While June 16th, 1904 will be, thanks to a certain tome, forever associated with Ireland’s greatest writer never to have won a Nobel Prize for Literature, May 16th of that year also held a certain resonance for the same individual – but because of his musical rather than his literary prowess. One hundred and nine years ago, James Augustine Aloysius Joyce won a bronze medal at the 1904 Feis Ceoil (it probably would have been gold except for Joyce’s refusal to sight-read a musical score). The circumstances of his success say much not only about Joyce’s undoubted musical talent (as Nora Barnacle one said “Jim should have stuck to the singing”) but also reflect his lifelong relationship with money – or the lack of it.
It was the great Count John McCormack who encouraged Joyce to enter the competition (McCormack himself had won the gold medal in 1903) and Joyce, who had yet to publish anything, perhaps saw in this event an opportunity for fame – and monetary advantage. He hired a room on Shelbourne Road in March, 1904 to practise for the upcoming event, but then came the thorny issue of a piano to underpin his preparations. Joyce, with partner-in-crime Oliver St John Gogarty, came up with a novel way to ensure that his preparation would be professional . . . but cost neutral. Joyce ordered a piano from Pigotts on Grafton Street (a forerunner of the modern-day McCullogh Pigotts), and with Gogarty as look-out, ensured that he was absent when the piano arrived, thus no tip for the delivery men. The timing of the delivery was crucial to Joyce's strategy, coming as it did some six weeks before the date of the feis. Joyce realised that Pigotts would only look to repossess the piano when the second downpayment failed to materialise – given that payments were monthly, Joyce was able to perfect his performance, flee the coop and subsequently win a medal before the ruse could be rumbled. That one of the pieces he had to sing was The Long Farewell is particularly apt, given that Joyce's long exile from his native land commenced just a few months later.
The Feis Ceoil took place in the Ancient Concert Rooms, which was the setting for the Dubliners short story A Mother . Joyce described Mrs Kearney, the titular matriarch of that story as one "who sat amid the chilly circle of her accomplishments, waiting for some suitor to brave it and offer her a brilliant life. But the young men whom she met were ordinary and she gave them no encouragement, trying to console her romantic desires by eating a great deal of Turkish delight in secret". While you might think this a rather cruel depiction, it pales into insignificance with Joyce's description of the suitor who finally did brave that "chilly circle": "She respected her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure and fixed: and though she knew the small number of his talents, she appreciated his abstract value . . . as a male."
The Ancient Concert Rooms were also the setting for a concert where Joyce shared the stage with Count John McCormack during Horse Show week in August 1904. Joyce greatly admired McCormack and included him both in Ulysses (as John MacCormick, one of the artists in Molly's proposed upcoming concert tour) and in Finnegans Wake (the "golden meddlist"). Joyce's own voice was probably best described by his brother Stanislaus: "Jim's voice, when in good form, has a beautiful flavour, rich and pure, and goes through one like a strong exhilarating wine".
Some of these and other anecdotes concerning James Joyce feature in an exhibition "Dubliners' Dubliners; from Araby to a Painful Case" by the Liberties Heritage Association in the St Nicholas of Myra Centre, Carmans Hall. It is just around the corner from St Catherine's Church in Meath Street, the setting for The Sisters , the first of Joyce's stories to be published (it appeared in The Irish Homestead in 1904).
Going back to the Feis Ceoil, rumour has it that Joyce, disappointed with the result and the intransigence of the judges, threw his medal into the Liffey. However, it is also suggested that the medal survived and is in the possession of world-famous dancer Michael Flatley. Perhaps Michael might visit the exhibition with the ultimate clarification!
The exhibition runs until June 16th.
