Irish and Proud

Guinness. Leprechauns. Potatoes. Mood swings. Beethoven. 
Nothing says Ireland like Beethoven.

George Thomson (1757 - 1851) spent 59 years working in Edinburgh for the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Art and Manufactures in Scotland, a body set up to improve Scottish trade and commerce. He also spent the bulk of his leisure time collecting Scottish and Welsh folk melodies, commissioning famous composers to write arrangements around them, then finding poets willing to provide appropriate lyrics. 

Having published two volumes of Scottish melodies, Thomson's friend, poet Robbie Burns, floated the idea to Thomson of collecting Irish melodies and repeating the process. Thomas was into it, collected the melodies, many from his friends, and reached out to renowned Irish composer, Ludwig Van Beethoven, to write some arrangements.

As a proud Irishman, Beethoven agreed to healthy terms of payment, and wrote the songs. 

Here's the thing though: he wrote arrangements to the melodies without any lyrics. Thomson added lyrics he thought would be appropriate after the fact. So, kicking every accepted songwriting rule right in the blarneys, Beethoven wrote the music with no knowledge of what lyrics would go with it. I'm sure it happens, but for these songs it was the rule, not the exception. 

To my ear, the resulting arrangements are beautiful, but don't sound remotely Irish. They're like Irish melodies behaving themselves after getting yelled at by German police. 

I will listen to them all, but today here's a little romance. 

The lyrics are a poem by Lord Byron, called "On Parting".  The song is called "The Kiss, Dear Maid , Thy Lip Hath Left", Op 224, WoO 153, No. 9. It's an achey song of leave-taking, love, longing, kissing and waiting. I love the heart-beat pulse in the violin line and the sweet light tenor of Robert White really adds to the Irishness, not that Beethoven could be any more Irish. 

The kiss, dear maid, thy lip has left,
Shall never part from mine,
Till happier hours restore the gift
Untainted back to thine.

Thy parting glance, which fondly beams,
An equal love, may see;
That tear that from thine eyelid streams
Can weep no change in me.

I ask no pledge to make me blest
In gazing when alone;
Nor one memorial for a breast
Whose thoughts are all thine own.

Nor need I write - to tell the tale
My pen were doubly weak:
Oh! What can idle words avail,
Unless the heart could speak?

By day or night, in weal or woe,
That heart, no longer free,
Must bear the love it cannot show,
And silent ache for thee.