JOHN FRANCIS McCORMACK, 1884-1945

On a broadcast in December of 1938, just after his farewell concert in London, when asked about his feelings about his career, McCormack compared it to an ocean voyage and concluded thus:

"Altogether it's been a calm and prosperous voyage, and now I've come into port."

One of the Few, 1939 - 1942

In the spring of 1939 John and Lily took a vacation trip to Egypt. While there they learned of the death of the pope and traveled to Rome, where they remained until after the conclave that ultimately chose the candidate who became Pius XII. John had various duties to fulfil during this time, and he and Lily stayed a week beyond the coronation, at which time he and Lily were presented to the new Pope by Cardinal Hindsley. That summer, after a fishing trip to Ireland, John began to give some thought to teaching. The advent of the European war led John to offer his services to the red Cross for fund raising, and he soon resumed almost as grueling a touring schedule, given his age and health, as he had endured during the last years of his concertizing in the United States.

From the fall of 1939 to the first days of 1942 McCormack actively toured on behalf of the Red Cross and gave concerts for servicemen throughout the Great Britain. He also broadcast regularly on the BBC. During these years he greatly endeared himself to the public, since his unselfish activities on behalf of the war effort and the morale of the home front were self evident. His tour that began in the fall of 1939 included no less than 39 concerts between November and the following May. Other singers with him on that tour were Robert Irwin, baritone, and Sara Buckley, contralto. Irwin was an Irishman whose career had been strongly supported by McCormack in the States before the war.

McCormack kept up a hectic schedule throughout 1940 and 1941. He continued to give concerts, broadcast, and make records (with Gerald Moore as his accompanist. He became ill during the winter months in early 1942, when he developed a severe and persistent cough, which was followed by a recurrence of the streptococcal infection that he had suffered in 1922. His convalescence was lengthy, and he was unable to sing further concerts.

Last Years, 1943 - 1945

When he had recovered he did record in the studio three more times that year (26 May, 10 August, and 10 September). The September studio date turned out to be his final recording session, although McCormack probably did not perceive it as such at the time (according to Gerald Moore). The singer's health continued to falter, and he never regained the robust constitution and stamina that had sustained him in his long professional life. By 1943 he was unable to continue, and early that year he and Lily moved back to Dublin, living in the Shelbourne Hotel for about 18 months. In the late spring of 1944 the couple moved to their final home in Booterstown, a house named "Glena." McCormack's various biographers testify to a succession of illnesses during his final months, including pneumonia and influenza. Several sources note that he could not speak except in a hoarse whisper. He died peacefully on Sunday, September 16, 1945.

Lily McCormack, in I Hear You Calling Me , wrote that a few days after his death, she found these words which McCormack had written in a notebook:

"I live again the days and evenings of my long career. I dream at night of operas and concerts in which I have had my share of success. Now, like the old Irish Minstrels, I have hung up my harp because my songs are all sung."

"It is the capacity for being the song he is singing that gives him the right to be called the world's greatest living tenor."

- Compton Mackenzie, 1924

"A beloved bard, a perfect instrumentalist of song. He is the ideal type of artist. One who, through flawless mastery of technique, makes himself felt as a human being. There is in his singing that curious and likeable tinge of what, in this polished craftsman and universal favorite, has invariably struck me as being a genuine humility in the face of his gifts and of that rare and genial understanding which his singing has brought to hearts all over the world."

- Eugene Stinson

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"Other artists will, I am sure, not think that I am casting a slur upon them if I select from among them one to serve as an example. From the beginning of his career as a concert singer John McCormack made it his custom to place always on his programs some of the best vocal music and to sing it with consummate art. He was supposed at that time to be merely a singer of popular ballads, but gradually he convinced the musical public and the whole country, as well as the critics, that he was a great artist - one of the best living singers of Mozart and Beethoven as well as of Irish folk-songs. The result was that his fame became world-wide and there was a universal demand not only for his records, but for himself in person ..."

"If there was ever a brilliant object lesson in any department of art, it has been furnished by John McCormack. ... The musical style is the vocal revelation of the heart within the man."

- W.J. Henderson

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"When I think of the word 'singer,' stripped of any extraneous connotation and in its purest sense, I see John McCormack standing on the concert platform - his head thrown back, his eyes closed, in his hands the little black book he always carried, open but never glanced at, as he wove a spell over his completely hushed listeners. John McCormack was truly a singer for the people; he was also a singer's singer. ... From Italy, McCormack learned the art of singing with beauty and with complete security. Few men have sung with such stylistic and technical elegance."

"It was not technique alone, however, that made McCormack so fabulous a success. Without doubt, he was one of the truly remarkable personalities among musicians active in the first half of the twentieth century. Perhaps the three of these who were able to reach the heart most directly were Padrewski, Kreisler, and McCormack, and of them, McCormack was very probably the surest technician. Like Caruso, he had a forthright charm that, free of any complications, made its effect with a minimum of time and effort. People who listened to McCormack were drawn to him. Let us call this personal magnetism. We are apt to refer to people we are drawn to as 'warm' or 'genuine'; McCormackwas just that. Even when he was singing in a huge auditorium, he always gave me the sensation of person-to-person intimacy."

"McCormack had a sense of the power of language such as few singers have possessed. In this he was like the bards of ancient Ireland. He could tell a story. He could paint pictures. His enunciation was so clear that every syllable reached the last row of listeners."

- Max de Schauensee

"He was a supreme example of the art that conceals art, the sheer hard work that becomes manifest only in its results, not in the revolving of the machinery that has produced them. He never stooped to small and modest things; he invariably raised them, and with them the most sophisticated listener, to his own high level. I never knew him in his public or his private singing, to be guilty of a lapse of taste, of making an effect for mere effect's sake. He was a patrician artist, dignified even in apparent undress, with a respect for art that is rarely met with among tenors. There is no one to take his place."

- Ernest Newman, 1945

Many years after his death, McCormack's home town of Athlone honored his memory with a bust placed beside the river Shannon, which flows through the city.

"... He opened his mouth, and my God, it was the most beautiful sound you ever heard!"

- Mary Garden