Nicely done! Wild arrangement. Really get the feel of the pipes with the cuts, taps, rolls, triplets. On the harp. Reminds me of Cape Breton piano playing modeled after the fiddle playing ornaments like the hammer on grace note
You know that the piping pibroch is not as old as the clarsach ceol mor. It is from the older cell mor tradition that the piping styles were developed.
the DNA of sound. i've been tempted to get an old harp to inhabit the sound physically, but because i've no dexterity with my fingers it'd seem almost sinful, not for misspending money but for disrespecting an instrument through it not being played
I have a strong suspicion that Pibroch originated as harp music. The Harp was the prime instrument of the Scottish order, played on all occasions from feasts, funerals, to battle, but it was replaced in less than a generation by the War Pipes, an oddly tuned instrument with an uncompromising sound, little suited for subtly. Was the clárseach originally tuned like the Highland pipes, which are noted for using a scale not found elsewhere in the world? The army pipes are tuned to something more like even temperament. Was the intricate ornamentation of piobaireacht transferred directly from harp music? Would the different ornaments produce different resonant effects on an undamped harp? That is what makes this series of recitals not just beautiful, but intriguing.
I think you're on the right track. Current thinking is that the bagpipe came rather late to the highlands and islands from mediaeval Europe via England and lowland Scotland. The playing of this tune on the harp or clarsach and a classical piobaireachd on the bagpipe.......there's hardly a hairsbreadth between the two.
Beautiful, trying to learn the words from the Margaret Bennett track from the Glen Lyon recordings with her late son Martyn. Here's a wee link to the myths www.bocan.tv/library/index.php?version=1&columnnumber=0&group_nr=3&topic=18&superselect=0§ion=2
I liked this. I never heard that triplet-note, pibroch style, phrasing, on the wire-strung harp before. I don't play, so forgive me if my comment is irrelevant/ignorant, but I imagine that repeated unmuted bass notes could be added to add a harsher, chanter-like feel. The clarsach can produce a very refined tone but, to my ears, it doesn't have to. There is a reason for the bell like tone, akin to the notion of a wind harp, and the idea of a martial-like tune played on the harp fits with that concept (in my imagination anyway!). The German harpist Rudiger Oppermann sometimes explores the harshest possible sounds from the clarsach on his own unique (self-built) variation of the instrument, and by improvising comes up with his own tunes. The ideal most players aim for, though, is the more sonically perfect tone of a modern-day harp in reproducing old airs. That may have been the ideal of court musicians but it may not be the sole way to conceive of the sonic potentials of the instrument. I'd like to hear more experiments done with its sound or tone. Having said that, this performance is wonderful just as it is.
Owen McGee Thanks for your thoughts! This is a very meditative, wistful, supernatural pibroch, hence the more dreamy atmosphere. Check out my other videos for some different sounds including some militaristic tunes!
simonmchadwick I did, and yes: I heard that variation in tone in the different tunes. I liked that sound too. There is an interesting video on youtube of Sean O'Riada interviewed for Danish tv where he compares Irish music to Arabic and Oriental music, in terms of tone and in terms of improvisation. I think that's a concept people interested in old Irish or Scots repertories could explore. Some of Oppermann's tunes sound partly Arabic and partly "Celtic" simply by learning and then improvising using each type of "folk music" scale and drawing on both. Roses for Rumi is a solo performance purely Arabic on the wire-strung harp. The answer to breathing life into a tradition may be in composing, from improvising, and thinking of the common denominators to all folk musics rather than just surviving manuscripts etc. I'm a historian, not a musician, but the old cliché that music is universal and timeless is true; revival is a bit of a mistaken concept, to my mind. It either lives or it doesn't. In Japan, people rediscovered lost music for koto in the early 20th century, but the tradition of koto music (dead since the 16th or 17th century) was reborn only through composing for the instrument "today" and forgetting about "reviving" the court music concept, as if recreating exactly an early modern consort. This contemporary koto music has the same tone and similar techniques but a new sensibility and compositional approach compared to the surviving musical scores of old. An interesting development that also caused the instrument itself to develop. I will check out more of your own music later on. I'm not so familiar with the Scottish repertoire, although I'm fascinated to hear links between what you and pibroch players like Barnaby Brown are doing in that regard. And I much prefer the sound of the clarsach to the pibroch! When budgets allow, I will check out some of your cds as well. Keep up the good work, as they say!
