Hibernia

The Stewards of the Charitable Musical Society request the favour of the Ladies not to come with Hoops this day to the Musick Hall, Fishamble Street. The Gentlemen are desired to come without their swords.”

This was the notice that appeared in the Dublin Faulkners’ Journal on April 5, 1742, before the public rehearsal of the “Messiah” by Handel. Doors opened at 11 a.m. The performance began at 12 noon.

Tickets cost half-a-guinea each.

All present —those who came because of their love of music and those there simply because they liked to be seen in the right place at the right time-could have purchased a “word book” of the Messiah, which was on sale in the theatre for sixpence. Two of those booklets survive, one being held in Trinity College, Dublin, the other in the British Museum in London.

The copy held in London, in fact, was bought in a secondhand shop on the Dublin quays by Professor Dowden of Trinity College, who afterwards presented it to Dr. Culwick, organist of the Chapel Royal at Dublin Castle.

This particular copy contains in its margins the names of the soloists participating in the historic occasion at Fishamble Street. It is the only known record of the soloists at that first performance of the Messiah.

The soloists were drawn mostly from the two Dublin cathedrals. This, as far as St. Patrick’s was concerned, was surprising, as Swift, Dean there at the time, strongly objected to members of his choir performing elsewhere than in his cathedral.

Seven hundred people packed the Musick Hall in Fishamble Street for that first performance. 

The theatre was looking its best, really coming into its own on that historic occasion. It was designed by Richard Cassels, who also contributed to the Dublin ambience such architectural gems as the Rotunda, the city’s famous maternity hospital, Leinster House, where the Dail (Parliament) meets and the celebrated Dining Hall at Trinity College.

George Frederick Handel was born in Saxony (Germany) in 1685, but went to London when he was 27 and continued to live there until his death.

Recognition came late. He was well into his fifties when, poor, disheartened and not in the best of health, he returned one summer evening to his apartment in London’s Brook Street, where he found an oratorio awaiting him. It has been sent by the poet Jennens and began with the words: “Comfort ye, my people…”

Handel spent the entire night studying the poem and he worked on it for the next three weeks, never leaving his rooms, until the work was completed on September 14. A few months later, he was ready to offer it to a Dublin audience.

At that first public presentation of the Messiah Handel played concertos on the organ, and it was to be described as easily the most outstanding musical composition ever heard in Dublin. One music critic wrote: “Words are wanting to express the exquisite delight it afforded to the admiring crowd. The sublime, the grand and the tender adapted to the most elevated, majestic and moving words conspired to transport and charm the ravished heart and ear.”

Handel was delighted with the Musick Hall in Fishamble Street. He said of it to a friend: “The Musick sounds delightfully in this charming room, which puts me in good spirits. I exert myself on my organ with more than usual success. I cannot sufficiently express the kind treatment I received here, but the politeness of this generous nation cannot be unknown to you, so I let you judge of the satisfaction I enjoy, passing my time with honour, profit and pleasure.”

Handel’s final performance of the Messiah in Dublin took place on June 1, 1742, starting at 7 p.m.

To make the Fishamble Street theatre more comfortable for the capacity attendance, it was announced in advance that a pane of glass would be removed from the top of each window in the Musick Hall to save the audience from suffocation.

Many of the airs used by Handel are thought to have been taken from Dublin street ballads. It has been claimed that “How Beautiful The Feet” owes something to “The Night Before Larry Was Stretched!” That historic first performance brought a windfall to charity. A sum of £400 went to the city’s Mercer’s Hospital, the Society for Relieving Prisoners and the Charitable Infirmary.

Handel returned to Britain later in that year of 1742. His reputation was now firmly established, although he never received the wholehearted support of the Royal Family, who looked down on him as a “German outsider.” Once, in Hamburg, it could be said that music saved his life. He was taking part in a duel when a left thrust from his adversary’s weapon was broken by a thick musical score he happened to be carrying in his pocket.

Handel never married, devoting the remainder of his life to music. He died on April 13, 1759, leaving £20,000, a considerable fortune then.

It was said of him: “His fingers were so curved and compact that, when he played, no motion, and scarcely the fingers themselves, could be seen.”

