With respect to the verses which I have written for these Melodies, as they are intended rather to be sung than read, I can answer for their sound with somewhat more confidence than for their sense. Yet it would be affectation to deny that I have given much attention to the task, and that it is not through want of zeal or industry, if I unfortunately disgrace the sweet airs of my country, by poetry altogether unworthy of their taste, their energy, and their tenderness.
THOMAS MOORE: ‘Prefatory Letter on Music’, from Irish Melodies
The son of a Dublin grocer, Moore was educated at Trinity College, came to London in 1799 to study law at the Middle Temple, and a year later translated Anacreon’s Odes, which he dedicated to the Prince of Wales, thus launching himself on a successful poetical and social career. Thomas Moore’s claim that he had ‘an instinctive turn for rhyme and song’ has been endorsed by posterity. Though his early publications – The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little (1801) and Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (1806) – are now little read, his Irish Melodies, and National Airs (which were published as a multi-national sequel), have always enjoyed enormous popularity. The poems were grafted onto mostly eighteenth-century airs, largely drawn from anthologies of ancient harp music, especially the collections of Edward Bunting. Ten volumes of Irish Melodies were published in London and Dublin between 1808 and 1834 by James and William Power, earning Moore as much as £100 a song. Moore’s friend Sir John Stevenson provided the accompaniments for the first eight volumes, but they were soon considered too intricate for the simple beauty of the airs; the Power brothers fell out, William stopped publishing the Melodies in Dublin, and the last volumes were issued by James Power in London, with simpler accompaniments by Henry Rowley Bishop. Michael William Balfe wrote new accompaniments to the songs in 1859. In the advertisement to National Airs (1819–28) Moore wrote:
It is Cicero, I believe, who says, Natura ad modos ducimur [‘By nature we are led to melody’]; and the abundance of wild indigenous airs which almost every country except England possesses, sufficiently proves the truth of his assertion. The lovers of this simple but interesting kind of music are here presented with the first number of a collection, which I trust their contributions will enable us to continue. A pretty air without words resembles one of those half creatures of Plato, which are described as wandering, in search of the remainder of themselves, through the world. To supply this other half, by uniting with congenial words the many fugitive melodies which have hitherto had none, or only such as are unintelligible to the generality of their hearers, is the object and ambition of the present work. Neither is it our intention to confine ourselves to what are strictly called National Melodies; but wherever we meet with any wandering and beautiful air, to which poetry has not yet assigned a worthy home, we shall venture to claim it as an estray swan, and enrich our humble Hippocrene with its song.
He then prints poems to over seventy airs of Cashmerian, Catalonian, English, French, German, Highland, Hungarian, Indian, Italian, Languedocian, Mahratta, Maltese, Neapolitan, Portuguese, Russian, Savoyard, Scotch, Sicilian, Spanish, Swedish, Swiss, Venetian and Welsh origin. His Irish Melodies eventually earned him an income of £5,000 a year, but when in 1819 his deputy registrar at the Admiralty Court in Bermuda absconded with £6,000, Moore was compelled to flee the country to avoid arrest.
An accomplished musician with an attractive voice, Moore was soon regarded as the national bard of Ireland. He also had a talent for satire, manifested in Intercepted Letters: or The Twopenny Post Bag (1813), in which he pilloried the Prince Regent. Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance was commissioned by Longmans and published in 1817 – a romantically exotic volume, written in the wake of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), The Corsair (1814), The Siege of Corinth and Parisina (1816). Moore returned to satire in The Fudge Family in Paris (1818). The Loves of the Angels (1823), another attempt at orientalism, proved to be as financially successful as Lalla Rookh.
Moore became a close friend of Byron, when the latter returned from the eastern Mediterranean in 1811, and their friendship lasted till Byron’s death. Byron gave Moore his memoirs when the latter visited Venice in 1819, and Moore – with Byron’s approval – subsequently sold them to John Murray for posthumous publication. When they were burned after Byron’s death, Moore was incandescent with rage. He made some amends by publishing his own Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of His Life in 1830, which moved Macaulay to declare that ‘it deserves to be classed among the best specimens of English prose which our age has produced’. Moore also wrote a Life of Sheridan (1825), The Epicurean (1827), a novel about a Greek philosopher, a Life of Edward Fitzgerald (1831) and a History of Ireland (1835–46). He was awarded a Civil List pension in 1850.
