Dec 24, 2024
Nov 26,2024
'Letts' poems are a joy to sing. It is almost as though they were written to be sung.' Singer, artist and educator Aileen Lambert introduces her latest song project, inspired by the work of poet Winifred M. Letts.
Collaborations form part of many creative practices.
My current project is a collaboration of sorts, albeit with a writer who died three years before I was born. This creates a certain complication – would the artist approve of my handing of their material?
Pic – Nellie and Aileen with pic of Winifred (attached)
The first collection of poems by Winifred M. Letts (1882-1972) was entitled Songs from Leinster. However, this is a poetry collection – no music was included or song airs referred to.
Over a century later, I have composed new airs in the traditional style and set them to a selection of her works.
The occasion of the launch of Bairbre O’Hogan’s book Sing in the Quiet Places of My Heart – The Life and Works of W.M. Letts (1882-1972), published by South Dublin Libraries, on October 20th 2024 was the perfect occasion for their performance.
Letts’ poems are a joy to sing. It is almost as though they were written to be sung. As a writer she certainly shows great understanding of the ballad and traditional song form and the imagery is strong and beautiful. She also uses dialogue in many cases, which adds to the storytelling and performance potential.
However, some works have an irregular metre, such as The Harbour, and this is what first encouraged me to compose a new air to set to her words, as no old Irish air would fit the irregular metre.
I composed an air which rises and falls like the sea itself to go with the poem, when I first encountered it in 2017, inscribed on a plaque in Courtown Harbour. My daughter, Nellie (age14), performed it at the launch.
Watch: The Harbour performed by Nellie Fortune, words by Winifred M. Letts, air by Aileen Lambert
Letts told Maeve Binchy, in a 1969 interview, that she never heard anything memorable or musical in the kind of conversations they used to have in the drawing room, and that she got 'all her ideas from the back door and listening to the talk of the people who came to sell things or to deliver vegetables'.
I feel it is only natural, then, that her poetry should be sung to airs which are characteristic of the style of traditional song the ordinary people would have been singing.
Watch: In Service, performed by Aileen Lambert, words by Winifred M. Letts, air by Aileen Lambert
In Service is a song which tells of an encounter between a homesick domestic servant with a friend from back home. ‘Little Nellie Cassidy’ got a job in a big house in the city, but longs to be back on the Wexford shore. While Letts was English-born, she spent most of her life in Ireland, and had a great affinity with County Wexford. We know that later in life she regularly visited her stepson in Ardamine, near Courtown Harbour, and Bairbre O’Hogan thinks her earlier connection may have been through ‘an old Wexford woman, a family nurse’ who she mentions in a later essay.
Watch: The Call to Arms in Our Street, performed by Aileen Lambert, words by Winifred M. Letts, air by Aileen Lambert
Thanks so much to Oriana Conner (grandniece of Letts), Bairbre O’Hogan (Letts’ biographer) and South Dublin Libraries, especially Librarian Emma Edwards, for their support. I am very grateful to the Arts Council for an Arts Agility Award earlier this year which has supported this work. Bairbre’s book is available through South Dublin Libraries, and you can follow her here to hear about further developments.
While we can't ask Winifred about her opinions of my singing of her work, I was delighted to receive a lovely email from her closest living relation, her grandniece Orianna Conner: "I want to say how beautifully you set Win's poetry to music. Your settings are right in every way. I was not sure what it would sound like, but the words and music fitted like a comfortable glove. Your voice and empathy for the words was a delight and joy which was felt by all. It was truly fitting to her words and sentiments. Thank you so much for bringing her poetry to life it this touching but strong way. I feel sure Winifred would have been surprised but gratified by the whole event."
