Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University (Continued)

 

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University (Continued 2024)

January 7 2024

My thanks to the friends and colleagues who noticed the anniversary of the start of my relationship with London Metropolitan University, and my role there, Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies...

And, yes, London Metropolitan University and I have (quietly) agreed that we should continue our relationship for a further year.  We have plans.

My thanks to Don MacRaild, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange, and Lynn Dobbs, Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of London Metropolitan University. 

I must also thank the patient staff of London Metropolitan University, especially in the Library and in Research Support - who have been so helpful in difficult times.

Our thing, this Visiting Professor thing, began towards the end of 2019.  Then and early in 2020 I held a series of meetings in London - making links, exploring ideas and possible projects.  I walked and talked.  London, with its complex past and present, and its many academic strengths, ought to be a world centre for Diaspora Studies.  It isn't.

Well, as you know, all plans were kiboshed by the pandemic.  I wrote a (rather sad) little note, which is still there on my blog...

 https://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/2020/06/visiting-professor-of-irish-diaspora.html

And I am still sad.  Here are some rock pools of sadness, chosen from many such pools...

 

1.

Notre Autre Voisin...

It was always obvious, and was even more obvious in 2020, that, if we wanted to develop Irish Diaspora Studies in London, in the South of England, we should reach out to our colleagues in France.  Especially in Northern France, a few hours away.

And this was working well.  For example, our colleagues at the University of Caen, and Caen University Press, made available to us, as a gift to London Metropolitan University, a selection of their books in our field.  The books arrived just in time to be locked away, as the virus crisis took hold.

But we have, thankfully, stayed in touch online with our colleagues in France - there have been online gatherings.  Always in Irish Diaspora Studies, when I am struggling to explain a train of thought, perfect examples present themselves.  I think here particularly of Nathalie Sebbane's presentation, the thought behind her book about the Magdalene Laundries...  See...

Sebbane, N. (2021) Memorialising the Magdalene Laundries: From Story to History. Peter Lang .

For me, in the background, in this conversation with Ireland's Other Neighbour, is a developing project about differing national and scholarly/academic approaches to Irish matters -  it is an 'Irish Diaspora Studies' critique of 'Irish Studies'.  I have quietly collected the material for many years...

This must now be, in part, a dialogue with the 2021 Handbook edited by Renée Fox and colleagues...

Fox, R., Cronin, M. and Ó Conchubhair, B. (2021) Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies. Routledge.

...especially a dialogue with Michael Cronin's chapter 3, 'Irish Studies in the non-Anglophone world'.

This is that Michael Cronin, of Trinity College Dublin - whose work on translation we admire and use.

Not Mike Cronin, Boston College, one of the Editors of the Handbook - who is also admired.  Mike Cronin's own chapter in the Handbook is Chapter 10, 'Connections and capital: the diaspora and Ireland’s global networks'.

Similar dialogue with Michael and Mike. And all good wishes...

Thus we are in meditation with a remark by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, that 'Irish Studies' was invented by Joseph Campbell at Fordham, in 1926...  See p11 of...

Campbell, J. and Ní Chuilleanáin, E. (2001) ‘As I was Among the Captives’: Joseph Campbell’s Prison Diary, 1922-1923. Cork: Cork University Press.

We look at the different underpinnings, intellectual and structural, in different places, in the development of Irish Studies and Irish Diaspora Studies.  And specific difficulties...

 

2.

The Theology of Diaspora...

My notes on this began, long ago, with a reading of Nicholas Lash...

Lash, N. (1982) A Matter of Hope: A Theologian’s Reflections on the Thought of Karl Marx. Longman and Todd.

There have been notes shared, over the years, with a number of colleagues - I think now of Thomas O'Loughlin, in Nottingham.  And, more recently, Aidan Beatty, in Pittsburgh

Where would I begin nowadays?  Maybe with Jeremiah 29, which is both an Emigrant Letter (as we now understand these things) and a Diaspora Policy (as we now understand these things).

Or Diaspora This Worldly/Theology Next Wordly?

Certainly the Theology of Diaspora is something that needs to be refreshed, and there is enough interest to develop some kind of exploration and gathering.

(Recently, in a discussion elswhere, I made the interdisciplinary point that when the word, 'diaspora' moved from Greek literature and history - it is used mostly in histories - to the Greek language version of the Bible, it changed disciplines.  It moved from history to theology.)

