Category Archives: Horizon 2020

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.

 

Resources for Thomas Moore in the Digital Age: Music, Illustrations, and Stories

On Monday 28 May 2018 (the day of Moore’s birth in 1779), Sarah McCleave will introduce the resources of project ERIN in a public talk, “Thomas Moore in the digital age: music, illustrations, stories”, as part of the ‘Meet the Music Series’ for  Queen’s University Belfast. This will take place at 19:00 in the Old McMordie Hall, Music (University Square, Belfast). Sound files, image banks, and the catalogue will be introduced to those present. (The catalogue now has 500 of a projected circa 800 publications entered into it.) ALL are welcome and no tickets are required.

Peri with dead lovers.Jones and Warren
Peri with dead lovers.Jones and Warren

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

Readers of the blog are reminded that the image banks (four collections) and associated narrative online exhibitions are already available  (http://omeka.qub.ac.uk/). NEWLY available are the texts and powerpoints from four presentations undertaken by Triona O’Hanlon and Sarah McCleave during May-June 2017: see the Queen’s University Belfast open access institutional repository, https://pure.qub.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/sarah-mccleave [‘Publications’ 2017].

Future posts of the blog in 2018 will make available some  recordings of the Irish Melodies featuring young singers from the BMUS at Queen’s; we will also offer features on particular pieces which can be traced across project ERIN’s resources.

SMI 2017 Plenary Lecture Part 2

On Saturday 17 June Dr Sarah McCleave and Dr Tríona O’Hanlon presented the plenary lecture at the 2017 SMI Conference, Queen’s University Belfast. The title of the lecture is Project ERIN and the Response of European Composers to Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh. The lecture provides a case study of Spontini’s Lalla Rookh, an overview of Project ERIN and its outputs. You may listen to the second part of the lecture, delivered by Dr Sarah McCleave, here.

 

SMI 2017 Plenary Lecture

On Saturday 17 June Dr Sarah McCleave and Dr Tríona O’Hanlon presented the plenary lecture at the 2017 SMI Conference, Queen’s University Belfast. The title of the lecture is Project ERIN and the Response of European Composers to Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh. The lecture provides a case study of Spontini’s Lalla Rookh, an overview of Project ERIN and its outputs. You may listen to the first part of the lecture, delivered by Dr Tríona O’Hanlon, here. The second part, delivered by Dr Sarah McCleave, will be uploaded in our next blog on 8 October.

 

Tune in to the Lyric Feature

The ERIN radio documentary “An oriental romance: Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh” will be broadcast on the Lyric Feature on Sunday 10 September at 6pm on RTÉ Lyric fm. The documentary outlines the story of Moore’s Lalla Rookh and focuses on the variety of musical works it inspired. The documentary, which was produced in collaboration with Dublin-based Rockfinch Ltd., has been in preparation since June 2016. Contributors to the programme include the following:

Spoken Contributors: Dr Daniel Roberts (QUB), Dr Sarah McCleave (QUB), Dr Tríona O’Hanlon (QUB), Siobhán Fitzpatrick (RIA Library), Gerry Long (National Library of Ireland), Aoife O’Sullivan (DIT), Martha O’Brien (DIT), Sinéad Campbell-Wallace (DIT), Helen Aiken (QUB), Anja Bunzel (NUIM)

Artistic Contributors: Dr Sarah McCleave (QUB), Dr Tríona O’Hanlon (QUB), Sinéad Campbell-Wallace (DIT)

Performers: Aoife O’ Sullivan (DIT), Martha O’Brien (DIT), Helen Aiken (QUB)

Technician & Technical Assistant: Dr David Bird (QUB), Oisín Hughes (QUB)

Producer & Narrator: Claire Cunningham (Rockfinch Ltd.)

Image courtesy of pixabay.com.

A taster of ERIN’s collection of sound files

Lalla Rookh with Feramorz in the Vale of Cashmere

Lalla Rookh and Feramorz in the Vale of Cashmere

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

A collection of no fewer than forty-one sound files from three performance events, promoted by and supported by project ERIN, will be made available soon through our project website. The first was a Lalla Rookh bi-cententary concert performed (and also recorded) by year 3 students in the BMus of Queen’s University Belfast, which took place in the Harty Room on 11 May 2017. We re-told the story of Lalla Rookh through a selection of songs and pieces taken from larger works inspired by, or based on, Moore’s oriental romance. The selected recording is an arrangement of the ‘Slow March’ from Frederic Clay’s 1877 cantata Lalla Rookh, performed here by flautists Ciara Jackson and Poppy Wheeler, violinist Linzi Jones, and clarinettist Gerard Mullay. The recording engineer is Jason Jackson.

Further audio files from this concert feature the music of Félicien David, Robert Schumann, Thomas Attwood, Charles Villiers Stanford, and Sir John Stevenson, among others.

The second sound file is taken from the second concert to mark the bi-centenary of Lalla Rookh, at the Sonic Lab in SARC, Queen’s University Belfast, on 17 June 2017. Performers Helen Aiken (mezzo), Martha O’Brien (mezzo), and Aoife O’Sullivan (piano) performed music by Schumann, Stanford, John Francis Barnett and George Kiallmark, among others. Fiddle player Conor Caldwell provided a medley of his own arrangements and those of Tommy Potts to tunes associated with Thomas Moore. In the sample provided here, Helen Aiken and Aoife O’Sullivan (as recorded by David Bird) perform Danish composer George Gerson’s  “Tell me not of joys above”. The lyrics are derived from an episode near the end of  Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh: the princess and her beloved poet are estranged; he sings this touching song to her whilst hidden in a tree.

