Recordings of rarely-heard Thomas Moore part 1

Project ERIN has published forty-one podcasts of individual pieces of music, music either set to words by Thomas Moore or inspired by his work in some way. Today we will introduce the first set within these podcasts, which were taken from a student-based project for the Queen’s University Belfast BMUS module ‘A Night at the Opera’ in spring 2017. Since this was the bicentenary of Moore’s Lalla Rookh, it was decided to recreate this tale through a mixture of narration (written and delivered by the students themselves) and a selection of music, ranging from domestic songs dating from as early as 1818 to the 1893 version of a grand opera. The students provided their own arrangements to these works, sometimes adding an obbligato instrument to a song originally conceived for voice and piano only, sometimes working as a small chamber group to perform a piece originally conceived for orchestra.

Feramorz singing to Lalla Rookh, as drawn by John Tenniel

Our programme opened with the “Slow March” from Frederic Clay’s cantata Lalla Rookh – originally written for the Brighton Festival of 1877. We used our arrangement of this as an atmospheric piece that recurred to suggest ‘travel’ from one section of Moore’s work to the next. We then followed the structure of Moore’s tale, drawing on Clay again for the song “Princess thy royal father”, sung by Lalla Rookh’s officious chaperone Fadladeen as he supervises that princess’s reluctant wedding journey to meet a groom she has never met. Said groom has disguised himself as the poet Feramorz so he can join Lalla Rookh’s train and court his bride; we recorded the runaway hit of Clay’s cantata, “I’ll sing thee songs of Araby” as the poet’s first – and successful – attempt to intrigue his betrothed. Prior to this, we hear Lalla’s expression of restlessness and lack of fulfilment in “Sous le feuillage” from Félicien David’s opera comique Lalla Roukh (Paris, 1862).This highly popular work travelled across the theatres of Europe, and did much to circulate Moore’s tale to new audiences (for further see project ERIN’s OMEKA exhibit, ‘The tales and travels of Lalla Rookh, at http://omeka.qub.ac.uk/exhibits/show/tales-travels-lalla-rookh/.)

Zelica sings ‘Bendermeer’s Stream’ to Azim, as drawn by John Tenniel

‘The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan’ is the first poetic tale that Feramorz sings to Lalla Rookh in Moore’s original. This dark story of a cult built around a false prophet does not seem to have inspired any domestic songs or cantatas for amateur choral societies to enjoy, but it did stimulate the Irish composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford to write a grand opera derived from Moore’s work. Within this tale we find ‘Bendemeer’s Stream’ – a mournful reminiscence sung by the prophet’s concubine Zelica to her former lover Azim – from Stanford’s second adaptation of his own work as Il profeta valeto (London, 1983). We offer a unique arrangement of this song for soprano, piano, and obbligato clarinet.

Peri with dead lovers, lithograph by Owen Jones and Henry Warren

Feramorz’s second tale for Lalla Rookh was ‘Paradise and the Peri’, a lighter but still poignant story of a fallen Persian angel whose desire to enter heaven obliged her to find ‘that perfect gift’. This resulted in the Peri undertaking three quests, from which she brings back: a drop of blood (from a hero), a sigh (from a dying lover), and a tear (from a repentant sinner). We chose music to mark the three recurring actions of this story. Each quest starts with the Peri waiting at the gate of heaven, for which we recorded an arrangement of “Vor Eden’s Thor” from Robert Schumann’s ‘poem in music’ Das Paradies und die Peri (1843). The guardian angel’s repeated refusal to give the Peri entrance is captured by “’Sweet’, said the Angel” from John Francis Barnett’s cantata Paradise and the Peri (Birmingham, 1870). An expression of the Peri’s dashed hopes we also took from Barnett, “But ah! Even Peri’s hopes are vain”. We returned to Schumann for an atmospheric chorus of Arabian maidens, “Schmucket die Stufen”. We concluded our adaptation of this tale with John Clarke Whitfield’s  “Joy, joy forever!”, which the Peri sings as Heaven’s gate is finally opened for her. This was taken from his cantata for soprano,  The Peri Pardoned; this was published by Moore’s regular music publisher James Power in 1818.

