This CD is a recording of a collection of some of Percy French's music performed by a Tenor, Michael Lawlor, who lives and works in Ireland. Michael is an Opera singer and the quality, clarity and ease of listening of this beautiful collection has to be heard to be believed. (Accompanists Dana Forbes, Annabel Adams (keyboard) and Johnny Mc Carthy on Flute.) It is available by paypal using the button below or mail order by sending an email stating how many you want and we will organise it from there. (Cost $29.95 each including postage and packing). - dor@irlonline.com. Donal O'Riordain or use the link below.
What makes Percy French so worthwhile a study, apart from his achievements in the field of artistic production, including his paintings, songs, ballads, plays, operas, poems, parodies, was the unique attitude to life that underpinned this and made his success possible. This approach amounts to what one would only call total mastery of the "art of living" - a gift that seems to be rare in today's hectic wortld. He was always busy and had about him an ambiguous optimism and an irrepressible sense of humour but it would be wrong to infer from this that he was in any sense a shallow man. Rather this gift seems to have sprung from a deep spirituality which had nothing self-righteously pietistic in it. Researching his life is both a humbling and instructive exercise
He has become a cult figure of the great Music Hall days of the early 1900's. But there is more to William Percy French than that, as his less hackneyed more reflective songs such as Gortnamona and Innismella unveil. Likewise, his paintings and the place painting occupied in his life, is the gateway to the inner essence of the man revealing a depth that sets him apart from the ordinary. It was in those hauntingly lonely landscapes, immersed in the ever-shifting simulacrum of light that he found artistic solace and true spiritual expression. Capturing the simple beauties of nature was a vocation. Nature seems to have been a sanctuary where he could be at peace to reflect on the world and make a sense of life, somewhat like the great Romantic poets of the wordsworth school.
List of songs:
1) Gortnamona (Words: Percy French, Music Philip Green)
2) Dromcolligher (Words: Percy French, Music Percy French)
3)The Mountains of Mourne (Words: Percy French, Music Percy French)
4) Phil the Fluter's Ball (Words: Percy French, Music Percy French)
5) An Irish Mother (Words: Percy French, Music Brendan O'Dowda)
6) Are you right there Michael (Words: Percy French, Music Percy French)
7) Whistling Phil McHugh (Words: Percy French, Music Percy French)
8) Inishmeela (Words: Percy French, Music Philip Green)
9) Oklahoma Rose (Words: Percy French, Music Percy French)
10) Flaherty's Drake (Words: Percy French, Music Percy French)
11) Emigrants Letter (Words: Percy French, Music Earnest Hastings)
12) The Mary Ann McHugh (Words: Percy French, Music Philip Green)
13) The Hoodoo (Words: Percy French, Music Houston collection)
14) That's why we're burying him (Words: Percy French, Music Ettie Green)
15) Come back Paddy Reilly (Words: Percy French, Music Percy French)
