Monthly Archives: August 2016

Moore and European Art Music part II

In the previous post we considered Moore’s regular music activities as an appreciative auditor, a well-received performer, and a keen music copyist.  This blog will explore the intersection between Moore’s social experience of music and his professional use of it. For Moore, the process of performing songs as he was working on them–and also after they were published as a means of promoting sales — was an established practice. On one occasion over a six-week period we we see him creating  lyrics to an instrumental notturne by the contemporary Italian composer Giuseppe Felice Blangini (1781-1841), and testing the piece out in performance with a social acquaintance Miss Canning before sending it off to his usual music publisher James Power.

NA 3

Decorative book cover from Moore and Henry Bishop’s National Airs,  number 3

At times Moore’s Journal is frustratingly sketchy — for example, on 29 July 1822 he merely tells us: “sent off today to Power the slight sketch of a Song to a little air of Beethoven’s”. (Given the date, this probably refers to ‘Like morning, when her early Breeze’ from number 2 of his Sacred Songs, as it came out in 1824.)  On other occasions, however, we get some indication how Moore’s creative processes were stimulated. From a series of Journal entries we can glean the story of Moore’s discovery of an air by Neapolitan composer Michele Enrico Carafa, “O Cara Memoira” and his eventual success at writing lyrics for it. Moore first encountered this tune on 31 October 1824 at the Bowood residence of his patron Lord Lansdowne, where Lady Pembroke sang it and Moore was immediately moved to copy it out. On 15-16 November he reported a lack of success at putting words to the song; inspiration struck on 11 January 1825 when, upon walking to Bowood from his own cottage, Moore “wrote a verse of a song to Carafa’s beautiful air in going” [i.e. during his walk]. And so by mid-January a new song was ready to send to James Power.

Like Morning, SS2

Opening bars of Moore’s lyrics and Henry Bishop’s arrangement of Beethoven’s ‘Like Morning when her early breeze’ from Sacred Songs, number 2.

In a similar tale of inspiration, Moore records hearing Ferdinando Paer and his daughter sing at the Comte de Flahaut’s residence during his Paris sojourn (23 Dec. 1819); he was struck by their rendition with Flahaut of a “very pretty” trio, a harmonization by Paer of “an air that they sing to bagpipes at Rome in Christmas time”. Moore resolved that he “must have it for my National Melodies” (Dowden has identified this as ‘See, the Dawn from Heaven’ from number 3 of Moore’s National Airs). Moore, who was generally a ‘chatty’ writer in both his journal and in his letters, has likely left us more tales of interest to discover over the course of our project.

See the Dawn, NA3

Opening bars of Moore and Henry Bishop’s arrangement of the Roman bagpipe air, National Airs, number 3.

Images courtesy of Special Collections, McClay Library, Queen’s University Belfast.

Thomas Moore and European Art Music part I

Moore had a profound response to music, which could move him to tears–even in a public setting. This blog will sketch its presence in his every-day life. Oddly, he was not given music lessons as a child, but seems to have been stimulated by his sister’s lessons on the piano and the presence of the instrument in his family home. Music  for Moore was a form of release. On 27 Sept. 1818, after a day of hard work on his biography of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, he relaxed by copying out a Benedictus of Mozart and the “Et incarnatus est” of Haydn, describing these composers as “both the ‘merum sal’ of music”, playing and singing his new acquisitions before supper with his wife Bessy and one “Mary D”. After the ladies retired that evening, Moore played some piano sonatas of Muzio Clementi, an act which reminded him of hearing his own sister play the very same pieces when he was a child. And so as a youth Moore developed a particular appreciation for the leading European masters of the ‘Classical’ era — Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), and Ludwig van Beethoven  (1770-1827). His Journal frequently details his encounters of theirs (and other’s) music in domestic settings — remember at this time people made their own entertainment in the evening, and informal concerts or music-making sessions amongst friends was common. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/The_Hon._Charlotte_Stuart_and_The_Hon._Louisa_Stuart%2C_1830_by_George_Hayter.jpg/512px-The_Hon._Charlotte_Stuart_and_The_Hon._Louisa_Stuart%2C_1830_by_George_Hayter.jpg Continue reading →