The distinguished architect Gandon designed a mausoleum to the memory of Handel in the demesne of Sir Samuel Hiller in Staffordshire. In Dublin, in the ancient St. Michan’s Church in Church Street, the Culville organ on which he played survives.

Preparations are already underway in Dublin for a major production of Handel’s “Messiah” on April 13, 1992 to mark the 250th anniversary of the first performance of the celebrated oratorio.

Taking part will be the orchestra and chorus of the Academy of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner and featuring Sylvia McNair.Planet Pictures and Virgin Broadcasting are hopeful of an audience of 5,000 at Dublin’s huge Point Theatre.

 

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the March 1992 issue of Irish America. ♦

Scranton: “So you were here with Bobby Kennedy in 1964, were you now,” the young man said grabbing my hand. “I was too. I’ll never forget it.”

I looked him over. Maybe 28 he was or 30 at best.

“Aw, you couldn’t have been.” I said. “You’re not old enough.”

“I was only 9,” he said. “My father sneaked me in.”

Maybe his father did. There’s hardly an Irishman in Scranton who’ll admit he wasn’t in the old Hotel Casey on that raw March night when Kennedy gave one of the most heart-wringing speeches of his life.

Not a one did I meet at the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick dinner last night.

And why should I have. It was a very special event.

It was here on St. Patrick’s Day, 1964 that Kennedy appeared before a large public gathering in the United States for the first time following President Kennedy’s death.

He went somewhat reluctantly and only after insistent urging by Rep. Dan Flood of Wilkes-Barre for through the crushing weeks after the assassination in Dallas he had been desolate, holding his grief inwardly, functioning tautly and wondering bleakly what he would do with his life.

As spring approached he began to perk up, but just below the surface one often saw signs of a new somberness and fatalism, caused not only by the trauma of his brother’s death, but also by the realization that any decision he would make about his future depended on events beyond his control.

Scranton marked a turning point.

When his plane landed at Scranton-Wilkes-Barre Airport on a gray afternoon, more than 2,000 people, most of them young, broke through police lines and crowded around him–jumping, shouting. laughing as they tried to touch him—so that he could not move l from the bottom of the ramp until police cleared a path.

He was taken into Scranton to officiate at groundbreaking ceremonies for the new John F.  Kennedy Elementary School and then driven to nearby Yatesville to speak briefly at a St. Patrick’s Day dinner. Heavy wet snow had begun to fall and along the route about 10,000 men, women and children huddled under umbrellas to catch a glimpse of him.

They were still lining the highway when he drove back to Scranton.

At the Hotel Casey the crowd was so large and so exuberant that the hotel’s heavy doors were torn from their hinges as people pressed forward to shake his hand.

His appearance before the Friendly Sons was one of the most difficult he ever made.

He had drafted a sentimental Irish speech and for the ending he had written: “I like to think—as did President Kennedy-that the emerald thread runs into the cloth we weave today…and I like to think that his policies will survive and continue as the cause of Irish freedom survived the death of “The Liberator, Owen Roe O’Neill.”

And he proposed to close with a poem written after O’Neill’s death, when Ireland was overwhelmed with grief:

Your troubles are all over,
You’re at rest with God on high,
But we’re slaves
And we’re orphans, Owen!
Why did you die?
We’re sheep
Without a shepherd
When the snow
Shuts out the sky
Oh! Why did you leave us.
Owen? Why did you die?

When I worked some changes he wanted into the speech, I eliminated the poem.

When he read the redrafted test, he asked: “Why did you do that?”

“Because you’ll never get through it,” I said.

“I’ve been practicing in front of a mirror,” he said,

“I can’t get through it yet but I will.” And in Scranton, he did-just barely, but among the 600 stalwart sons of Erin in the audience, many a man wept openly.

Kennedy would never forget Scranton. On the plane back to Washington, astonished by the reception he had received – the pig of love to-of love for President Kennedy and so much evidence that he stood well with the people in his own right–that he made an irrevocable decision about his future.

Somehow, someway, he would remain in public service.

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An Emerald Thread Spans The Generations in Scranton, by Edwin Guthman. Reprinted from the Philadelphia Inquirer, March 18, 1984.

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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the March 1992 issue of Irish America. ♦