Lalla Rookh by Kenny Meadows

Recordings of all the pieces mentioned above can be found at: http://www.erin.qub.ac.uk/podcasts/. Copies of all the images, with full metadata, can be found at http://omeka.qub.ac.uk/collections/show/15.

Music credits: Oscar Aiken (arranger); Megan Boyd (piano); Courtney Burns (soprano); Ellen Campbell (soprano); Matthew Campbell (tenor); Sarah Coulter (mezzo); Galina Crothers (piano); Jenny Garrett (piano); Ciara Jackson (flute); Jason Jackson (recording engineer); Linzi Jones (violin); Alison Montgomery (piano); Gerard Mullaly (clarinet); Daniel Steele (baritone); Poppy Wheeler (arranger, bassoon, flute).

Part 2 of this blog series will cover the pieces this ensemble recorded from Moore’s ‘The Fire-worshippers’, ‘The Light of the Harem’, and also from the conclusion of Lalla Rookh’s wedding journey.

ERIN catalogue reaches 1000

The ERIN catalogue now records over 1000 musical scores that are related to Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh, his National Airs, or his Irish Melodies. The 1000th object to be entered in the catalogue is the ‘Lalla Rookh Nocturne’ for solo piano by one Antoine Schafer. This appears in an anthology of sheet music for piano held at the British Library. This type of work, inspired by Moore’s creative output but having no direct connection in its content to him, offers the most distant kind of relationship captured by the ERIN catalogue. Other recent additions include several of Cesare Pugni’s arrangements for solo piano of pieces from his own ballet Lalla Rookh — choreographed by Jules Perrot, this was performed at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London, in 1846 (see the blog and OMEKA collection dedicated to Lalla Rookh for further). William Lovell Phillips’s piano arrangements of Lalla Rookh, entitled Pearls of the East, are also a recent addition to the catalogue. Their dedicatee, Lady Sydney Morgan (d. 1846), was a prominent author whose well-regarded “Irish national tales” would have cultivated a readership for Moore’s work. Concluding the recent additions of pianoforte music to catalogue ERIN are two arrangements of vocal works by the Bohemian-born composer Wilhelm Kuhe (1823-1912). The first, ‘O ma maîtresse’, is derived from Félicien David’s opéra comique, Lalla Roukh (Paris, 1862); the second, a ‘Fantasia on airs from Frederic Clay’s Lalla-Rookh’ was drawn from Clay’s cantata as performed at the Brighton Festival in 1871. This was the first of several such annual musical events organised by Kuhe himself.

The ERIN catalogue: Thomas Moore in Europe

The Gibson-Massie Moore collection. Image courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Queen’s University Belfast

At www.erin.qub.ac.uk you will find the ‘Home’ tab and the ‘Search resources’ tab. These lead to the ‘simple search’ interface of the ERIN catalogue, a resource which documents editions of Moore’s Irish Melodies, his National Airs, and also music inspired by these series as well as music inspired by Lalla Rookh. The time frame is 1808-1880; European publications only are featured; it represents the collections of eight European libraries: McClay Library, Queen’s University Belfast; the British Library; the National Library of Ireland; the Royal Irish Academy;  the Bibliothèque nationale de France; the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich; and the Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig. These were chosen to represent four nations where he was particularly popular (Ireland, Great Britain, France, and Germany). Further considerations were either the size of their collection on Moore, or the uniqueness of their holdings.

The catalogue currently holds nearly 1000 records within. Although all libraries are represented, there are additional entries to come for the British Library (circa 125 records, mainly instrumental arrangements), Queen’s University Belfast (circa 125 of records, further Irish Melodies), and Leipzig (circa 30 records). Further blogs will report as these final stages of the catalogue are completed.

