The Last Rose of Summer is a poem by Irish poet Thomas Moore, who was a friend of Byron and Shelley. Moore wrote it in 1805 while at Jenkinstown Park in County Kilkenny, Ireland. Sir John Stevenson set the poem to its widely-known melody, and this was published in a collection of Moore's work called Irish Melodies (1807-34).
Friedrich von Flotow uses the song in his opera "Martha," premiered in 1847 in Vienna. It is a favorite air ("Letzte Rose") of the character Lady Harriet. The interpolation works, and indeed the song helped popularize the opera. (According to the 1954 Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the opera grew from an 1844 ballet-pantomime, "Lady Henriette," for which Flotow wrote the music to Act One. Burgmuller and Deldevez wrote the rest of the music; "Lady Henriette" was produced in Paris.)
It has been arranged into a set of extremely difficult variations by Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst for the violin.
The song is mentioned by James Joyce in Ulysses.[1]
As well as being a common phrase[citation needed], the poem is alluded to in the Grateful Dead song "Black Muddy River".
Clannad released a rendition of the song on their album Crann Úll. Sarah Brightman recorded the song for her album The Trees They Grow So High. It was made popular in the twenty-first century in a recording by Charlotte Church and the Irish Tenors.
It is sung in the musical group Celtic Woman by Méav Ní Mhaolchatha and Hayley Westenra. Chloë Agnew's solo version is recorded on her self-titled album. In the Celtic Woman: A New Journey tours, she sang duets with Ní Mhaolchatha, Westenra, and the vocalist-guitarist of the same group, Lynn Hilary. Agnew and Hilary are performing the same version in the Isle Of Hope tour. Ní Mhaolchatha's solo version is included in her Celtic Journey album.
In the 1941 film Here Comes Mr. Jordan it is the character Joe Pendelton’s inability to play “The Last Rose of Summer” on his saxophone anything other than badly which allows him to prove that he is alive in another man’s body; all the other characters think he is the dead man from whom he got the body, but when he plays the sax for his old boxing manager, he uses the same wrong note in the melody as he always did, and which thus confirms his story of coming back from the after-life.
In the 16th (final) episode of the 6th season of the UK Channel 4 television show Shameless, the song was sung by Jamie Maguire (played by Aaron McCusker) at the funeral of his sister Mandy Maguire (Samantha Siddall).
In the 1995 film An Awfully Big Adventure, the song is used as P.L. O'Hara's theme tune and is a recurrent musical motif in the film's score.
The song was featured in Rick Burns' documentary series, New York, broadcast on PBS in the USA.
Poem
| “ | 'Tis the last rose of summer Left blooming alone; I'll not leave thee, thou lone one! So soon may I follow, |
” |
Notes
- ^ "Ulysses by James Joyce: The Last Rose of Summer, accessed 29 June 2009
External links
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