Voices at a funeral recall records from my fatherÕs time

I WAS at a funeral recently where the choir performed a positively splendid version of Angels That Around Us Hover – why it struck up such a memory for me was that I had not heard it for maybe 20 years, though it was a huge favourite in our house in my father’s time.

I understand that it may also be known as The Angelus. Whether or which, it is drawn from Maritana, that marvellously tuneful ‘ballad opera’ which was very popular among musical societies a number of years ago, but has become practically a rarity in more recent times.

I must say I intensely dislike that slightly snobbish term ‘ballad opera’. It makes it sound somewhat rustic and not quite up to the standard of, say, grand opera of French or Italian origin. Can I say that it didn’t matter a damn to us growing up . . . we loved a number of the arias from the William Vincent Wallace work first performed about 1850.

Maritana was among a collection of records which my father had. They were the old giant 78s, so called because they spun on the turntable of a gramophone at a speed of 78 revolutions per minute. The reason I am explaining is that Ihave to be careful – there is a wholegeneration out there who have neverseen a ‘record’.

Life moves on so quickly these days, though I am one possibly least equipped to discuss changes in even the technology which has impacted directly on all our lives. I would have been the typewho thought Betamax format was the be all and end all .. . and we all know what happened to that when VHS and swept the world. And there are youngsters who never even heard of the formats . . . now it’s all DVDs.

Our house more than 50 years ago was fairly typical of most others in the country. There was hardly a home that did not have a gramophone – usually a giant piece of furniture housed in a mahogany case, which sat in the corner of the sittingroom and was presided over by someone like ‘the man of the house’ when it was decided that the precious records would be taken out.

There was no such thing as television, so, if the radio was not the centre of attraction, the huge HMV gramophone would be opened, occasionally, especially around Christmas when the sittingroom, came into use for a few days.

My father, or one of the older sisters or brothers would, under supervision, ‘wind’ the spring with a giant key which really was rather like a small version of a car starting handle, and we would be treated to an evening of music such as The Barcarole from The Tales of Hoffmann, or some John McCormack.

The 78 records were quite brittle and would not take any sort of abuse. The steel ‘needle’ with which they were played – which was rather like a stout steel pin – was anything but easy on the playing surfaces. Invariably, the sound was somewhat tinny, like too much treble on the modern sound systems, but we sat contentedly for ages listening to arias from Maritana sung by people like Denis Noble and Heddle Nash.

In our case, the centrepiece of the rather small, but special, record collection was a bound album of six records which carried the highlights from Maritana – arias such as Scenes That Are Brightest, There Is A Flower That Bloometh, I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls, Alas Those Chimes, Let Me Like A Soldier Fall.

Of course, there were others. What collection could be complete with some John McCormac. There was a set of six records of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado performed by the D’Oyly Carte company.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.