 

3.

Rhyme And...

In recent times I have worked a lot alongside colleagues in what are broadly called the Digital Humanities.  I am the guy who asks the obvious questions - I do this because it is part of my role to collate the obvious answers.

It is complained, perhaps fairly, that too often the Digital Humanities represent a solution in search of a problem.  For this very reason I collect problems that will welcome Digital Humanities solutions.  These can be problems within Irish Diaspora Studies, or problems that can be given an Irish Diaspora Studies spin.

And so to Rhyme...  I am unusual amongst the poets of my generation in that I am comfortable with traditional poetic techniques.  I know how they work, and I know how to make them work...

I won't go into detail here - but we are in a strange golden age of Rhyme.  Rhyme has spread into cultures with no previous history of popular rhyming verse.  It might be the influence of Rap, or it might be the influence of John Skelton and Edith Sitwell...

But the obvious starting point - the spin - for us, today, is with W. B. Yeats.  And I can give my standard lecture on Yeats and Rhyme.

To my joy - when I began planning work for the Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies - I found myself exchanging notes with Marjorie Perloff, who seems as active and charming as ever.  (I am not.)

Her early book on Yeats...

Perloff, M. (1970) Rhyme and Meaning in the Poetry of Yeats. Paris: Mouton

...has always seemed to me to offer a Digital Humanities approach.  Avant la lettre.

And now the software is in place, and I am in touch with the software developers - and we can test my observation.

Marjorie Perloff herself explains that behind her thesis, and the subsequent book, is the approach of Craig LaDrière, at the Catholic University, Washington.  LaDrière looked, in the study of literature, for things to measure - we are familiar with this approach in the social sciences and in the development of social policy.   I guess that LaDrière himself has pretty much disappeared from view - the Ezra Pound specialists might know the name.  LaDrière did some nice work on genre.  In her Memoir, p226, Marjorie Perloff comments that this focus on the 'ontology of poetry' put the Catholic University students, in a curious way, 'ahead of the game' in later developments in the worlds of theory.

There are moments when Marjorie Perloff's Memoir offers footnotes to Irish Diaspora Studies - like the series of chances that took her to the Catholic University, Washington, to sit alongside all those nuns and Christian Brothers, and study under LaDrière.  LaDrière would always arrive late to give his lectures, and would always begin his lectures by reciting the Hail Mary prayer.  In French.

Marjorie Perloff's own Memoir is a powerful, thoughtful, moving classic of Diaspora Studies - it is a book I would be happy to bring to a seminar.  I will be fulsome.

Perloff, M. (2004) The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir. New Directions Books.

It asks the question:  what does a little 4 year girl, of Jewish heritage, fleeing across the Atlantic from Anschluss Vienna, need to know?  It recounts how German-speaking Gabriele became English-speaking Marjorie - as Amerika became America.  The Memoir's Epilogue includes little nods to Terry Eagleton, on Wittgenstein of course, and to Yeats...

 

4.

And so forth...

5.

The Diaspora Dictum

...is:  Do what you can, where you are.  As opportunities arise, and when I am asked, I am getting back into the habit of academic lecturing and presentations - and have not done too badly, really, with projects about the Emigrant Letter, Ireland and the BBC, Jonathan Swift, Denis Johnston, Samuel Beckett, and more.  The themes outlined above give a flavour.  

I continue, as usual, the collation of research material and research advice.  Here in Yorkshire, I have given my support to the revived Bradford Irish Society - who have asked me to give a lecture on the Irish origins and interests of the Brontës.  That is the sort of thing I can do - an Irish Diaspora Studies approach.  Of course.

 

Patrick O'Sullivan

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies

London Metropolitan University 

January 7 2024

 

p.osullivan@londonmet.ac.uk

Patrick O'Sullivan's Whole Life Blog http://www.fiddlersdog.com/

Archive https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ooj5btdttc9y4/Documents

Archives of the Irish Diaspora List, 1997-2017 http://idslist.friendsov.com/

https://britishmusiccollection.org.uk/composer/patrick-osullivan

Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

 

 

 

Good Drying Day, sung by Shannon Marie Harney

Good Drying Day

Sung by Shannon Marie Harney

Lyric and Melody by Patrick O'Sullivan

New song out there, doing nicely...

Yes, a song about Doing the Laundry...

The song will be visible and audible on every other streaming platform, in due course...

