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Music in Irish Theatre: The Sound of the People

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Abstract

This chapter sets out to investigate the use of music in the works of canonical Irish playwrights, and note how this has been echoed by contemporary theatremakers. It examines, in particular, the function of music as it relates to identity, on both a personal and a national level.

The chapter takes three playwrights from different points in Irish theatre history, as benchmarks for the broader trends within Irish theatre. The first focus is W.B. Yeats, examining his use of music as part of the Irish Literary Revival, and how this added to his authorship of a cultural identity for the Irish people. The chapter moves on to investigate Brian Friel, noting his use of music to emphasize identity on a personal level. Also examined is his use of music where words can no longer function to overcome a crisis of representation within the Irish canon. Thomas Murphy is the final playwright to be studied in depth. The chapter excavates the changes he brought about in the way that music was used within Irish theatre. His use of music to engender the female voice is also significant, and something which is explored. Throughout, this chapter aims to draw parallels between these canonical playwrights and some of their contemporary counterparts. It charts the use of music within Irish plays, and looks to the present moment of popularity Irish-generated musical theatre is experiencing.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Harry White, Music and the Irish Literary Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 8.

  2. 2.

    Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London: James Currey, 2011).

  3. 3.

    Mary Trotter, Ireland’s National Theatres: Political Performance and the Origins of the Irish Dramatic Movement, (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001), 11.

  4. 4.

    W.B. Yeats, Collected Plays of William Butler Yeats (Bristol: Macmillan Library Reference, 1994), 217.

  5. 5.

    Declan Kiberd and Patrick J. Mathews, Handbook of the Irish Revival: An anthology of Irish cultural and political writings 1891–1922 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), 303.

  6. 6.

    Yeats, Collected Plays of William Butler Yeats, 219.

  7. 7.

    Derek B. Scott, Musical Style and Social Meaning: Selected Essays (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 235.

  8. 8.

    Paul Cohen, “Words for Music: Yeats’s Late Songs,” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 10(2) (1984): 16.

  9. 9.

    Anthony Bradley, Imagining Ireland in the Poems and Plays of W.B. Yeats: Nation, Class, and State (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 12.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., 13.

  11. 11.

    Yeats, Collected Plays of William Butler Yeats, 81.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., 86.

  13. 13.

    Kiberd and Mathews, Handbook of the Irish Revival, 305.

  14. 14.

    Yeats, Collected Plays of William Butler Yeats, 86.

  15. 15.

    White, Music and the Irish literary Imagination, 208.

  16. 16.

    Csilla Bertha, “Brian Friel as Postcolonial Playwright”, in The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel, ed. Anthony Roche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 163.

  17. 17.

    Richard Kearney, “Friel and the Politics of Language Play”, Massachusetts Review: A Quarterly of Literature, the Arts and Public Affairs, 28 (3) (1987): 510.

  18. 18.

    White, Music and the Irish Literary Imagination, 21.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., 15.

  20. 20.

    Harry White, “Brian Friel and the Condition of Music”, Irish University Review 29, Special Issue; Brian Friel (1999): 15.

  21. 21.

    Brian Friel, Collected Plays; Volume Five (Loughcrew, Oldcastle, Meath: Gallery Press, 2016), 207.

  22. 22.

    White, Music and the Irish Literary Imagination, 8.

  23. 23.

    Donald E. Morse, Csilla Bertha, and Mária Kurdi, Brian Friel’s Dramatic Artistry: “The Work has Value” (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2006), 62.

  24. 24.

    White, Music and the Irish Literary Imagination, 8.

  25. 25.

    Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1997), 36.

  26. 26.

    Bertha, “Brian Friel as Postcolonial Playwright”, 157.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 155.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., 154.

  29. 29.

    Tom Murphy, Plays: Four (London: Methuen Drama, 1997), 69.

  30. 30.

    White, Music and the Irish Literary Imagination, 22.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., 8.

  32. 32.

    Christopher Murray, ed., “Alive in time”: The Enduring Drama of Tom Murphy: New Essays (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2010), 155.

  33. 33.

    Harry White, The Progress of Music in Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), 67.

  34. 34.

    Ania Loomba, Colonialism-postcolonialism (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015), 159.

  35. 35.

    Murray, “Alive in time,” 147.

  36. 36.

    Yeats, Collected Plays of William Butler Yeats, 86.

  37. 37.

    Arthur Riordan and Bill Whelan, “The Train” (Dublin: Project Arts Centre, 2016).

  38. 38.

    Stacy E. Wolf, A Problem like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 16.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 19.

  40. 40.

    Jim Carroll, “A Night in Funderland,” The Irish Times, April 24, 2012, http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/ontherecord/2012/04/24/a-night-in-funderland/.

  41. 41.

    Murray, “Alive in time,” 139.

  42. 42.

    Tom Murphy, Plays: Three (London: Methuen Drama, 1994), 236.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Ciara Fleming

Authors
  1. Ciara Fleming
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Eamonn Jordan

  2. School of Creative Arts, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Eric Weitz

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Fleming, C. (2018). Music in Irish Theatre: The Sound of the People. In: Jordan, E., Weitz, E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58588-2_53

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