The
Snowy Brested Pearl was published by Edward
Bunting in his collection of Irish music in
1797. Bunting’s A General Collection of the
Ancient Irish Music has occupied a highly
influential position in the history of Irish
traditional music. Although it is by no means
the earliest such collection, its focus on the
then disappearing centuries-old music of the
Irish professional harpers resonated with the
romantic sensibilities of its time, and in the
years since its publication it has been
extensively mined by arrangers, publishers and
performers. Its influence continues in print, on
sound recordings and on the Internet.
As
is well known, the collection had its origins in
a commission given to a young Armagh-born
classical organist and pianist Edward Bunting
(1773–1843), by the organizers of the Belfast
Harp Festival of 1792, to notate and preserve
the instrumental and vocal music of the Irish
harpers. Bunting made this task his lifework and
published two further similar volumes:
A General Collection of the Ancient Music of
Ireland
(1809) and The Ancient Music of Ireland
(1840). More of the music and song that he
gathered remains unpublished in his surviving
manuscripts. At the time of his death
Bunting was working on a revised edition of the
volume, but this was never completed.
The
melody is by Carolan. Turlough O'Carolan
(1670 – 25 March 1738) was a blind Celtic harper,
composer and singer in Ireland whose great fame
is due to his gift for melodic composition.
Although not a composer in the classical sense,
Carolan is considered by many to be Ireland's
national composer. For almost fifty years,
Carolan journeyed from one end of Ireland to the
other, composing and performing his tunes. The
annual O'Carolan Harp Festival and Summer School
commemorates his life and work in Keadue, County
Roscommon.
John
McCormack sang The Snowy Breasted Pearl to carry
off the Gold Medal at the Feis Ceoil of 1904.
This was the famous performance said to have
convinced a fellow contestant, James Joyce, that
his future was not as a singer but as a writer.
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