3 arrangements from Moore’s Irish Melodies (1957-58)

Oft in the stilly night

At the mid hour of night

The last rose of summer

Although he he did not take a creative interest in folk song in the way that Vaughan Williams or, in a rather different way, Bartók did, Britten made his own versions of more than seventy folk songs or near-folk songs. Most of them – for voice and piano but in some special cases with guitar or harp accompaniment – are to be found in the six volumes of Folk Song Arrangements he published between 1943 and 1961. Just how authentic they are as folk song is a question that can be asked of several of Britten’s sources, not least the Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore, who wrote some tunes himself and took others from already published collections. For Oft in the stilly night Britten turned not to Moore’s Irish Melodies but to his National Airs, where it is to be found described as a “Scotch air” in an arrangement by Sir John Stevenson. At the mid hour of the night and The last rose of summer are both from Irish Melodies and are both based on traditional Irish tunes (respectively Molly my dear and The groves of Blarney from Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland), the latter coloured from the start by dissonant arrpeggiated harmonies in anticipation of the dramatically approached, bleak ending.