Brief guide to the catalogue: The Home and ‘Search the resources’ tabs lead to the simple search interface of the catalogue. The user enters a keyword of interest to them, examples including: the name of a composer, performer, artist, engraver, publisher, or bookseller from the 19th century; a musical instrument, or a European city. ‘Select relation’ enables the user to filter results to ‘Irish Melodies’, ‘National Airs’, or ‘Lalla Rookh’. The results can be sorted by title, or by date. They are displayed in two formats: as a list with basic information; to see the details of a particular source, click on its title.

The advanced search option enables the user to access search terms that represent the actual contents of the database as well as its indexing terms. The user can achieve more specialised searches here. The fields include: free keyword, relation (Irish Melodies, Lalla Rookh, National Airs), place of publication, agent role (eg, author, composer, dedicatee, illustrator, publisher, etc.), language, type (kind of score: the musical forces or instruments required), as well as a date filter. The get the best result when searching for a range of dates enter your earliest date of interest in the from field, and then sort by date. It is not necessary to put data into all the fields when searching. Choose Relation combined with one or two other fields to gain the best results. The advanced search enables the user to access index terms that will produce results in the database; these terms can sometimes work most effectively in the simple search.

Introducing Project ERIN: Thomas Moore in Europe

ERIN documents two of Thomas Moore’s song series – the Irish Melodies (1808-1834) and National Airs (1818-1827) – as well as music inspired by his ‘oriental romance’ Lalla Rookh (1817). ERIN enables the user to track the production and dissemination of these pieces in Europe from their respective dates of creation through to 1880.

All of ERIN’s resources are now available at www.erin.qub.ac.uk. This website unites the previously available blog and OMEKA resources (images) with some new features, including podcasts, and a catalogue.

ERIN’s home page directs the user to its resources, and also to a user’s Survey that will help us to plan further projects on Thomas Moore. The ‘Irish Melodies’ tab leads to an introductory page, at the bottom of which are links to two collections of images dedicated to this series, which enable the user to discover different editions of the texts, illustrations inspired by the Irish Melodies, and also editions of the music. The reader can also access two digital exhibitions on the Irish Melodies. Likewise, the ‘National Airs’ tab leads to some introductory text, with a link to a collection of images documenting Moore’s series alongside some similar collections of European national songs, with another link to a digital exhibition. The ‘Lalla Rookh’ tab leads to a collection of images and a digital exhibition that document musical works and illustrations inspired by Moore’s Lalla Rookh. The Podcasts tab leads to recordings that document rarely heard music inspired by Lalla Rookh, and some of Moore’s Irish Melodies in rarely heard arrangements. The Blog tab leads to ‘Thomas Moore in Europe’, a resource with over 50 short essays that can be browsed, or searched through its index. Topics include: concert music, domestic music, exhibitions, illustrated editions, Irish music, European libraries, pantomime, publishers, songs, and theatre music. One blog provides details of our radio documentary, “An oriental romance: Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh”.

The catalogue: the ‘Home’ tab and the ‘Search resources’ tab leads to the ‘simple search’ interface of the ERIN catalogue, a resource which documents editions of Moore’s Irish Melodies, his National Airs, and also music inspired by these series as well as music inspired by Lalla Rookh. The time frame is 1808-1880; European publications only are featured; it represents the collections of eight European libraries in Ireland, the UK, France, and Germany. The introduction to this resource will be continued in the next blog.

Lalla Rookh as drawn by Kenny Jones. Image courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Queen’s University Belfast.

 

‘Discovering Thomas Moore’ exhibition and launch of ERIN website

On this, the 240th- anniversary of Moore’s birth, we are pleased to announce a forthcoming exhibition, ‘Discovering Thomas Moore: Ireland in nineteenth-century Europe’, which will be held at the Royal Irish Academy for six months from 17th June 2019. This exhibition is a co-operative venture between the Royal Irish Academy and Special Collections and Archives at Queen’s University Belfast. ERIN’s on-line resource – including the previously inaccessible database-catalogue – will be launched at this exhibition, with computer terminals as part of the display. In autumn 2019 a series of lectures at the Royal Irish Academy will complement the exhibition. For further information see: https://www.ria.ie/discovering-thomas-moore-ireland-nineteenth-century-europe-0

Peri descending to fallen hero. Lithograph by Henry Warren, inspired by Thomas Moore’s ‘Paradise and the Peri’. Published by Day & Son, 1860. Image courtesy of Special Collections, Queen’s University Belfast.