Has already turned up on Apple...

Good Drying Day

https://music.apple.com/us/album/good-drying-day-single/1717826586

 

And Spotify...

https://open.spotify.com/track/1H4dFwc13IvmEWY16CDLL1

https://open.spotify.com/album/2WhXEzFHzGzs842EoQxulZ?si=Sj3uh0qETlGF07X4sA1v-g

 

And YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he61fkuRtl0

 

Worth listening on a higher quality platform, if you have access - to hear the detail of the arrangement...

Note that through Musixmatch Pro I am able to slot in lyrics on the platforms that will accept lyrics, like Spotify.

Musixmatch will even have a stab at translating lyrics...

https://www.musixmatch.com/es/letras/Shannon-Marie-Harney/Good-Drying-Day

 

This is the French...

https://www.musixmatch.com/es/letras/Shannon-Marie-Harney/Good-Drying-Day/traduccion/frances

In tidying the lyric I left enough subtext and back story in place, I think, to satisfy those who like subtext and backstory.  Others will not notice.  

What the BBC calls 'a certain brand' of washing machine plays a little phrase from Schubert's Trout at the end of its cycle.  

It is Samsung.  

So...  We quote Schubert at the beginning of Good Drying Day...

...and the laundry is done...

Patrick O'Sullivan

December 2023

The Spirit of My Song, by Metta Victoria Fuller and Stephen C. Foster

 

This is the link to my YouTube recording of

The Spirit of My Song

poetry by Metta Victoria Fuller, music by Stephen C. Foster

Video link

https://youtu.be/bpBikx2L-nc

In the weeks before Christmas, there is now a tradition that the members of UK Autoharps build an Advent Calendar - members develop and share a song, one member/one song per day, in the days leading up to Christmas.

It is a nice tradition.  It began in the days of lockdown and breakdown.

And The Spirit of My Song is my contribution, December 17, 2023...

 

1.

From my point of view there are a number of sub-traditions.

It has become a tradition that my offering to the UK Autoharps Advent Calendar develops from my exploration of the song archives - specifically the archives of Stephen Foster.

The Autoharp has a special relationship with these nineteenth century 'parlour songs' - for the parlour was one of the places where the Autoharp found a niche. 

The case study is the nineteenth century 'parlour song' which escaped from the parlour and, through the Carter Family, became a 'folk song', and an Autoharp standard - Wildwood Flower/ I'll Twine 'Mid the Ringlets.

Stephen Foster songs are usually very Autoharp-friendly.

 

2.

Often a feature of these parlour songs is their hard won 'poetic diction'.

We can take the discussion in any number of directions - one starting point is this note by the Academy of American Poets, on poets.org...

https://poets.org/glossary/poetic-diction

But...  Search on, search on...

I see this turn to poetic diction as part of the expansion of education and printing in the late nineteenth century, especially in the USA.

With due deference to Wordsworth, it would be very odd if we defined poetry in a way that made poets use ONLY everyday language in their poems.  Poets who use heightened, elaborate language, with arcane and unusual words, are not making a mistake.  They are exploring a resource - in many cases a resource that is, through education, new to them.  They are demonstrating a developing skill.  And some human experiences ask for heightened language.

 

3.

These thoughts arise from my work on...

The Spirit of My Song

poetry by Metta Victoria Fuller, music by Stephen C. Foster

This is the sheet music on the Library of Congress web site.

https://www.loc.gov/item/2011565323/

You can see that the LOC librarian wrote on the title page the date when the song entered the Library of Congress, 21 August 1850.

See also...

https://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/collection/068/124

Foster's Complete Songs

https://www.library.pitt.edu/foster-songs

In 1850 the poet, Metta Victoria Fuller, was 19 years old.

Let us see if we can find a way to treat her song with respect.

 

4.

There is a Wikipedia entry on Metta Fuller

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metta_Victoria_Fuller_Victor

You can see that, with marriage, her full name became Metta Victoria Fuller Victor...

But that was only one of her many, many names.  She became a successful professional writer, publishing under at least a dozen names, often masculine names, some weird masculine names like 'Seeley Regester' .

So, very hard to research...

