Author: Tom Cahill

No, I thought - I mean why should I have?

I should have been embarrassed at my ignorance.

James Flannery, whose parents came from Ireland, is the Director of the W.B. Yeats Foundation at Emory University in Atlanta, where he is also Winship Professor of the Arts and Humanities. Flannery is a polymath of Irish culture. He has written a definitive study on W B Yeats, and has staged nineteen of Yeats's plays in leading theatres in Canada, the US and Ireland. He was formerly Executive Director of an annual Yeats International Theatre Festival at the Abbey. And he has a two CD set of Moore's Melodies in which he is the tenor.

James W. Flannery and I were 'conferenced in" through the good offices of our now mutual Canadian friend. We spoke for a considerable length of time for a first conversation. Flannery has enormous personal charm and, that rare thing, a complete lack of affectation. Our conversation ranged widely. His parents came from the period of Irish emigration immediately following the Irish War of Independence - a war in which his father was decorated.

During our conversation Flannery struck upon an area of Irish culture of strong interest to me: Thomas Moore and his Melodies. Years ago, friends at Texas A+M University invited me to dinner to meet their father, a biographer of Moore, and the author of "Bolt Upright". During the course of a pleasant evening, each of the myths I had believed about Thomas Moore were quickly, politely, and decidedly ended. They were replaced by truths of greater value and substance. This Moore was a great Irish hero, far more than I had understood. I left with a sense of enormous gratitude to Professor Jordan, whose book on Moore is, sadly, almost impossible to locate now.

Moore was a phenomenon. Jefferson quoted Moore's lyrics. The royal houses of Europe idolized Moore. We have all heard at least one of his melodies: "The Minstrel Boy", "The Harp that once thro' Tara's Halls" (which might account for why the harp appears on all Irish Government documents and on a favored brand of Irish beer known appropriately as "Harp") , "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms", which is a most beautiful love song with lyrics matched only by the beauty of the melody to which they are sung.

I had never read all of Moore's Melodies, let alone heard them sung in their entirety. Dr. Flannery has collected, in his two CD set, thirty-nine of these melodies and is tenor on them all! That is a major contribution to a largely neglected piece of Irish cultural history. Here are the Irish-American and Irish worlds at their cross-pollinating best.

Flannery's training showed decided promise for a potential listener. As a boy alto, he won acclaim on American national radio and television for his peformance of Irish songs. He later studied singing at Julius Hartt College of Music with cantor Arthur Koret, at Yale University with oratorio tenor Blake Stern, with Ottawan conductor/composer Fred Karam and in Dublin with Hans Waldemar Rosen, Director of the Radio Eireann Singers.

I asked Dr. Flannery if he could send me a copy of this CD set, and he obliged - but when I received his package some weeks ago, the envelope was torn and the CD's were gone. They were stolen out of my mailbox! I cursed. The petty thief was probably ensconced in his dive of an unpaid for apartment playing my Moore's Melodies on a stolen stereo. Well. Damnation! Jim Flannery sent another set. His mother had raised a dacent man.

On a recent Friday evening, I prepared to satisfy my curiosity. I set my stereo to exacting specifications. I settled in on a comfortable chair with a glass of Knappogue Castle. If these CD's are to a high standard, I thought to myself, his contribution would be singular. I played the entire set through Friday evening and throughout Saturday to get the sense of both CD's and all 39 melodies. A visiting family friend - a musician trained at the University of Texas - heard Flannery through the stereo. She knew nothing of Moore or Flannery. "Who is this?", she asked. "That tenor's vocal placement is perfect." Exactly so.

Dr. James W. Flannery exceeded all expectations. His rigorous adherence to Moore's original lyrics and music passed unnoticed one was so entranced by his excellent voice and masterfully controlled passion. Later reading showed that Flannery's interpretation is how Moore meant his melodies to be heard and how Moore sang them himself. Flannery had done his research and "got it right" but his rendition was so natural that one simply took his hard background research work completely for granted. Moore himself, I have no doubt,would have been profoundly impressed to have heard his work presented with such purity.

While on the subject of purity, Flannery shows wisdom in selecting Irish harpist Janet Harbison for his accompaniment. Moore's Melodies, to be heard as they were meant to be heard, must be wrapped in the richness of historical context delicately suggested by the harp itself. Ms. Harbison's delicacy of touch, sensitivity to lyric and a sure sense of musical history "limned the whole" in this CD set and demonstrated for all to hear why she is considered one of the greatest Irish harpists in the world.

Flannery is clearly a "man of parts". The accompanying 40 page (4 x 6) booklet for this CD set, "Thomas Moore, Minstrel of Ireland", has a remarkable amount of erudition compressed between its covers. He has recovered Moore for us and the ages while selecting all the parts with a discrimination suffused with the master artist's confidence.

The creator of this CD set is deserving of an award from the people of Ireland. Now, if only Ireland, like Japan, could make an individual a Living National Treasure. Flannery is a bard - part of a long and ancient Irish tradition. I am happy, beyond expressing, to see the tradition alive and so robust in the person of James Flannery of Emory University in Atlanta, Ga.

Note:: I asked Dr. Flannery where readers might be able to get copies of his Moore CD set. His recording and monograph are, unfortunately out of print but I have been given to understand that he has some copies which can be ordered by writing to him in care of his Emory address, (The W. B. Yeats Foundation, 1463 Oxford Road, Room #307, Atlanta, GA 30322). The cost would be $23.00, including shipping.