Inbox

Forgotten Composers; Musical Twins in Canada

Forgotten Composers
Una Hunt, Dublin, writes:
I was interested to read Raymond Deane’s review of the new book on Arthur O’Leary by Bob Fitzsimons (‘A Lament for Arthur O’Leary’, Jan–Feb). Fitzsimons is among the few devoted to ‘rehabilitating’ the reputation of long-forgotten Irish composers. What interested me most were Raymond Deane’s penetrating observations regarding the state of historic music in Ireland (by which I mean the music of ‘dead’ composers). There is, and never has been, any provision made for the promotion, preservation and dissemination of this music. An organisation is badly needed to devote resources and expertise towards this neglected area, but despite efforts over a number of years, we don’t seem to be any closer to achieving this goal. There appears to be a complete lack of interest and sympathy within public bodies, yet I observe a great hunger for knowledge among the general public.

My own experience of encounters with Irish music reveals a great deal of ingrained prejudice. When I was a little girl, I was curious to find the music of Irish composers and to play it. However, I was told that there really wasn’t much there and what existed was of a rather mediocre quality. Things haven’t changed much in the interim. Irish composers are still looked down on with more than a little snobbery and ignorance.

The question of identity is linked to this attitude – somehow, these composers are not really regarded as Irish, although in reality they were just as Irish as you or I. Personally, I hate the term ‘Anglo-Irish composer’, because I don’t know what it means. Does it refer to the fact that these musicians left the country (incidentally, they mostly had to)? Or has it something to do with their origins? In any case, it seems a rather derogatory term, suggesting some lack or other.  

Deane mentions that O’Leary, despite his historical importance as Stanford’s teacher, has vanished from Grove’s Dictionary. He wasn’t the only Irish composer to have been deleted in this way, as I have discovered on quite a few occasions. As Deane puts it so aptly ‘The point is not that O’Leary was the equal of Wagner or Liszt but, quite simply, that he existed’ – because we are led to believe that there were no composers, a premise which surely renders Ireland unique among the countries of Western Europe. The truth is that we have plenty of composers, as I discovered through completing a survey of the music collections at the National Library in 2001, and a staggering number I had not even heard of. We may have composers, but we are still not likely to know much about them and certainly getting hold of their music presents often insurmountable challenges. I believe that the music will continue to languish unrecognised and unknown until we can establish an organisation devoted to this cause. Surely our composers deserve the recognition of existence, even if only as part of a myriad of cultural encounters.

I wholeheartedly agree that the establishment of an archive of Irish composers is an urgent necessity. I also believe that while nothing is done out of sheer neglect, we may well be losing valuable and irreplaceable sections of our musical culture.

Axel Klein, Darmstadt, Germany, writes:
Raymond Deane is to be congratulated on his insights derived from reading Bob Fitzsimons’ study on the rather neglected Irish nineteenth-century composer Arthur O’Leary. If only more listeners, friends and supporters of Irish classical music would come to the same conclusions, then we could start digging more deeply into Irish musical soil, which will then turn out to be more fertile than everybody had thought.

It is, for me, one of the most fascinating aspects of Irish music, and a key reason for my continued involvement in researching it is that it is still possible to make amazing discoveries, both in terms of neglected works and totally unknown composers.

To give you an example, I have been researching, on and off for the past ten months or so, the life and music of an Irish composer in France called Joseph O’Kelly (1829–1885). Nobody I know has ever heard about him. He composed piano music and songs (quite attractive settings of Victor Hugo among them), but also operas (one on an Irish theme with a plot in Galway) and a cantata for Daniel O’Connell. O’Kelly is just an example, like O’Leary.

Ireland urgently needs a centre for the documentation and research of classical music to give this art form the place in public esteem and general consciousness that it deserves.

Douglas Bennett, Edinburgh, Scotland, writes:
Sometimes I wonder if current popular musical outpourings are a deliberate strategy to make people forget the wonderful music of earlier times. To be sure, some of it deserves neglect, but without regular resuscitation there is a real danger that valuable gems will be lost.

A case in point arises from the 2008 bicentenary of the birth of the composer Michael William Balfe, an event that has been met with yawning indifference in most of the countries where he actively pursued his successful career. Maybe no one could think beyond repeat productions of The Bohemian Girl, but there is much more to Balfe than that old warhorse.

I have enjoyed two visits to Dublin for events designed to celebrate the ‘undiscovered’ Balfe. First, his Italian Falstaff at the National Concert Hall in October, with a stargazy line up led by Majella Cullagh opposite a French Falstaff. The result (and the recording available from RTÉ Lyric FM) proved quite wonderful.