Thomas Moore’s most popular songs: Bendemeer’s stream

There’s a bower of roses by Bendemeer’s stream,

And the nightingale sings round it all day long;

In the time of my childhood ’twas like a sweet dream,

To sit in the roses and hear the bird’s song.

That bower and its music I never forget,

But oft when alone in the bloom of the year,

I think–is the nightingale singing there yet?

Are the roses still bright by the calm Bendemeer?

No, the roses soon wither’d that hung o’er the wave,

But some blossoms were gather’d while freshly they shone,

And a dew was distill’d from their flowers, that gave

All the fragrance of summer, when summer was gone.

Thus memory draws from delight, ere it dies,

An essence that breathes of it many a year;

Thus bright to my soul, as ’twas then to my eyes,

Is that bower on the banks of the calm Bendemeer.

Zelica sings to Azim, drawn by John Tenniel

‘Bendemeer’s Stream’, from ‘The Veiled Prophet’ in Lalla Rookh (1817), is a nostalgic lyric sung by the concubine Zelica to fulfil the prophet’s demands that she seduce her former lover Azim. This individual lyric was set by more composers than any other from Lalla Rookh, with James Power of London publishing settings by Lord Burghersh, William Hawes, and Lady Flint shortly after Moore’s poem came out. A later setting, by Edward Bunnett, was published in 1865. American settings (as ‘Bower of roses’) include J. Wilson (New York, 1817), as well as R.W. Wyatt and S. Wetherbee (Boston, 1820). The song also appears in Charles Villiers Stanford’s opera, The Veiled Prophet (Hannover, 1881; London, 1893 as Il profeta valeto). Project ERIN has recorded a special arrangement of the Stanford (with piano and obbligato clarinet), which will be made available on the project website early in 2019.

Image courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Queen’s University Belfast

Three arrangements of Moore’s Last Rose of Summer

“The Irish Melodies are perhaps the purest national tribute ever bequeathed by a poet to his country” (Novello). While Moore’s achievements were recognised in the years following his death,  the efforts of the two composers who provided the original “symphonies and accompaniments” were either derided as too complex (John Stevenson), or ignored (Henry Bishop). And so in 1859, as the copyright to Moore’s Irish Melodies expired, the prominent publishing firm Novello released Moore’s Irish Melodies with new Symphonies and Accompaniments for the Pianoforte by M. W. Balfe. At that time, the well established theatre composer Michael William Balfe was producing works for the Pyne-Harrison Opera Company of London’s Lyceum theatre. The Irish-born Balfe was a logical choice to arrange these melodies — not least given his success as an opera singer before he took up composition and theatre management.  In an unsigned preface to Balfe’s edition, the publisher claimed to be responding to a change in public taste “for the simple and natural” by issuing fresh arrangements of  Irish Melodies from numbers one through seven. We can appreciate this simplicity in Balfe’s approach to Moore’s ‘Last Rose of Summer’ (Irish Melodies, fifth number), which he sets with  single staccato quavers for the left hand punctuating a gentle triplet figure for the right hand of the piano part.

[Audio example to be inserted]

Mezzo soprano Laoise Carney with pianist Brian Connor.

At the same time as Novello was releasing a new version of Moore’s Irish Melodies, so too did the London-based publishers Cramer, Beale and Chappell. Sustaining an earlier interest in the original Irish Melodies (Cramer, Addison and Beale obtained the rights to James Power’s plates for Moore’s Irish Melodies circa 1840), this firm  commissioned the London-based composer George Alexander Macfarren (1813-1887) to arrange Moore’s Irish melodies  with new symphonies & accompaniments – also restricting the selection to songs from the first seven numbers. Macfarren’s arrangements were further promoted by Cramer through a wide selection of individual songs published into the 1870s; the London-based firm J. Macdowell seems to have taken over this enterprise around 1880. Macfarren’s arrangement of the ‘Last Rose of Summer’ favours a relentless semiquaver figure in the left hand of the piano part, against a purely melodic right hand. His harmonic learning is hinted at in the occasional introduction of a passing modulation.

