Nostalgia: Looking back on the prestigious Cork International Choral Festival's history
View of Cork City Hall during the Cork International Choral Festival in 1955.
TOUTED as one of Europe's premier international choral festivals, the Cork International Choral Festival got underway on Wednesday, marking the 66th annual prestigious event.
The festival, which concludes tomorrow, was founded in 1954 to be a dynamic force in developing choral music in Ireland.
It was originally organised in connection with An Tóstal - a series of festivals launched by Seán Lemass in 1953 which were aimed at promoting Irish culture and boosting tourism.
An article in March of the inaugural year of the Cork International Choral Festival stated that invitations to enter were being "extended to all choirs, Irish and foreign".
"A grant of £100 has been guaranteed towards the expenses of a Welsh choir to compete in the Cork International Choral Festival from April 20th to May 2nd.
"The offer follows a conversation between Captain Kealy, Secretary of the Festival and the Lord Mayor of Cardiff, Sir James Collinson, during the Lord Mayor's recent visit to Ireland," the article continued.
The festival, held virtually this year, would normally attract 50,000 visitors from all over the world to Cork city and county.
This year, the festival opened with a specially commissioned poem, ‘A Singing City’ written by renowned Cork poet, Billy Ramsell.
The virtual performance was voiced by arts broadcaster, Elmarie Mawe and backed by exceptional archival footage of the festival over the years.
And then the 17th century
many-sailed and barnacled
drops anchor at the harbour.
Songs richer than butter,
more profitable than brandy
are off-loaded at the quayside:
and ,
a snatch of swapped
for a ballad from San Sebastian.
The city’s rivers swerve in counterpoint,
its hills undulate like a melody.
What sieges those singing hills witness,
what castles rising,
collapsing amid the marshlands,
what burnings, plagues and lockdowns.
And still from every street corner,
from drawing room and shebeen
come songs of history and courtship.
The harmonies, the eyes evolve,
the faces change, the voices
as the 19th Century yields to the 20th.
But the singing remains ceaseless.
And then each April with the cherry blossom
the choirs started coming;
coming from Budapest and Bristol,
from Gdansk and San Francisco,
augmenting and replenishing
the city’s endless store of song.
The harmonies, the eyes evolve,
the faces change, the voices.
But each year the choirs come back again
coming from Salzburg and Armagh
Chicago, Vladivostok.
And we believe, we believe that madrigals, cantatas
will grace the riverbanks once again
unfurling themselves deliberately
outside the city hall, the opera house
that motets will drift like the cherry blossom
through Daunt Square and Gallagher Plaza
that sweet hymns will linger amid the market stalls
hovering once more
in spools and whorls
above the olive merchants
above the gossiping fishmongers
and the purveyors of sumptuous fruit.
App?
