'Europe's Minstrel' - Thomas Moore

The European Commission Representation in Ireland and the European Parliament Liaison Office in Ireland are delighted to have commissioned this project as our principal cultural contribution to the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which started on 1 July and will continue until 31 December 2026.

The project – entitled 'Europe’s Minstrel’ – is a tribute to Dublin’s own Thomas Moore (1779–1852), an Irish writer, poet and lyricist of European renown, perhaps best remembered for his volumes of Irish Melodies. His works were translated into almost every European language and inspired the work of many of Europe’s greatest composers, including Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Berlioz, Duparc, von Flotow, and Britten. In this sense, Moore’s opus serves as a most apt metaphor for what Ireland hopes to contribute to Europe during its six months at the helm in the Union. A successful Presidency is one that puts its own unique talents and contribution at the service of the whole European concert of nations – a community whose motto is ‘United in Diversity’ – in an effort to bring about harmony and common accord.

Thomas Moore’s story is one of an Irishman and a European. Born to a Wexford mother and Kerry father over the family business – a grocery shop – on Aungier Street in Dublin, he was among the first Catholics to attend Trinity College, outside of which his statue stands today, recently spruced up by Dublin City Council. As a student, he was fascinated by the winds of political liberalism sweeping across the European continent, and was particularly inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity.

The Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 sounded the first note of what was essentially a Europe-wide revolution. In the aftermath of World War II, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman’s appeal was a clarion call to European leaders to rebuild the continent on the basis of shared European values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law, centred on human dignity. The Declaration opens by proclaiming, ‘World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it.’

So, creativity at the service of the human family is at the heart of the European project, making tonight’s concert a most fitting overture for Ireland’s EU Presidency. Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’, set to the music of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, was chosen as the stirring European Anthem. It urges to strike up agreeable tones of joy, that beautiful spark of Divinity, that leads us towards human fraternity.

Frank McGuinness on Thomas Moore

Where is Thomas Moore to be placed in Irish civilisation? At its centre, without doubt, but as what? That is the leading question, and to that question there are many answers. Composer, poet, lyricist, companion to the good and not that good, chronicler of his time that he can transform into our time because, as with every great artist, there is more than a passing resemblance to the magician in his nature and supernature.

The closest I have found to resemble Moore is in the words of Rilke, the German genius, who wrote in his Sonnets to Orpheus of the unicorn:

This is the creature that never breathed.

Not seeing that, they adored it anyhow . . .

They fed it not with corn, not with hay,

but with the dream it may come to be.

A creature of almighty ambiguity then, willed into existence, an imaginary energy, unleashed into and out of our soul's desire to comprehend itself, its culture, its nation.

It is as if Thomas Moore decades before his most effective apostle, James Joyce, is forging the conscience of his race, altering it profoundly, leaving it transfigured by his words and music.

What words, what music are his, and his theme is a potent clash of hope and horror, of joy and desolation, capturing in his ironies how the Irish and indeed the European mind at their most Romantic operate at levels where contradictions flare into harmony, all the time risking serious discord.

Summer brings its roses that bloom, but the bloom gives way to blight, so it is the Last Rose we smell and celebrate its fragrance and beauty as it withers and dies. The love of this beauty rings alarmingly true, since it has rooted itself where all lovely companions are 'faded and gone’.

Moore’s thoughts are always troubled by absence, or perhaps more feelingly by the presence, the nearness of those in the garden who lie ‘senseless and dead’. To a people so intimate with the violence and visions, the voices of our past, Moore is arguably the most haunted of our poets. His writing is imbued with desperate loneliness, with the strength and power of shadows to darken light, with the nearness of the grave that seems to open and never to close in Moore’s elegies for love lost and departed.

The musician in ‘The Minstrel Boy’ dies for Ireland – but he is young, and his life passes too soon, too savagely. Cheers of admiration for such reckless courage as this boy embodies are accompanied by fierce tears, and ‘the harp he loved ne’er spoke again’, a silence to confound the same cheers rallying the crowd to fight against what Moore calls slavery but never forgets the cost of such sacrifice to the country he dies for and adores.

And how Moore adores the children of Lir in their appalling metamorphosis into swans, sentenced to endure this stormy world, longing to sing only ‘the death-note’ that will liberate, as like Erin herself in her darkness, they will lie waiting for ‘pure light in its dawning’ but is to be ages away. This strange salute to suffering marks, I believe, Moore’s peak as a poet – it personifies in one poem all his political grief, rage and despair, not quelled by militarism of bodies or arms, but also not resigned since he recognises so potently the scale of Ireland’s sorrow in his great love song to his native country, ‘She Is Far From The Land’.

Moore’s mood may range from the temperate to the Arctic, he is a citizen of heat and ice, and he dares to hear how the Minstrel’s heart is breaking. Through the strength of its simplicity love declares itself for the island of sorrow. But at the core of this pain always Moore glimpses – in his honesty it is rarely more than a glimpse – the ‘promise of a glorious morrow’.

How proud would Moore be to see Ireland long take her place now among the world’s nations, embracing Europe, embracing Britain as allies, standing among equals? How proud, how shocked would he be to observe this?

Happy? Yes. Overjoyed? Hold fire on that. For this is the wise man who knew to keep both ears and both eyes awake to how fragile our dear country, our beloved continent, our magnificent earth remain, having wept and witnessed, and, so far, survived so much.

Frank McGuinness is an award-winning Irish playwright, poet, and novelist. Born in Donegal, he is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at University College Dublin. His adaptations of classic works have been widely acclaimed, with his version of A Doll's House winning both a Tony Award for Best Revival and the Outer Critics’ Award.

The Songs of Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore's poetry and lyrics have provided inspiration for countless composers throughout the century. In these videos, singers from across Europe interpret a selection of songs that feature Moore's words from some of the pre-eminent composers in classical music.

Love Thee Dearest, based on a violin concerto by Giovanni Battista Viotti

Rosa Belmonte, soprano and Marie Datcharry, piano

Silent, Oh Moyle (Song of Fionnuala) by Charles Villiers Stanford

La Belle Voyageuse by Hector Berlioz

Sandra Laagus, voice and Markus Zugehör, piano

Two Venetian Songs from the song cycle Myrthen, Op. 25 by Robert Schumann

XVII. Leis' rudern hier, mein Gondolier!

XVIII. Wenn durch die Piazzetta

Manuel Winckhler, baritone and Markus Zugehör, piano

Le coucher de soleil by Hector Berlioz

Elene Gvritishvili, soprano and Dearbhla Collins, piano

Two Venetian Songs from the song cycle Myrthen, Op. 25 by Robert Schumann