to an Ode … [to] St. Cecilia’, the patron saint of music.²² Thus, the real background to this song was deliberately obscured by linking it to a seemingly harmless context.

The little-known ‘Song of the battle-eve’ (X.iii) is another case in point, which proves that even in 1834 when the Irish Melodies project was drawing to a close, Moore was still keen to obscure his real intentions. The title alone was perhaps ...