Noteworthy roads - Frank McNally on Dublin’s musical streetscape

As I may have mentioned here before, the southwest of Dublin – on the northern fringe of which I live - is an intensely colourful part of the city. Just beyond Inchicore, for example, there are areas called Blackhorse, Bluebell, and Goldenbridge, encountered in quick succession on the Luas. A little farther on, adding to the psychedelic qualities of the tram route, is Red Cow.

The passengers can be colourful too. Speaking of psychedelia, it’s not unusual to hear certain people exchanging substances – also sometimes colour-coded – that promise to turn the journey into more of a trip. But it escaped me until this week that the same general area also boasts the most intensely musical part of Dublin, if only thanks to road names. It centres on the suburbs of Crumlin and Walkinstown, where every Irish classical musician of note – and a few I’ve never heard of – is commemorated.

Travelling south, you first have to cross a forbidding mountainous area to get there (a range of roads named Mourne, Galteemore, Sperrin, Comeragh, etc). But then suddenly, you’re into a streetscape Who’s Who of composers and performers, including Thomas Moore, John McCormack, Hamilton Harty, Michael Balfe, and even Michele Esposito, an Italian who taught at the Academy of Music for a half a century.

They’re not all classical, either. Percy French is there too, as is the great traditional music collector Edward Bunting. Alas for my colour theme, there does not appear to have been room anywhere for an exponent of the Blues.

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Also included in the southwest Dublin map is the name of Carl Hardebeck (1869-1945), a London-born German who went native in this country and whose great contribution to Irish life had eluded me until a Bloomsday-inspired email from Zef Kinkenbergh, who is related to him “in a tenuous sort of way”.

As I have now learned, Hardebeck moved to Ireland in his 20s and became known as the “Blind Bard of Belfast” for his work in composing and arranging traditional music. He also became a devout nationalist, once declaring his belief in the Holy Trinity of “God, Beethoven, and Patrick Pearse”. He was a fluent Irish speaker too.

Zef mentions that Hardebeck was chairman of the Gaelic League’s Belfast branch and, as such, once organised a concert that provoked a boisterous singing match between Home Rulers and unionists. While the composer is not name-checked in Ulysses, his ancestor thinks that event may have featured and wonders where the reference might be found?

Not recalling one myself, I referred his question to several Joyceans of the officer class who tell him that, no, it’s not in the book. The main Belfast musical theme in Ulysses is Molly’s impending concert in that city. And of course, Molly is having her own political troubles, even in Dublin, where she is in danger of being cancelled for insufficient patriotism:

“…the last concert I sang at where its over a year ago when was it St Teresa’s Hall Clarendon St little chits of missies they have now singing Kathleen Kearney and her like on account of father being in the army and my singing the absent-minded beggar and wearing a brooch for Lord Roberts…”

While combing the musical street map of Crumlin, I also saw the name Wallace and felt a pang of guilt. Two weeks ago, regular correspondent Una Hunt sent me an email about the Waterford-born composer William Vincent Wallace (1812-1865), a man I had also never heard of until then. My ignorance in this case may be excused because, as Hunt says, Wallace’s music is both “magnificent” and “very neglected”. The neglect is not recent, either. She believes that being an Irish composer in the UK of his era was “tantamount to the kiss of death”. Even beyond music, Wallace led an extraordinary life. He emigrated to Sydney, in his 20s, hence his nickname “the Australian Paganini”.

After separating from his first wife, he went on a whaling voyage from New Zealand, later crossed the Pacific to tour Chile, Argentina, Peru, Jamaica, Cuba, and Mexico, then moved to the US where he was famous for a time, before returning to Europe and dying poor, aged 53.

He has long been forgotten in these parts. And so was the mention I was supposed to give here this week to a rare performance of his opera Lurline at the National Concert Hall on Friday (17th). Sorry Una – blame Bloomsday.

Wallace’s grave in London bears the poignant epitaph: “Music is an art that knows no locality but Heaven”. In a similar vein, it seems, Wallace’s fame is a phenomenon that knows no locality but Crumlin. I hope the concert went well anyway.