See also

Women Writers and Detectives in Nineteenth-Century Crime Fiction

The Mothers of the Mystery Genre

Lucy Sussex

https://blogs.stockton.edu/litrecovery2019/metta-victoria-fuller-victor/

Metta Fuller is sometimes credited with bringing the detective into American crime fiction - her Mr. Burton does seem like a nod to Dickens' Mr. Bucket.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46708/46708-h/46708-h.htm#p1c5

 

5.

I first came across the text of The Spirit of My Song in the sheet music of 1850.

The text is also visible on Google Books in

Poems of Sentiment and Imagination: With Dramatic and Descriptive Pieces

By Frances A. Fuller, and Metta V. Fuller

Published in 1851

Page 211

TinyUrL

https://tinyurl.com/2nrsk9tk

(The New York Public Library, and Google Books, have made a mistake - in attaching Metta's later married name, Victor, to both sisters...)

Metta and Frances - Frances is the older sister - describe their poems as 'the first fruit offering of young hearts...'

And say that the poems 'have before appeared through various literary mediums...'

I assume that Stephen Foster saw the text in a journal, or it might have been sent to him for consideration.

Note that Metta Fuller's text does not have a chorus.  She does top and tail the lyric with the same four lines

Tell me, have you ever met her

Met the spirit of my song?

Have her wave-like footsteps glided

Through the city's worldly throng?

 

Those are the first 4 lines of the poem and they are the last 4 lines.

I deduce that Stephen Foster wanted a song with a chorus.  He knew his audience.

So, the Composer decided that the first four lines of the song would become the Chorus - and that is set out in the sheet music.

As ever the Melody has two parts, Melody A on the first 4 lines of the 8 line stanza, Melody B on the second 4 lines.

The repeats of those 4 lines as Chorus with Melody A, and the structure of the song, are Composer decisions.

We respect the decisions of the Poet and the Composer.  So, we get those 4 lines a total of 8 times, once in stanza 1, once in stanza 6, and in the 6 choruses.

And in stanza 6, where those 4 lines are the last lines of the poem, we sing the same 4 lines first on Melody B and then, back into the Chorus, on Melody A.

This is hard.

 

6.

Now, let me introduce another sub-tradition.  It turns out that my work for the UK Autoharps Advent Calendar becomes an investigation of the state of my health as the winter progresses...

There is a video from a previous year where you can see me, lashed to the microphone, determined to stay upright and give a performance.

This year, 2023...  Turns out I was having a slow motion health crisis.  I was ill throughout October - merely a Very Bad Cold.  Merely...  I lost October.

November was spent recovering and apologising.

I asked for extra time from the organisers of the Advent Calendar project - my thanks to Helen Slade and the other Autoharpers who stepped in to help.

In the video you can hear how ill I was.  We have left in some fluffs and spoonerisms.  We had to - there were so many.  Only sometimes do I hit that high note.

Have we invented the Raku Ware approach to the music video? - where the blemish is part of the process, and a part of the beauty?  Nah.

 

7.

I wanted the video and the performance to keep the Autoharp-friendly nature of Stephen Foster' setting.  And to respect the text.

This young Poet is pushing Poetic Diction.  Hard.  You have to take this on its own terms, and enjoy its effects.

There are some splendid effects - eyes that 'magnificently flash'.

So...  what is the song about?  What did Stephen Foster hear?  Who is the Spirit of Metta Fuller's song?

At one level, it must be a song about our Muse - the bringer of inspiration.  Perhaps Euterpe, the Muse of Music and Lyric Poetry, often shown carrying a flute, or Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance and Choral Song, with her lyre.

And in Metta Fuller's poem the Spirit has a lyre, and tries to teach Metta how to play the lyre.

But Metta Fuller's Spirit can be clearly seen, and met, walking through the crowds.  The text follows the Sprit into the home, into the parlour.  Where she brings inspiration, yes - and comfort and education.

I think that Metta Fuller is writing about her older sister, Frances.

So there it is - my contribution to the UK Autoharps Advent Calendar 2023.

But is this a Christmas Song?

Again, following Dickens – Christmas is when we see Spirits, and learn from them.

 

Patrick O'Sullivan

December 2023

 

Shannon Marie Harney sings The Border...

Shannon Marie Harney sings The Border...

We have released a new recording of the O'Sullivan/Edwards song, The Border.

The setting, the melody, is by Sue Edwards - who is well known to the autoharp community, of course.

And it is a very autoharp friendly melody - chords are G C D.  We have added a little Middle 8 section, Chords Em C G D.

