daron aric hagen

The story told by The Antient Concert concerns itself with the 1904 Feis Ceoil competition recital on 27 August 1904 in the Antient Concert Rooms in Dublin, Ireland. Legend has it that John McCormack and James Joyce competed that night in the Tenor singing competition. There is no documentary evidence of this; however, Joyce did win the Bronze Medal that year (it is said that he did not agree with the stipulation that competitors demonstrate their musicianship by doing some sight-reading, and left the stage). Many believe that it was McCormack's 1903 win of the Gold Medal that launched his career.

For the purpose of telling a story about the collision of words, music, performance, competitiveness, guilt, sex, death, and nationalism, the authors chose five traditional ballads that Joyce and McCormack may have performed that evening, and used them as the musical and textual foundation upon which the piece is built. Accordingly, throughout the recital, the characters alternate between performing reinterpretations of the original words and music of the ballads for the audience and — as they express their internal thoughts — new words and music based on those ballads.

The Five Ballads
1. Salley Gardens
Yeats’ poem was published in Crossways in 1889, and was probably inspired by an 18thcentury song called The Rambling Boys of Pleasure. The tune is the traditional Irish ballad The Maids of Mourne Shore.

2. The Harp That Once
Moore’s ballad has long been associated with the traditional air Gramachree, found in M’Gibbon’s Scots Tunes Bk. II (1716) as Will You Go To Flanders.

3. You’re as Welcome as the Flowers in May
The original tune (words and music) was penned by Daniel J. Sullivan in the early 20th century.

4. Tho’ the Last Glimpse of Erin
In 1543, Henry VIII passed laws regarding the dress of the Irish. Thomas Moore set his words to the traditional air Coulin, which concerned an Irish virgin who preferred her “Coulin” (an Irish youth with long hair) to strangers. The song is about preferring exile to the oppression of English law.

5. The Croppy Boy
Although similar to an Elizabethan lute tune called Callino Custurame, it is more likely that this air is an adaptation of an Irish song of the 18th century called Cailín O’Chois Siure Mé. New Geneva, referred to in the original lyric and in The Antient Concert, refers to the village in County Waterford, where in 1798 the British maintained a prison and torture house.