Mezzo soprano Laoise Carney with pianist Brian Connor.
 

Granville Ransome Bantock (1868-1946) was another figure who was attracted to Moore’s Irish Melodies. An early recipient of the Macfarren scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, Bantock demonstrated an interest in Moore while a student there in the early 1890s with his ambitious choral-orchestral setting of The Fireworshippers (see this blog for 30 June 2017). Later in his career, he would arrange some of Moore’s Melodies for voice and piano, including the ‘Song of Fionnuala’ as a song in four parts (1910). Of the three settings considered here, Bantock’s  ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ is  most successful in evoking the sound of the Irish harp through the use of arpeggiated (rather than rhythmically articulated) chords across both hands in the piano accompaniment.

[Audio example to be inserted]

Mezzo soprano Laoise Carney with pianist Brian Connor.

Reference

Novello. Preface, Moore’s Irish Melodies with new Symphonies and Accompaniments for the Pianoforte by M. W. Balfe. London, [1859].

Stanford’s settings of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies

As 1894 drew to a close, the prominent publisher Boosey & Hawkes prepared to issue a volume of songs with the title, Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore the original airs restored & arranged for the voice with pianoforte accompaniment by Charles Villiers Stanford. Dublin-born Stanford’s intentions are made plain in its preface, where the composer identified this as

an opportunity … of laying before the musical public an edition of the Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore, in which the airs could be given in an accurate form as noted by such excellent antiquarians as [Edward] Bunting and [George] Petrie.

Stanford’s “Notes to the Airs,” which offers comments on individual songs, evidence his careful research in the collections of Bunting and Petrie as well as those of Smollett Holden and the venerable harper Turlough O’Carolan. Stanford compared variants of the tunes for which Moore had written original lyrics and then set the version he deemed the most authentic or superior. These “Notes” are critical in the full sense of the word, as  Moore’s presentation of these Irish tunes is variously deemed ‘wrong’ or ‘mistaken’; he also stands accused of ‘spoiling’ or ‘destroying’ the original character of the airs — either by altering the time or tempo, or by raising the (characteristically Irish) flattened seventh degree of the melodic scale.

Included here is a recording of “The harp that once in Tara’s Halls” (Irish Melodies first number) one of the rare tunes about which Stanford makes no comment in his “Notes”. We can infer from this silence that he accepted Moore’s treatment of the tune. His approach to the accompaniment, however, is notably different to Sir John Stevenson’s: rather than repeating the same accompaniment for each verse, Stanford writes a through-composed piece. A simple chorale-style accompaniment supports the elegiac tone of Moore’s first verse, where the harp is described as “mute”, or  “asleep”. In the second verse, as the harp “swells” to tell a “tale of ruin” the accompaniment is accordingly more rhythmically active, with the voice of the harp suggested by strummed chords of considerable textural weight.

Rachel McClelland (soprano) and Brian Connor perform C.V. Stanford’s “The Harp that once”.

 

Stanford  came to his Moore project with prior experience in setting the lyrics of an Irish poet to Irish tunes: in 1883 Boosey & Hawkes published his setting of some fifty of Alfred Perceval Graves’s lyrics as Songs of old Ireland. A 1931 obituary for Graves suggested that it was he, rather than Moore, who demonstrated

a careful regard for the true antique form of the music.

While Moore was a modernist who sought to popularise the music of Ireland, Graves and Stanford, and indeed all the collectors on whom they and Moore depended, were attempting to preserve  it. But Stanford (Preface) at least recognised that the act of writing an accompaniment to this melodic music was a significant intervention, admitting that it was necessary in this to be

frankly modern … the better [to bring the] force of the melodies home to the listener.