Robert Schumann included Freiligrath’s translations of two of Moore’s poems in Myrthen, his wedding present for Clara, and also used Lallah Rookh, for which Moore was paid an astonishing advance of £3,000, as the basis of Das Paradies und die Peri (1843). Berlioz, too, was greatly influenced by Moore’s Irish Melodies, partly no doubt because of his passion for the Irish Shakespearian actress Harriet Smithson. With Thomas Gounet, who translated the poems into French, Berlioz published the Neuf mélodies (Irlande) at his own expense in February 1830, and such was the success that it was not long before people were talking enthusiastically about these new mélodies, thus coining unwittingly the very word by which the French art song became known.
Oh! breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade,
Where cold and unhonour’d his relics are laid;
Sad, silent and dark be the tears that we shed,
As the night-dew that falls on the grass o’er his head.
But the night-dew that falls, though in silence it weeps,
Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps;
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,
Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.
(Hughes)
Composed in 1829–30, these songs were first published in 1830 under the title Neuf mélodies/imitées de l’anglais/(Irish Melodies)/pour/une et deux voix, et chœur/avec accompagnement de piano. It was not until the third edition (1849) that the songs were re-christened Irlande, with the subtitle Neuf mélodies.
How dear to me the hour when daylight dies,
And sunbeams melt along the silent sea,
For then sweet dreams of other days arise,
And memory breathes her vesper sigh to thee.
And, as I watch the line of light, that plays
Along the smooth wave tow’rd the burning west,
I long to tread that golden path of rays,
And think ’twould lead to some bright isle of rest.
(Sjögren)
Rich and rare were the gems she wore,
And a bright gold ring on her wand she bore;
But, oh! her beauty was far beyond
Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand.
‘Lady, dost thou not fear to stray,
So lone and lovely, through this bleak way?
Are Erin’s sons so good or so cold,
As not to be tempted by woman or gold?’
‘Sir Knight! I feel not the least alarm,
No son of Erin will offer me harm:
For, though they love women and golden store,
Sir Knight! they love honour and virtue more!’
On she went, and her maiden smile
In safety lighted her round the green isle;
And blest for ever is she who relied
Upon Erin’s honour and Erin’s pride.
(Britten)
’Tis believ’d that this Harp, which I wake now for thee,
Was a Siren of old, who sung under the sea;
And who often, at eve, thro’ the bright waters rov’d,
To meet, on the green shore, a youth whom she lov’d.
But she lov’d him in vain, for he left her to weep,
And in tears, all the night her gold tresses to steep;
Till heav’n looked with pity on true-love so warm,
And chang’d to this soft Harp the sea-maiden’s form.
Still her bosom rose fair – still her cheeks smiled the same –
While her sea-beauties gracefully form’d the light frame;
And her hair, as, let loose, o’er her white arm it fell,
Was changed to bright chords, uttering melody’s spell.
Hence it came, that this soft Harp so long hath been known
To mingle love’s language with sorrow’s sad tone;
Till thou didst divide them, and teach the fond lay
To speak love when I’m near thee, and grief when away.
(Taneyev)
Row gently here, my gondolier; so softly wake the tide,
That not an ear on earth may hear, but hers to whom we glide.
Had Heaven but tongues to speak, as well as starry eyes to see,
Oh! think what tales ’twould have to tell of wandering youths like me!
Now rest thee here, my gondolier; hush, hush, for up I go,
To climb yon light balcony’s height, while thou keep’st watch below.
Ah! did we take for heaven above but half such pains as we
Take day and night for woman’s love what angels we should be!
(Jensen)
When through the piazzetta
Night breathes her cool air,
Then, dearest Ninetta,
I’ll come to thee there.
Beneath thy mask shrouded,
I’ll know thee afar,
As Love knows, though clouded,
His own Evening Star.
In garb, then, resembling
Some gay gondolier,
I’ll whisper thee, trembling,
‘Our bark, love, is near!
Now, now, while there hover
Those clouds o’er the moon,
’Twill waft thee safe over
Yon silent Lagoon.’
(Jensen, Mendelssohn)
At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly
To the lone vale we lov’d, when life shone warm in thine eye;
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air,
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there,
And tell me our love is remember’d, even in the sky!
Then I sing the wild song ’twas once such pleasure to hear!
When our voices commingling, breath’d, like one, on the ear;
And, as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls,
I think, oh my love! ’tis thy voice, from the Kingdom of Souls,
Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.
(Cowen, MacCunn, Wood)
(To a Scotch air)
Oft in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood’s years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber’s chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
The friends, so linked together,
I’ve seen around me fall,
Like leaves in wintry weather;
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber’s chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
(Gibbs, Parry)
(to the air ‘Groves of Blarney’)2
’Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh.
I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one!
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go sleep thou with them.
Thy leaves o’er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love’s shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie wither’d
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
(Nelson)