DR Brian Boydell has held audiences spellbound many times before. Yesterday, at the Merriman Summer School in Ennistymon, Co Clare, he did so again with a lecture interspersed with humour, learning and wit.
Music, he told the packed lecture hall, is a mirror of society, giving insights into how people lived in a particular period. In the period chosen the 18th century Dr Boydell said Dublin was a colonial, royalist society.
We learn from contemporary records what the popular music of the gentry was but as the press was controlled by the upper classes there was little to guide us as to what the lower classes were enjoying. Dublin in that era, he went on, was a divided community in terms of religion, politics and language.
Back then, admission to a concert would have cost a British crown. This would hardly have upset the chief landlords of the day whose income ranged from £7,500 to £35,000 a year, or the top government officials who earned between £200 and £1,000 a year. A senior clergyman on £340, and even his curate on £75 a year, would have been able to afford the cost. But a labouring man who liked classical music would have found it beyond his grasp. With an annual income of £6 to £15 people in this class had more pressing items on the agenda.
If there was any doubt about the predominant politics in Dublin, and its Tory leanings, Handel's march for the Duke of Cumberland's regiment after the battle of Culloden in 1746, and his final chorus from Zadok the Priest, ending with the line, "God save the King", would dispel it.
But was there a native Irish element in Dublin music? There most certainly was, Dr Boydell said. But again it was not well documented. What has come down to us is that, Italian style, the condescendingly superior upper classes liked to take rough native ballads and dress them up.
Imagine, he said, what a demure lady of standing in the community might have remarked after such a rendition naturally, in the privacy of her own home. "My dear, isn't it delightfully crude and naughty," she might have said in mock horror, Dr Boydell theorised. On the other hand, Carolan was taken up by the gentry and was deeply influenced by the music, mainly baroque music he heard in their homes.
The men played an instrument as part of their education, perhaps a flute. The ladies stuck to the harp because it was considered rude for them to be lifting their elbows with a fiddle in their hands.
Eileen a Roon was a popular Irish melody of the day and one which was a must on the programme of any visiting singing celebrity from London. For example, Fishamble Street, Dublin, 1798 "After the minutes are over, a lady who plays the 17th century harp for her own amusement, will play the Duke of Cumberland's march and Eileen a Roon, with all its graces, and will sing the same after, before the ball begins," said the programme on that evening. There was a rondo made out of Gramachree Molly, and another out of the Favourite Air of the Dargle, or Haste to the Wedding.
In a section, "How to attract an audience", Dr Boydell quoted from a celebrated invitation issued by the Rev Dean Bailey of the Dublin Hospital Board to the much sought after performer Ms Anne Catley. The invitation read "His compliments to Miss Catley, and requests to know when she can give him a night at the lying in hospital, and her terms." She replied "Miss C. presents her compliments to the Rev. Dean Bailey. For three nights to come she is engaged to particular friends, but on the fourth will be at his service."