That the Irish poured out their hearts and their history in music is evident from the abundance of hauntingly beautiful Irish song literature. During most of the 18th century, the Irish people suffered under the Penal Laws, the intent of which was to eradicate Irish culture and the practice of Catholicism. The singing of patriotic songs was forbidden, and from this proscription arose a whole genre of song in which the poet addresses himself to Ireland under the guise of a young girl. One of the most beautiful of these allegorical songs is The Snowy Breasted Pearl. The direct translation from the original Gaelic is "The Pearl of the White Breast." The Herbert Hughes Collection, Irish Country Songs, in five volumes contains some of the most eloquent arrangements of these ancient airs, including The Gartan Mother's Lullaby, a song from Donegal. "Aiobheal" ("Eval") is the name of the fairy woman who guards the gray rock. The little babe is rocked gently in its mother's arms, while all nature and fairy folk conspire to bring it a safe and loving slumber.

James Lyman Molloy set lyrics penned in 1882 by G. Clifton Bingham into the familiar and beloved Love's Old Sweet Song. Bingham was a professional lyricist, and Molloy apparently beat out other composers for the privilege of setting these words by being the first one to contact Bingham by the electric telegraph. It had to be one of the most auspicious timings, for the work's languid insistence that love is the oldest and most immutable song in our hearts insures its place among the most touching and profound songs ever written.

Arthur Sullivan's first collaboration with W.S. Gilbert was in 1871, on Thespis. In 1875, the year that was to bring them their first great comic opera success in Trial by Jury, they collaborated on a set of parlor ballads. These included the sentimental Sweethearts, which quickly became one of the most popular songs of the decade. Which of these "sweethearts" is truer? In love, as in all things, appearances can be deceiving.

So great was the danger at the end of the 18th century of the extinction of ancient Irish folk music that, according to poet Thomas Moore in the preface to his own work, The Irish Melodies, "a great music-meeting held at Belfast in the year 1792, at which the two or three still remaining of the old race of wandering harpers assisted, exhibited the last public effort made by the lovers of Irish music to preserve to their country the only grace or ornament left to her, out of the wreck of all her liberties and hopes." A Mr. Edward Bunting had been hired to record at this meeting the repertoire of these itinerant musicians, and his first volume of national airs was published in 1796. The ten volumes of Moore's Irish Melodies were published from 1807-34, half a lifetime's effort to memorialize these airs in song. The most famous of these is probably "The Last Rose of Summer." Farewell! But Whenever captures the acknowledgment, by a country torn apart by political strife, that it is what binds us one to another that really matters.

Ivor Novello was born in Wales in 1893. He became a matinee idol of the British stage, a film actor, and a playwright and composer of popular operettas. Like his contemporary Noel Coward, Novello wrote and starred in his own productions, while his dashing and distinguished good looks assured him of leading man status whatever his milieu. The Dancing Years was his 1939 triumph with frequent collaborator and lyricist Christopher Hassall. The show made the point that beauty - in this case, Music - must always triumph over any efforts to kill or destroy it, as represented by the Nazis. As he sometimes did, Novello provided Hassall with the title lyric for I Can Give you the Starlight, which was Hassall's favorite among all of Novello's tunes. It reminds us that in the simple joy of giving lies our greatest capacity to heal ourselves and each other.