And while he has little patience with Moore’s approach to rendering Irish tunes, he lauded his predecessor for creating

masterpieces of lyrical writing … [and] the first popular presentation of the Folk-songs of Ireland.

Stanford’s ambivalent attitude towards Moore was entirely characteristic of his time, and was arguably part of a changing sensibility within Ireland about how culture could and should be harnessed to articulate national identity. On 6 February 1895, shortly after his Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore was published, Dublin’s Freeman’s Journal named Stanford as a supporter of a new development, an annual festival of national music that was to become the Feis Ceoil. The Feis Ceoil, founded in 1897, is a significant cultural institution that still thrives today, in 2018.

Bibliography

Obituary. “Mr A.P. Graves.” The Times (London), 28 December 1931. The Times Digital Archives. Artemis Gale Primary Sources. Accessed 20/07/2018.

“The Revival of Irish Music.” Freeman’s Journal (Dublin), 6 February 1895. British Library Newspapers. Artemis Gale Primary Sources. Accessed 20/07/2018.

Stanford, C.V. “Notes to the Airs.” Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore the original airs restored & arranged for the voice with pianoforte accompaniment by Charles Villiers Stanford. London: Boosey & Hawkes, [1895].

Stanford, C.V. Preface. Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore.

 

The Reputation of Thomas Moore in the Belfast Newsletter

An interesting indication of Thomas Moore’s reputation is discovered by consulting historical newspapers. The Belfast Newsletter, as the major source of news and reviews for the city of Belfast since 1828, offers a view of Moore’s profile in a neighbouring city to his birth-place of Dublin. It’s notable that coverage during Moore’s life was more often confined to short references in passing to him, but the final decades of the nineteenth century yielded a few detailed considerations, including a substantial article, “RECOLLECTIONS OF THE POET MOORE”, apparently written by one who had met the poet  in 1830 through an acquaintance struck with Moore’s sister Ellen:

…  I learned she was Miss Ellen Moore, a sister of the  famous Thomas; and great I remember was my gratification when I received one evening an invitation to drink tea with her. … Upon a certain evening I observed preparations being carried on for an entertainment of a more pretentious character; and I learned that Mr. Thomas Moore, having arrived that morning in Dublin, was expected to join our company. A large party was assembled to meet him. I must own to feeling great astonishment at his appearance, as, if his sister was small, he was smaller still-that is, for a man. He was what Charles Dickens would have called a “mite.” He came into the room on tiptoe, at a sort of run, with his head thrown back; and first he kissed his sister Ellen most affectionately, then he kissed nearly every other pretty girl he could get at. His manner was delightfully frank, genial, and winning. He was full of the gossip of the day, and looked like a well-to-do little gentleman who had no other occupation except amusing himself. …  In society it was almost impossible to get at him: for he was generally the centre of a perfect galaxy of petticoats. All the prettiest women seemed to fondle and caress him, and treat him much as they would a large wax doll; but when he sang, as he did on that particular evening, two of his famous melodies, the “Last Rose of Summer.” and “Oft in the stilly Night” there was a sensation, a flatter, and a tendency to hysterical emotion instantly perceptible …  I cannot attempt to describe either the singing or its electrical effect …

The writer continues by affirming Moore’s standing within Dublin high society at the time:

He was in prodigious request at that time, I remember, in Dublin. The Marchioness of Normandy used to send her carriage to fetch him out for airings in the Phoenix Park, and he was continually receiving invitations to dine with the Lord Lieutenant, or Lord Morpeth, then the Secretary. A covered car, which is a species of conveyance peculiar to Dublin, used to fetch him to these entertainments …

Moore’s reputation extended to his person, for according to this account

In all the relations of private life Mr. Moore’s conduct was unexceptionable ; a better husband, a kinder father never existed; and he allowed his only sister, at whose house I made his acquaintance, out of his own slender income, sufficient for her comfortable support. … –Belgravia

(Belfast Newsletter, 29 December 1874)

Moore was still a subject of academic interest in Belfast over forty years after his death. Reporting on the second of a series of four lectures on Ireland’s contribution  delivered by the Rev. C. E. Pike at the First Presbyterian Church, Holywood, the Belfast Newsletter (10 January 1898) recorded the following claim:

Moore is a lyrical poet, and he is one of the greatest of our lyrical poets. No one can read ” The Irish Peasant to his Mistress,” or that weird pathetic wail, ” 0, ye Dead,” without perceiving that though Moore uses English and purer English he has filled it with a passion which is not English; which is rather the transmitted feeling of a long-subjugated race, which has suffered in mute patience, and found consolation in dreams.