Over thirty additional tracks — many of music that is rarely heard — will be available on the project website soon. We will also offer some recordings of favorite Irish Melodies in distinct settings or editions.

The future of Project ERIN

ERIN completes its funded stage today, 31 August 2017. We are grateful to the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, co-funded by the European Union, for the opportunity to work on such interesting material, and to make it available to the public.

The website for project ERIN will be launched during autumn 2017. It will serve as an ‘open access’ gateway to the following resources, some of which are already available through sites hosted by Queen’s University Belfast:

– four collections published on the OMEKA platform

– four exhibits published on the OMEKA platform

– a collection of forty-one sound files, taken from two concerts to mark the bicentenary of Lalla Rookh as well as a selection of Irish Melodies

– a catalogue of over 800 published sources of Moore’s music, drawn from no fewer than eight European repositories

– the project blog, ‘Thomas Moore in Europe’

The blog will continue to appear at least once a month to serve these functions:

1. To advise our readers regarding the publication of outputs such as the radio documentary on Lalla Rookh
2. To make available certain outputs, such as our lecture for the SMI Plenary conference in June 2017.
3. To report on progress regarding on-going outputs such as the catalogue or a planned anthology of essays, “Thomas Moore and the Global Marketplace”
4. To highlight particular items in the collections or the catalogue

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

Irish Melodies [music and illustrations].London London, [1880].Frontispiece

Launching ERIN’S Collections and Exhibitions

We are pleased to launch four collections and four exhibitions on the OMEKA platform, as hosted by Special Collections & Archives, Queen’s University Belfast at the following link: http://omeka.qub.ac.uk

The collections, comprising a total of over 200 items largely drawn from the Moore Collection at Queen’s, are as follows:

Music to Moore’s Irish Melodies

Moore’s Irish Melodies: Texts and Illustrations
Moore’s National Airs in Europe
Lalla Rookh in 19th-century Europe

The exhibits are as follows:
Music to Moore’s Irish Melodies in Dublin and London
Moore’s Irish Melodies in Europe
The dissemination of Moore’s National Airs in Europe
The tales and travels of Lalla Rookh

 

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

Lalla Rookh
Lalla Rookh drawn by Kenny Meadows, engraved by J. Hollis

 

 

ERIN: THE ACRONYM AND LOGO

30 January 2016

Erin Logo PNG

Today’s blog aims to tell our readers about the inspiration behind our project name and logo.  The acronym ERIN stands for Europe’s Reception of the Irish Melodies and National Airs.  I can think of the titles of three Irish Melodies that include the word ‘Erin’: “Erin, the tear and the smile in thine eyes”; “Erin, Oh Erin” and “Let Erin remember the days of old”.  The word Erin used in this context is very powerful as it has both nostalgic and nationalistic connotations; themes very central to Moore’s work.  When it came to choosing an acronym for our project we felt it was important to come up with something catchy yet suitable to the subject area.  The acronym had to be decided at the funding application stage.  During the early stages of our project we decided to have a logo designed.  We were particularly inspired by Moore’s Egan harp, which is now owned by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) in Dublin.  We were very keen to incorporate an image using or based on this beautiful and ornate harp into our logo.  We would like to acknowledge our thanks and appreciation to Siobhán Fitzpatrick and the staff at the RIA who very kindly and generously facilitated our request. We would also like to thank and acknowledge Darragh Neely of Darragh Neely Design Works who designed our logo.  For more information about the Royal Irish Academy Library and Darragh Neely Design Works please visit the links below.  Let us know in the comments what you think of our acronym and logo.  Check out the Wikipedia entry for the word Erin and see what varied logos you can find if you Google search Erin!

www.ria.ie/library

www.darraghneely.com

WELCOME

20 January 2016

Image Blog Post 1

ERIN, a Horizon 2020 funded research project hosted by Queen’s University Belfast, was launched on 1 September 2015.  The aim of this research project is to map Europe’s response to Thomas Moore by examining the dissemination and reception of the Irish Melodies, National Airs and the music associated with Lalla Rookh.  This blog is a platform for sharing our work and will allow interested readers to track the progress of our research project while also providing a forum for discussion.  We expect to make some exciting discoveries along the way and will be posting content twice a month.

Irish poet-songwriter Thomas Moore (1779-1852) is a significant nineteenth-century figure, renowned for his articulation of national identity through the creation and exchange of poetry and song.  Early printed sources for the Irish Melodies, National Airs and Lalla Rookh are extant in libraries throughout Europe.  Our research begins with the Gibson-Massie-Moore Collection housed in Special Collections at the McClay Library, Queen’s University Belfast.  The Gibson-Massie-Moore collection is the largest collection of Moore’s published works in the world; it contains over 1,000 volumes of printed music, texts and volumes of illustrations.  We will keep you posted as we develop the various outputs of this project.

Image Courtesy of ContentDM Thomas Moore Music Project

http://cdm15979.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15979coll12