O’ Carolan, Sir Walter Scott, and Beethoven Collaborate

FPB posts an impressive art song adaptation of one of the old Irish tunes. The tune is “Young Terrence O’Donough” (“Toirrdealbhach Og Mac Donnchadh”, aka “McDonough’s Lamentation”) by the great O’Carolan, but the song is “The Return to Ulster,” with words taken from the vast poetic corpus of Sir Walter Scott. This is one of 25 Irish songs arranged by Beethoven (who loved both Scott and Scottish and Irish music, like any self-respecting Romantic). (There were two other collections of 37 other Irish songs, and a few more here and there.)

The project was set up as a moneymaking proposition by the Scottish sheet music publisher George Thomson, who provided Beethoven with good old tunes and matched them with “arty” lyrics from various sources. (His previous go-to guy was Haydn, who arranged a bunch of Scottish and Welsh tunes for Thomson, but allegedly didn’t have the energy for an Irish collection.) The intended audience was at-home groups of piano, cello or violin, and singer. (But the songs were designed so you could have piano alone, violin alone, or duets also.) In response, it seems that Beethoven came up with some very solid, popular stuff over the course of a decade. But apparently it was too easy-peasy to get much attention from classical music mavens, until now, when hardly anybody plays piano at home. (But there’s been a couple of Celtic music revivals, too, which helps.)

Irish art songs from this period, of this sort, were often either old harp tunes or trying to be. But this is one of the last of the old harp tunes, by one of the last of the old harpers and one of the greatest of Irish composers. It’s bittersweet, because the pianoforte/harpsichord (and Irish poverty) destroyed the harpers, but also preserved their work. (And Scott’s poem refers to this decline of the harpers, so Beethoven is referring to it also. The frontispiece of the book was a picture of St. Cecilia as an Irish gentlewoman playing Irish harp, so Thomson was milking this hunger for lost harp music also.)

By using the cello as well as piano, the traditional harping sound of a simultaneous melody and bass line, with constant variations, can be created by home musicians. But Beethoven does his own “modern” thing, too. There’s a lot going on, in a small space.

“Young Terence McDonough” was written in memory of the son of Terence O’Donogh, the only Catholic barrister allowed to practice in Ireland during the years 1692 to 1718.

Other tunes arranged by Beethoven include “Planxty Kelly”, “Abigail Judge” (here’s a non-Beethoven link), “The Pretty Girl Milking Her Cows” (“Cailin Deas Cruite na mBo”), “The Black Joke”, “The Snowy-Breasted Pearl”, “The Summer Is Coming”, “The Bold Dragoon”, “Garryowen”, “Peggy Bawn” (not the version we mostly know, but a pretty tune), “Kitty of Coleraine”, “The Twisting of the Rope”, “St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning”, “The Moreen” (aka “The Minstrel Boy”, after Moore got done with it), and “The Groves of Blarney”. Most of the lyrics are by Joanna Baillie or William Smyth, but there’s several by Scott and Boswell. (Gotta keep up the Scottish lawyer-literary combo!) There’s also at least one by Byron (“The Kiss, Dear Maid, Thy Lip Has Left” to a nameless tune) and several by Burns. A lot of Beethoven sources are kinda confused about Scottish versus Irish songs, partly because Thomson did some mingling. (For example, this arrangement of the tune “Tell Me, Dear Eveleen”.)

The useful thing here is that some of the Really Old Tunes show up on the classical side also, which I didn’t know. Good for Thomson!

Dearbhail Finnegan playing O’Carolan’s “Bridget Cruise” on an Irish harp.

“Brian Boru’s March” on harp, demonstrating the use of bass line with one hand and melody with the other. This was so typical for Irish harp tunes that it almost went without saying.

There were two kinds of old harp: gut-strung (for a softer sound) and metal-strung (for the big harps played by using long fingernails as picks, which was what the old Irish harpers preferred, and which was why there was a fine on anyone who damaged their fingernails).

Paul Dooley playing a little metal-strung harp with his fingernails.

Here’s a guy dressed up as Thorin playing a big metal-strung harp.

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