Dear Harp of My Country: The Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore (Spirit of Ireland in Lyric and Song, Vol 1) - Softcover

Flannery, James

9781879941366: Dear Harp of My Country: The Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore (Spirit of Ireland in Lyric and Song, Vol 1)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1879941368 ISBN 13: 9781879941366

Publisher: J.S. Sanders Books, 1997

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Since the late John McCormack I have heard no finer singer of Irish songs than James Flannery.—Ulick O'Conner

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From the Back Cover:

Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies have been known and loved throughout the world since their composition in the early nineteenth century. Before radio and the phonograph, the sheet music for "Tis the Last Rose of Summer" sold one and a half million copies in the United States alone! The songs of Moore have now found a voice to bring them alive for a new generation. In Dear Harp of My Country, author and singer James Flannery presents the story of Ireland's first national poet against the backdrop of his nation's turbulent history, and restores the Irish Melodies to their spare, original settings, accompanied only by the Irish harp. The resulting text and recordings are a stirring tribute to the legacy of Thomas Moore, and to the enduring power of music and song within the Irish cultural tradition.

"A work of advocacy in the deepest sense. Flannery's voice--as singer and as writer--calls us to attention and advances Moore's claims with an ardor that surely would have delighted Moore himself. He manages to explicate the Irishness and exhibit the melodiousness that have always been central to the allure of Moore's epoch-making collection."--SEAMUS HEANEY, poet, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature

"Blessed with a beautiful tenor voice and a remarkable feeling for the subtleties of poetic language, James Flannery also has the gift of knowing how to reach into what the Irish call uaigneas an chroi --the secret places of the heart."--BILL WHELAN, Grammy Award-winning composer of Riverdance

About the Author:

James W. Flannery is the son of Irish emigrants, James and Nellie Cotter Flannery, who settled in Hartford, Connecticut. He holds a B.A. from Trinity College, Hartford, an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama and a Ph.D. from Trinity College, Dublin. A specialist in the dramatic work of William Butler Yeats, Mr. Flannery founded the Yeats International Theatre Festival at Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 1989, and was executive director of the Festival from 1989 to 1993. He is the author of the definitive study W.B. Yeats and the Idea of a Theatre: The Early Abbey Theatre in Theory and Practice (Yale, 1976, 1989). As a singer, Mr. Flannery has concertized widely in the United States, Canada, and Europe. In 1993 he received the prestigious Wild Geese Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Culture. He teaches at Emory University in Atlanta.

Janet Harbison (accompanist) is one of Ireland's most accomplished harpers as well as a distinguished ethnomusicologist and composer. In 1992, she founded the Belfast Harp Orchestra, which achieved international acclaim for its Grammy Award-winning album with the Chieftains, The Celtic Harp..

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