This affirmation of Moore’s Irishness – not universally perceived in the decades following his death –  is an interesting facet of his posthumous reputation.

All newspaper quotes sourced from https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/, 29 April 2018.

Lady Flint and Lalla Rookh

Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh inspired dozens of songs by composers in Europe and America, dating from 1817 into the later Victorian period. James Power (d. 1836), who held the copyright over Thomas Moore’s music, seems to have encouraged or accepted material suitable for the domestic music market from a number of professional and amateur musicians, the most intriguing of who is one Lady Flint. Her Five Songs and a Duet, issued by Power on or around 1818, sets six song lyrics from within Moore’s ‘Oriental Romance’, including:

  • ‘Bendemeer’s Stream’ (Zelica’s song to her beloved Azim in ‘The Veiled Prophet’);
  • a duet for soprano and tenor, ‘Oh fair as the Sea-flower’  (“Farewell to thee, Araby’s daughter”), which is the Peri’s farewell to the drowned Arabian princess Hinda of ‘The Fire-Worshippers’;
  • ‘Namouna’s song’ (“I know where the winged visions dwell”), sung by the benevolent sorceress in ‘The Light of the Harem’ as she casts a spell to bring sleep to the love-lorn Nourmahal;
  • (“From Cindara’s warbling fount I come”- rendered by one of Namouna’s charmed spirits to the sleeping Nourmahal – promises the odalisque that her lover will return to dote  at her feet;
  • “There’s a bliss beyond all that the Minstrel has told” and “Fly to the Desert, fly to me” are subsequently sung by a hidden Nourmahal to her estranged lover Selim, who is so utterly enchanted that the two are thoroughly reconciled.

COPAC records but one other published composition by Lady Flint: ‘C’est mon ami : rendez-le moi’, a ‘Romance’ that begins:”Ah! s’il est dans notre village” and was written by Jean Pierre Claris de Florian (1755-94). Indeed, as a figure she would remain utterly shadowy to us if it were not for the  raconteur Captain Rees Howell Gronow (1794-1865), an officer in the Welsh Grenadiers and man about town whose Reminiscences and and Recollections [about]  the camp, clubs, court and society, 1810-1860 tells us

Among those of the fashionable world in London who patronised music … no one was more conspicuous than Lady Flint; whose charming concerts, given generally on Sunday at her house in Birdcage Walk, delighted all who had musical tastes and enjoyed the honour of an invitation. (London: John Nimmo, 1900, vol. 2, p. 267)

Gronow continues with an anecdote about the disruptive effect of noisy tea-drinkers on the musicians at one such event, establishing that the repertory performed included  violin concerto by Beethoven. Lady Flint counted among those who would perform at her concerts some of the leading London musicians of the day- including the acclaimed pianist-composers Jan Ladislav Dussek and Johann Baptiste Cramer, the “celebrated” violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti, and the double-bassist Domenico Dragonetti. From this one small anecdote we catch a glimpse of a woman of taste and discernment whose exposure to the best music and musicians of her day surely inspired her own imaginative responses to Moore’s lyrics.

Project ERIN is pleased to make available a recording from Lady Flint’s Five Songs, including a performance by BMUS students (graduating class of 2017) of the duet, “Farewell to thee Araby’s Daughter”

‘.

The performers are: Courtney Burns, soprano; Matthew Campbell, tenor; Poppy Wheeler, flute; Linzi Jones, violin; Jenny Garrett, piano.