Sue took a lyric of mine from my song lyric book, Love Death and Whiskey, pages 44-45, and set it.  I have always really liked this setting, and its embrace of repetition.  The patterns of repetition in the lyric interweave with the patterns of repetition in the melody.  Highlighting different phrases - different words and different melodic phrases.  It is the kind of repetition you would exploit in a song lyric, but not in a poem.  Very much the whole being greater than the sum.

The singer is Shannon Marie Harney.  I have said that my stuff is not a typical part of Shannon Marie's repertoire.  And, at first, she sang this song almost in rock chick mode - which I liked, and might have been happy with.

But we gave Shannon Marie her studio time - the song asserted itself, and took its own direction. 

I hope Sue Edwards is happy with the result.

The obvious links are pasted in below - but the song can be found wherever you look for your music...

I have also pasted in the Chordify link, so that you can see the pattern of the chords.  And the Google Books link to the song lyric book.

My thanks to Sue Edwards, to Shannon Marie Harney, and to Danny Yates, City Sound Studios.

 

1

YouTube

Provided to YouTube by CDBaby

The Border · Shannon Marie Harney

 ℗ 2023 Patrick Joseph O'Sullivan, Sue Edwards

 Released on: 2023-02-22

Auto-generated by YouTube.

https://youtu.be/I_AcH3jR8WY

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CXHKXfP1sd8lyFLQLllhQm2KWZMVS1I

 

2.

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/album/2tUHcIe1C4o7Agff5FvmwJ

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3z7aYsCGwhPh7mJ0apzu4u

 

3.

Amazon

https://music.amazon.com/albums/B0BWK8DTL2

https://music.amazon.com/artists/B0BNWBGPM5/shannon-marie-harney

 

4.

Chordify, Shannon Marie Harney, The Border

https://chordify.net/chords/the-border-shannon-marie-harney-topic

5.

Love Death and Whiskey - 40 Songs

By Patrick O'Sullivan · 2010

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Love_Death_and_Whiskey_40_Songs/Hw8XkeS_hlQC?hl=en&gbpv=0

Patrick O'Sullivan

February 2023

Irish Diaspora Studies and... The Male

 

Irish Diaspora Studies and...

Versions of this message have appeared on various platforms, in connection with other parts of my lives...

This version is a compact tidy - I hope it is coherent...

One starting point might be an aside at the end of my Introduction to Volume 4 of The Irish World Wide, p15...

O’Sullivan, P. (1995) ‘Introduction: Irish Women and Irish Migration’, in O’Sullivan, P. (ed.) Irish Women and Irish Migration. London & Washington: Leicester University Press (The Irish World Wide), pp. 1–22.

 

'Yet you cannot deconstruct only one half of the dyad, woman/man. If I

can imagine a volume on Irish Women and Irish Migration quite other than

the one you have in your hands, I can equally well imagine a volume on

Irish Men and Irish Migration which would be the companion to this one.

That volume would bring into Irish Studies and Irish Migration Studies the

critical study of men and masculinities.  Certainly we now need studies of

Irish migration which give the variable of gender its proper due.'

 

So...  That thought has been in the back of my everchanging mind, as we have tracked Irish Diaspora Studies throughout the intervening years...

We can begin with two songs.  A drinking song.  And a temperance song.

As a little music project, before Christmas 2022, we did two Stephen Foster songs:  one a drinking song, and the other a temperance song...

There are notes here and here...

http://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/2022/12/autoharp-advent-calendar-foster-cooper.html

http://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/2022/12/comrades-fill-no-glass-for-me-stephen.html

And little videos here and here...

Video link

https://youtu.be/kuBP6lvHSzM

Video link

https://youtu.be/55l0oSzOh5Y

Yes, I am not in good voice...  It is winter.

The drinking song, 'When the bowl goes round...', music by Stephen Foster, lyric by George Cooper, uses a strange phrase in the chorus,  'jolly fellows'.

'We'll all be jolly fellows'.  It felt like there was more to know...

I have now found a book by Richard Stott...

Stott, R. (2009) Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America. Johns Hopkins University Press (Gender Relations in the America).

...which is a study, page 1, of 

'a distinctive male comportment that consisted of not just fighting but also heavy drinking, gambling and playing pranks. Men who engaged in such behavior were called “jolly fellows.” Although the jolly fellows were a subset of the male population, whenever men, especially young men, gathered in milieus that were all male or where women were rare, such conduct could occur. Such behavior was tolerated, even condoned, by men who were not themselves drinkers, fighters, or gamblers...'

