Moving down Great Brunswick (now Pearse) Street, the funeral
cortège passes by the "Antient concert rooms" and Bloom
thinks, "Nothing on there." This private hall, home of the
Society of Antient Concerts since the 1840s, hosted an
impressive number of concerts and other entertainment events.
Several members of Joyce's musical family sang in the Antient
Concert Rooms, including his father and one of his mother's
aunts. James himself sang there on 24 August 1904, and again
on August 27 in the Grand Irish Concert that also featured
legendary tenor John McCormack. Of the first concert, the Freeman's
Journal reported on August 25 that "Mr. J. A. Joyce’s
fine tenor was heard to advantage in 'Down by the Sally
Garden' and 'My Love She was born in the north Countree'. He
was warmly applauded." Ellmann records that the paper covered
the second concert as well, writing that "James A. Joyce, the
possessor of a sweet tenor voice, sang charmingly 'The Salley
Gardens,' and gave a pathetic rendering of 'The Croppy Boy.'"
Of McCormack, the paper said that he "was the hero of the
evening. It was announced as his last public appearance in
Ireland."
About the August 27 concert, Ellmann quotes also (168) from
Joseph Holloway's diary: "The attendance was good but the
management of the entertainment could not have been worse. The
Irish Revivalists are sadly in need of a capable manager. At
present they invariably begin considerably after the time
advertised and make the audience impatient; thus they handicap
the performers unwarrantably. Tonight was no exception to the
rule; and after the first item, the delay was so long that the
audience became quite noisy and irritable . . . The substitute
appointed as accompanist in place of Miss Eileen Reidy, who
left early in the evening, was so incompetent that one of the
vocalists, Mr. James A. Joyce, had to sit down at the piano
and accompany himself in the song 'In Her Simplicity,' after
she had made several unsuccessful attempts to strum out 'The
Croppy Boy,' the item programmed over the singer's name."
Joyced mined these embarrassments for material that he worked
into the memorable Dubliners story "A Mother," which
takes place in the Antient Concert Rooms.
