For anyone under 40, Frank Patterson was probably most familiar as a personality in the world of popular entertainment. On his visits back to Ireland from his base in the US, he gave regular concerts, many of them family affairs with his wife Eily on piano and latterly his son Eanan on violin. He fronted his own television show for RTE.
He had a role in John Huston's last film, The Dead, as the singer, D'Arcy. His voice sang out of a gramophone in a scene of machine-gun violence in the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing. He appeared as a tenor in Neil Jordan's Michael Collins.
He released a stream of albums, covering ballads and popular songs. And, most famously, he sang for the Pope at the Phoenix Park in 1979 to an audience of over a million.
As an Irish tenor, he could be seen to be following in the footsteps of John McCormack. There was the amiable, warm-hearted approach to popular repertoire. There was the voice, light and sweet, with the unmistakable Irish flavour to the shaping of the words. And there was the career path. He left behind the possibilities of working in the world of oratorio and vocal/orchestral repertoire, not to mention the highly-demanding limelight of the song recital, in favour of a different - and much more lucrative - sort of stardom.
Before the change of direction, there was a time when Frank Patterson was an almost ubiquitous presence in Irish concert life. His Philips recordings of Berlioz (with the London Symphony Orchestra under Colin Davis, released in 1969) and a selection of Beethoven's Irish folk song arrangements (with the Music Group of London, released in the Beethoven bi-centenary year of 1970) helped to establish his international reputation.
And, here in Ireland, he was one of the most frequently heard of oratorio singers, and was part of a team, along with Irene Sandford, Bernadette Greevy and William Young, involved in the original Bach cantata concerts under John Beckett at St Ann's, Dawson Street.
Beckett, whose Bach was brought to the Proms in London and to the Bruges Festival in Belgium (and also attracted BBC Radio 3 to Dublin for specially-commissioned studio recordings), held Patterson in high regard. The two were heard together in songs by Haydn (Beckett on fortepiano) and Purcell (Beckett on harpsichord). In terms of stylistic responsiveness and flexible artistry, these collaborations in this sort of repertoire were unique in Irish musical life.
Patterson was also a distinctive if not quite a persuasive Evangelist in the passions of Bach. The range of his work in the 1970s can be gauged from the fact that in 1972, when Shostakovich was in Dublin to receive an honorary degree from TCD, Patterson performed in the New Irish Chamber Orchestra concert the composer attended, when Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, shared the programme with Shostakovich and Vivaldi. And in 1974, he was one of the soloists in Purcell's 1693 ode, Great Parent, Hail, written for the centenary of the founding of TCD, and featured in a Dublin concert by the BBC.
With a new generation of Irish tenors emerging in curious triplicate, Frank Patterson's record stands apart, unparalleled, and, from a serious musical perspective, still unchallenged.