Richard Stott does not seem to have been aware of this particular Stephen Foster song when he wrote his book, and picked its title.  It seems that Stephen Foster and George Cooper, writing in the 1860s, found that phrase, 'jolly fellows', still there in the ether.  And maybe by then - Richard Stott, the cultural historian, suggests - the age of the 'jolly fellows' was over...  He maps the development of a 'civilizing process' (Norbert Elias) that will, eventually, lead to Prohibition.  A drinking song, followed by a temperance song.

I find myself putting the, 'jolly fellows', from this Foster drinking song, alongside the 'boon companions' of 'Comrades, fill no glass...', the second Foster song I prepared for Christmas 2022.

The point for Irish Diaspora Studies is that Richard Stott has absorbed, seamlessly, the research and comment on Irish male violence into his study of nineteenth century American male violence - male violence, accepted, useful, controlled, directed?  There they are, the references we would expect, Carolyn Conley, “The Agreeable Recreation of Fighting,”, Patrick O’Donnell, Irish Faction Fighters of the Nineteenth Century,  William Carleton, Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry.  Edward “Ned” Harrigan and Mulligan's Guards.  And so on...

In turn, Richard Stott's book should take its place alongside all those other studies of the Irish male, and the Irish-American...

It is worth searching for Richard Stott's book - because I found it Open Access.  It is readily available.

Patrick O'Sullivan

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University

January 2022

 

 

Autoharp Advent Calendar: Stephen Foster, Comrades, fill no Glass for me

Comrades, fill no Glass for me - Stephen Foster

This is my contribution for Day 16 of the UK Autoharps Advent Calendar 2022...

 

1.

Jan Brodie asked me if I had a second song for the Advent Calendar - I said that I was working on a song that might fit...

But...  That first song was a Stephen Foster drinking song,

When the Bowl goes round, Stephen Foster and George Cooper

Video link

https://youtu.be/kuBP6lvHSzM

...and this second song is a Stephen Foster temperance song.

Comrades, fill no Glass for me - Stephen Foster

Video link

https://youtu.be/55l0oSzOh5Y

Compare and contrast...

But Jan thinks that nothing is more Chrismassy than temperance and good intentions...

 

2.

A second song from Stephen Foster.  A second song from the University of Pittsburgh and the Library of Congress online archives.

The sheet music says, proudly, Poetry and Music by Stephen Foster.

Pittsburgh Stephen Foster Collection

Has 3 copies.  Here is one...

Comrades, fill no glass for me

https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735061827113#page/1/mode/2up

Library of Congress

Comrades, fill no glass for me

Music for a nation: American sheet music, 1820-1860

https://www.loc.gov/item/sm1855.590420/

A web search will find that the sheet music has spread widely - and a number of people have had a go at singing the song....

 

3.

The lyric does show Foster's workmanlike skill, three 8 line verses each building to the couplet, which is sung twice, for emphasis...

Still, boon companions may ye be,

But, comrades, fill no glass for me.

With little variants on the later repeats.  There is the oddity that Verse 1 has 'boon companions may ye be',

But Verse 2 and Verse 3 have 'boon companions ye may be'.  Can we find a subtle reason for this?

You can sometimes hear performers puzzling over that difference.  And Copy & Paste web sites do not care.

There is a lot going on in the lyric - back and forth rumination.  Certainly a love of whisky, mixed feelings about the boon companions, and that, oft repeated, desired conclusion.

Basic lyric skills on show - like, when we plan rhyme schemes, if we are going to rhyme on an unusual word get that word in place early, so that the later, more expected, rhyme cements it in place.

'Liquid flame', meaning whisky, is a good example.  Foster knows then that he has the standard rhymes available.  He could explore the drinker's shame, the boon companions' blame.  And, of course, we do explore them.

For the actual rhyme Foster chooses 'blighted fame...'

See also Verse 3, 'aspirations undefiled' leads to the rhyme with 'child'...

And when we hear 'fill no glass for me', do we not also hear 'blasphemy...'?

Part of the fun of making the little illustrated videos for YouTube is seeing if - without getting bogged down - we can visually mark such detail.

 

4.

The melody is also workmanlike - but has enough Foster subtlety to make it worthwhile. 

