The Exodus. A Sacred Cantata, words by Thomas MacDonagh, music by Benedetto Palmieri (1904)

1904 Vocal Score for Thomas MacDonagh's The Exodus: A Sacred Cantata (Words by MacDonagh, music by Benedetto Palmieri).

In 1904 Thomas MacDonagh won the first price at the Dublin Feis Ceoil for a religious cantata that he wrote with music by the Italian pianist and R.I.A.M. singing teacher Benedetto Palmieri. The cantata follows the actions of the Israelites as recounted in the book of Exodus until their successful crossing of the Red Sea (Norstedt). It was first performed at the Royal University on the 19^th of May 1904 with Palmieri as a conductor. Arthur Griffith’s periodical, The United Irishman, criticized the cantata because it didn’t address more specific Irish subjects. This criticism partly contested the rules in the Feis Ceoil competition which allowed works by Irish-born authors ‘or’ on Irish subject as opposed to works by Irish-born authors ‘and’ on Irish subject (Norstedt). The collaboration between MacDonagh and Palmieri seems to be undocumented. After five years at the Royal College of Music in London (1885-1890), Palmieri worked at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin from 1900 to 1914 before returning to Italy during the wars. Palmieri most notably gave singing lessons to James Joyce who also participated in the 1904 Feis Ceoil winning a third-place medal for tenor solo singing.

Sources

Hodgart Matthew H. J. C. & Ruth Bauerle. Joyce’s Grand Operoar: Opera in Finnegan’s Wake. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Print.

MacDonagh, Thomas (words) & Benedetto Palmieri (music). The Exodus: A Sacred Cantata. London: Doremi, 1904. Print.

Norstedt, Johann A.. Thomas MacDonagh. A Critical Biography. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1980. Print.

“Benedetto Palmieri: Joyce’s Singing Teacher.” Music in James Joyce’s Dubliners. Online Exhibition of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. 2014. Web. Accessed 25 May 2015. [https://riamarchives.wordpress.com/music-in-joyces-dubliners/benedetto-palmieri/]

White, Lawrence William. "MacDonagh, Thomas". Dictionary of Irish Biography. (Ed.) James McGuire, James Quinn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Web.