The Parting Glass, Irish Song (arr. Earley)

A simple song well sung. Simplicity is a virtue in music too often forgotten. We have a tendency to celebrate complexity and bigness for their own sake. Just look at the Super Bowl Halftime Show each year where the producers struggle to add something more spectacular than the year before. More people, more lights, more sequins, and more decibels. And that’s just one example of a phenomenon that permeates contemporary entertainment.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Complexity has its place in the fine arts. Paintings on large canvasses with meticulous detail, Bach fugues, Wagner operas, ornate carvings—all of these things deserve our admiration when done well. But that doesn’t require us to lose sight of the value of simplicity.

Simplicity, carried to an extreme, becomes elegance. —Jon Franklin

Folk songs and tales by their nature tend to be simple. Anything that gets passed down in oral tradition (one of the defining elements of a folk song) resists complexity. The songs are intended for untrained singers. A work goes through a refining process as it is passed down. The rough edges tend to be erased.

When accomplished composers turn their attention to folk songs, they often seek a kind of simplicity—an authenticity of expression. The trick is to employ the learned craft of composition to enhance the folk song, to polish the artifact in a way that retains its nature. 

“The Parting Glass” has a long history in both Scotland and Ireland. Although it uses the imagery of a last drink, it is really a parting song. It was in fact the most popular parting song in Scotland before Robert Burns wrote “Auld Lang Syne” in 1788. The tune has additional history as a hymn. You can find it in the shape-note tradition as “Clamanda” in The Sacred Harp.

You can find some outstanding performances across a wide range of styles by the Choral Scholars of the University of Dublin under the direction of Desmond Earley. I predict you won’t be disappointed exploring their YouTube channel for some other gems.

This series of Friday Performance Picks will also be parting for a while as we focus on Professor Carol’s Advent Calendar.