The sheet music gives no time signature - I don't think that that is unusual?  There are little irregularities, which can confuse.  In this performance, we try to skate over.

And the second part of the melody has, for me, an unexpected twist - for line 6, in the key of G, we have gone with A7 and D7.

The real musicians will have more to say. 

We should say Thank You to the University of Pittsburgh and the Library of Congress for the online archives - this is the web working as it was meant to work.

Patrick O'Sullivan

December 2022

Christmas Guest: Carol for Drums and Choir, sung by Shannon Marie Harney

Christmas Guest:  Carol for Drums and Choir

Helleborus Niger - The Christmas Rose

Anyone active in music in England is aware of that extraordinary network of choirs, a subset of the ecosystems studied by Ruth Finnegan in her important book, The Hidden Musicians.

1.  I have just noticed that Ruth Finnegan now has her own web site, which can now be a starting point.

https://www.ruthhfinnegan.com/the-hidden-musicians

I am re-reading her sections on choirs... 

The possibility of my writing songs for choirs has been around, but has never quite come together - I am sad.  But I am aware that I would need to spend much more time understanding the repertoire and the ecosystems...

2.  As a case study...

A while back I was asked if I had a Christmas song for a choir.  And, why not?

Thinking about Christmas songs, recurring themes, and talking and listening to people, as they remember Christmas, and value Christmas, and worry about Christmas...

I developed an idea about that extra plate on the table, the last minute guest - a person with nowhere else to go, because of tragedy or disaster, personal, political.  On the receiving end of rough kindness.

I started with the line, 'He brings nothing to the feast...'

And began to structure a lyric.

3.  And then Lyric Madness took over.  I looked at my opening, and thought, Why am I adding words to add meaning?  Could I not add meaning by taking words away?

And that is what I did, hewing the opening quatrain, 'He brings nothing to the feast...' so that each of the four lines could be halved.

To make a new more compact four line verse. 

And then halved again.  And then halved again.

So that I had created four quatrains.  Each one clearly developed from the quatrain before, but each one with a different meaning.  And a different line length.

And the last one, the most compact, lists the things that the Christmas Guest did bring to the feast.

 

4.  So, four very different quatrains, with four different line lengths - difficult to set as one song.  Maybe it is really a sequence of four songs?  Four different songs, with four different moods.

How to impose unity?  Because there is unity, unity of thought and unity of narrative.

At this point we might just call in The Lone Arranger.  But those days are gone, or, at least, disrupted.

And I already had a vision, partly based on those conversations with choirs - see above.  It was a theatrical vision - what I wanted to see on the stage.

So, this became...

Christmas Guest:  Carol for Drums and Choir

I created the four melodies for the four songs, and, with the help of Danny Yates and Shannon Marie Harney, created an arrangement.

Some details we had to return to, when first thoughts did not work.  For example, to clarify the story, I created more theatre - including the Jovial Man (God, he is annoying!), and the white phone.  With that distinctive sound.

Every choir has its Jovial Man.  Or Woman.

The keyboard signals the ways in which the choir might 'vocalise' its interludes, and the drums impose drive, unity and structure.

There will be other ways of doing all this - for example, I did think of developing the four 'songs' further, by giving one song each to the four voices of the choir.

If someone lends us a choir...

But the result now is 'Christmas Guest' - perhaps the bleakest Christmas song ever written...

In some theologies of Christmas there is that sense of foreboding.  See also, Matthew 25:31-46, Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.

 

5.

'Christmas Guest' on YouTube...

https://youtu.be/WbDv7PBYRNw

 

This is Christmas Guest on Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/track/41l1sHcY1yOBcuqqJLu3L6

It is worth listening on one of the better platforms - to hear the uncompressed audio...

When I shared these thoughts, above, with Shannon Marie Harney - she understood perfectly...

 

Patrick O'Sullivan

December 2022

Christmas Guest:  Carol for Drums and Choir

He brings nothing to the feast but fears and woes.

His hollow eyes say everything that can be said.

His broken hands reach out to touch the Christmas Rose.

His hunger knows to sing, and waiting to be fed.

He brings nothing to the feast.

His hollow eyes say everything.

His broken hands reach out.

His hunger knows to sing. 

He brings nothing but

His hollow eyes,

His broken hands.

His hunger knows. 

He brings

His eyes,

His hands,

His hunger. 

© Patrick O'Sullivan 2022