But the less predictable gem was a small-scale performance of Balfe’s The Sleeping Queen in the far less august surroundings of the National Library lecture hall, masterminded by Una Hunt with a group of student singers and a narration by John Allen. This might have turned out to be a work of minor merit, but it gave plenty of opportunity for the young cast to show sparkling dramatic (and comic) talents.

Without the research by Una Hunt and the investment of time and effort by these young performers, it would have been impossible to discover that here is a work worth taking further.

Eve O’Kelly, Director, Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin, writes:
In Raymond Deane’s Jan–Feb review article, the point is well made that there were many more Irish composers active in the nineteenth century than is generally recognised. Reference is made to the fruitful research work which has done much to raise awareness of this neglected area of Ireland’s musical heritage.

Deane refers to the need for a national music archive as an urgent necessity. It may interest readers to know that the Contemporary Music Centre (CMC) already fulfils many aspects of this brief. Officially, the boundaries of our music collection encompass ‘music in the classical or art music tradition written today and at any time in the previous fifty years’. Unofficially, however, we have always acquisitioned any early twentieth- and nineteenth-century material available to us to ensure its preservation, out of concern that otherwise it will be lost.

Our recently-completed Strategic Plan 2009–2011, developed following a two-year strategic review and public consultation process, now proposes to formalise and develop this role. The Centre plans, in partnership with the National Library of Ireland and other relevant bodies and individuals, to extend both its promotional scope and its physical collection to embrace historical Irish music, thereby covering the full continuum of Irish classical music from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries right up to the present day. These proposals are currently before the Arts Council as key funder and we await their response.

I would like to take issue with Raymond Deane on his remark in relation to the need for modern performing editions of this neglected repertoire, when he says: ‘It is remarkable that, in their time, these forgotten composers fared better than our contemporaries, who have to make do without an Irish publishing company!’ Deane, himself a composer, is well aware of the range of services which CMC provides and of which he is a regular client – services which, incidentally, many of the ‘big name’ publishing companies have now curtailed in tandem with a significant reduction in the number of composers they are prepared to take on.

CMC’s services include the promotional work we undertake nationally and internationally to secure performances, commissions and other opportunities for composers; the provision of music scores and instrumental parts (soon to be available online) to performers, conductors, concert promoters, festivals, researchers, educators and others; our information-rich web site (cmc.ie) with extensive video and audio content; our CD releases targeted to radio stations; and our ongoing media and PR work.

If that’s not being an Irish publishing company (even the Irish publishing company) I don’t know what is. But perhaps we haven’t been doing ourselves the credit of saying so loudly enough.

Musical Twins in Canada
Jerry White, Editor, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies / Revue canadienne d’études irlandaises, Edmonton, Canada, writes:
I read Breandán Ó hEaghra’s article ‘Greim Láimhe don Pháirtnéar is Gaire Dúinn’, on how country music in America binds the Irish north and south, with great interest (Jan–Feb). Here in Canada, there is a comparable separation of musical twins, in the form of our legendary ‘two solitudes’ of English- and French-speakers. The possible redemption, here, though, comes not in the form of country music, or ‘ceol na “tíre” seo’, as Ó hEaghra jokingly writes, but in terms of an Irish musical sensibility that both groups claim pretty forthrightly. The affinity of Anglo-Canadian traditional music to Irish traditional music may seem intuitive, but Quebec traditional musicians also tend to wear their Irish sensibilities on their sleeves. Part of this is because of the legend of the well-integrated Irish immigrant. Unlike the Scots who came to Quebec, the tale goes, the Irish who came there, especially those (often monoglot Irish-speakers) fleeing the Famine, tended to integrate into Francophone society, remaining good Catholics and becoming good Québécois as names like Burke or de Búrca slowly became Bourque. Ó hÉaghra draws attention to the number of US presidents with Ulster-Scots names, and he could have a similar kind of fun trying to find mayors of Montreal or Premiers of Quebec with Irish names. The Irlando-Québécois Johnson family alone produced three of the province’s post-1960s Première Ministres, two of them – Daniel Johnston Sr of the Union Nationale and Pierre-Marc Johnson of the explicitly separatist Parti Québécois – more or less Quebec nationalists.

 The sadness comes when one sees these Canadian musicians try to perform together. I well remember a session among a few Nova Scotia fiddlers and the Quebec traditional group Entreloupe at the 2002 Edmonton Folk Festival. The Anglos would play a reel, and then the Francos would play a slightly different one, back and forth without the two groups playing together. It took a good ten minutes before they seemed to accept that they were both fluent in the same musical idiom and dropped their guards, joining in on each others’ performances. The results were marvellous, and you could almost feel a sense of relief settle in among the audience, as these great performers stopped thinking in English or French.

Published on 1 April 2009

comments powered by Disqus