Censoring Shamus: Charles Villiers Stanford and the Cultural Politics of Irish Opera
Harry White
Throughout his long career, the Irish composer Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) struggled for success in the opera house. Although he enjoyed prominence as a symphonist and as a composer of chamber and church music (among much else), it is fair to say that his most ardent ambitions lay in the theatre. In 1896, his opera Shamus O’Brien was premiered at the Opera Comique in London, and productions soon followed in Dublin and New York. The work was toured throughout Britain and Ireland and rapidly became the composer’s most successful opera. But in 1910, Stanford withdrew Shamus from circulation for fear that it might promote the case for Home Rule in Ireland (then still part of the United Kingdom). This self-imposed ban was in place for the remainder of Stanford’s life.
This essay examines the circumstances which led Stanford to silence his opera and considers the implications of this extraordinary act of self-censorship for Irish music. Although Shamus was successfully revived immediately after Stanford’s death, the genre itself faded quickly as a creative force in Ireland following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. It was precisely Stanford’s opposition to the possibility of Irish autonomy that led him to act as he did. A century later, it seems opportune to assess the politics of Stanford’s decision in relation to opera in Ireland and to reconsider those dramaturgical elements which Shamus O’Brien shares with later representations of Ireland in opera, film and stage plays.
The Revisionist Muse: Nationalism and Self-Censorship in Alois Fleischmann’s Ómós don Phiarsach / Homage to Patrick Pearse (1979)
Séamas de Barra
In 1979, Aloys Fleischmann (1910-1992) was commissioned to write a work to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Patrick Pearse (1879-1916), poet and visionary, teacher, revolutionary soldier and nationalist martyr who was executed by the British authorities as one of the leaders of the Easter Rebellion of 1916. Pearse’s life and heroic death were a profound inspiration in the subsequent struggle for Irish independence and, on the face of it, it would be difficult to think of a more suitable subject for national celebration. The celebratory note is muted in Fleischmann’s work, however; it is a predominantly dark and troubled score that largely focusses on Pearse’s social writings and on the poet’s tortured inner life. It is interesting to contrast it with Clare’s Dragoons which Fleischmann composed in 1945 for the centenary of the death of Thomas Davis (1814-1945), one of the architects of modern Irish nationalism. But the enthusiastic celebration of independent statehood that seemed so natural in 1945 had become problematic by the early 1970s. The political climate in Ireland had changed. This paper explores to what extent Homage to Patrick Pearse reflects Fleischmann’s response to the pervading atmosphere of inhibition and represents a tacit exercise in artistic self-censorship.
Music Textbooks: Ideologized in Communist Times, Apparently Politics-Free in Post-Decembrist Times
Olguţa Lupu
During the period of communism in Romania (1945-1989), the ideologisation of the younger generation was a concerted action, carried out throughout the period of institutionalised education and supported by the establishment of children and youth organisations (the Homeland Hawks, the Pioneers’ Organisation, the Communist Youth Union). In this context, textbooks in pre-university education were one of the forms of ideologising young people, but their degree of politicisation varied, depending on the specifics of each subject. As in all totalitarian movements, music played a very important role in indoctrinating the population. For instance, in specialised music education, one of the subjects strongly imbued with communist ideology was Theory and Solfege. From the earliest grades, the Theory and Solfege textbooks included songs dedicated to the Party, to the homeland which had no equal, to the working people, to the beloved leader, etc. I chose to analyse from this perspective one of the Theory and Solfege textbooks designed for primary school children, and finally I compared the 1977 edition with the one published by the same author in 1992, after the events of December 1989.
Censorship of Music and Music of Censorship: The Muzica Journal during Romanian Communism
Cristina Şuteu
The musical periodicals, in general, reveal remarkable connotations about the development of the musical life in a specific region and period. Some of them are published more than one century ago and thus can offer primary source material testifying the manner in which composers, performers, conductors, critics, musicologists and music lovers contributed to musical culture in an (inter)national context. Amongst these periodicals is also the Romanian journal Muzica, which started the publication of its first number in 1908 and (with some interruptions) it is still published today! From all of the socio-political changes the Muzica faced along different periods of time, the research question is focused on the impact of censorship upon the periodical during its publication in the communism period (1950-1989). To this research question, the answers (based of primary sources, analytical statistics, relevant materials regarding the historical context) form the acronym I.M.P.A.C.T.: Ideological images and texts, Musical scores with political connotations, Political manifestations, Anthem created for a key event, Criticisms that influence the public opinion according to the political orientation, Tribute to political figures.
The Influence of Socialist Realism on the Writings Folklorists in the Mid-20th-Century. Case Study: Mariana Kahane
Lavinia Gheorghe
This paper presents a case from the Institute of Folklore in Bucharest in the early 1950s, when a state directive had to produce a work presenting the “new genre” that emerged in traditional music after 1944. The task fell to folklorists Mariana Kahane and Paula Carp. In the Archive of the Constantin Brăiloiu Institute of Ethnography and Folklore I found the volume written by the two (which was never published), titled Contribuții la studierea noii creații de cântece populare din R.P.R. [Contributions to the Study of the New Creation of Folk Songs from the R.P.R.], in which information captured in a research in the village of Bătrâni, Prahova county, carried out in several stages was reproduced.
Finally, the paper will concern two other documents found in the above-mentioned archive, showing different versions of a study written by Mariana Kahane in 1956 and 1957. While in the first, written for the West, the author overlooks the ideas imposed by the politics of the time, in the second, written for Moscow, she takes up again the notions she had launched two years before, with Paula Carp. The two studies thus show the different ways in which the author treats the subject, influenced by their intended audience: Western versus Soviet.
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