Owen McGee Thanks for the heads up on the Sean O Riada interview, I had not come across that before. Yes it is an old idea, the connections between Celtic and Eastern music. I think at some level these old oral tradition musics are all interrelated back in the mists of antiquity, but I think it can be dangerous to dive too far back in one go, it can become trite and our modern preconceptions and complacent worldviews can take over. I'm looking for the balance of accessibility to a modern ear, and foreignness - I want to find alien sounds that push at our abilities to grasp them. I think it's less about recreating a specific historical scene, than using the foreignness to open a new outlook on things. Like studying poetry in a different language - sure you can translate or paraphrase or make a pidjin, but there is value in trying to see it from the "inside" on its own terms. After a lifetime of such study then yes, it is certainly possible and good to be so immersed in the tradition as to be able to compose fluently in it. I am nowhere near there yet!
simonmchadwick I appreciate and think I understand what you say. The poetry metaphor may be appropriate. But there is also the danger of thinking too much of being immersed in tradition, like someone believing it would be impossible to write a good verse in Greek today unless they were fully versed in Homer. In Ireland, we've had a lot of that sort of mummification of traditions with the end result of no real tradition. A good melody line could have been written in any age, so musical traditions in that sense transcend time, even more so than in the use of written language. A musician is doing the same thing in every age. Immersion in a tradition also means being immersed in the present. Today, I think people are constantly exposed to alien sounds due to the folk, and other, musics of all countries being audible at a click of a button. That can result in superficial appreciations or fusions of style; mere "sampling". But it can also provide inspiration, perhaps, for developing each distinct tradition with regards to individual instruments, in terms of the contexts in which they can play e.g. while Andrew Lawrence King and Jordi Savall are attempting to delve deep into a historic tradition of harp and cello like instruments playing together in early-modern times, at a non-traditional level the likes of Oppermann is playing with Mongolian cello-like instruments as if creating a new folk music for today. The latter may sound rootless, through being "new" or not part of a distinct tradition, but the parallels with what King & Savall are doing is strong, so is the idea of superficiality or rootlessness really the case? In the 17th century, the musicians who did what King & Savall are doing now were no doubt experimenting in a similar way to what more contemporary-minded musicians are doing today. The break in continuity between say Irish or Scots music performances up to the early-modern period and today can be transcended simply by treating the music as timeless rather than seeking to pick up again where the tradition left off, centuries ago. That can't actually be done. The well-tempered clavier didn't even exist then in terms of music too, so therefore the idea of musical scales used in early (European) music forms being similar to the folk music scales used in eastern Europe or 'the east' up until this day isn't something trite. The latter vocabulary actually provides clues as to how to develop the former on its own terms and bring it equally to life. My perspective here will be more superficial than yours, since I'm not a musician and haven't studied the tradition, but I think the idea of seeing music as timeless is never really a case of "diving far back"; it is a question of making it a living thing now. So if someone like yourself or Barnaby Brown understands the pibroch oral tradition of transmitting music, the potential is there to use that skill today in a totally non-historical and living way, so that the tradition becomes instinctual, not an academic puzzle, and it has a vivid context for now. Whatever the end results may be, it at least is a result, rather than a historical curiosity for study. Sorry if this is all impressionable nonsense. But if it provides any potentials for inspiration, no harm done!
Owen McGee Thanks for these thoughts - yes this is all useful and good! I think there is value in all these approaches - I think there is great value in strict historical re-enactment - e.g. playing Bach's arrangements on an original or replica harpsichord - there is value in creative historical collaborations and re-imaginings,, there is value in speculatively pushing the boundaries of received traditions, there is value in totally new creative weirdness. People think I am strict but really I think they can do anything they want!
Knowing this tune on the pipes makes this that much better!
Thanks! I basically learned it from listening to Murray Henderson’s recording on the pipes
All the wee people and little folk were buzzing and delighted within this cave!
Ahh.. 🤍🕊️ I love listening to this.. 🩵🕊️
Always something wonderful about golden and silver strings.
This resonates with me at a very deep level. The arrangement is perfect for your instrument. Thank you for sharing it.
Awesome, truly.
Nicely done! Wild arrangement. Really get the feel of the pipes with the cuts, taps, rolls, triplets. On the harp. Reminds me of Cape Breton piano playing modeled after the fiddle playing ornaments like the hammer on grace note
You know that the piping pibroch is not as old as the clarsach ceol mor. It is from the older cell mor tradition that the piping styles were developed.
Very atmospheric. Lovely.
the DNA of sound. i've been tempted to get an old harp to inhabit the sound physically, but because i've no dexterity with my fingers it'd seem almost sinful, not for misspending money but for disrespecting an instrument through it not being played
Inspiring.
I have a strong suspicion that Pibroch originated as harp music. The Harp was the prime instrument of the Scottish order, played on all occasions from feasts, funerals, to battle, but it was replaced in less than a generation by the War Pipes, an oddly tuned instrument with an uncompromising sound, little suited for subtly. Was the clárseach originally tuned like the Highland pipes, which are noted for using a scale not found elsewhere in the world? The army pipes are tuned to something more like even temperament. Was the intricate ornamentation of piobaireacht transferred directly from harp music? Would the different ornaments produce different resonant effects on an undamped harp? That is what makes this series of recitals not just beautiful, but intriguing.
I think you're on the right track. Current thinking is that the bagpipe came rather late to the highlands and islands from mediaeval Europe via England and lowland Scotland. The playing of this tune on the harp or clarsach and a classical piobaireachd on the bagpipe.......there's hardly a hairsbreadth between the two.
Beautiful, trying to learn the words from the Margaret Bennett track from the Glen Lyon recordings with her late son Martyn. Here's a wee link to the myths www.bocan.tv/library/index.php?version=1&columnnumber=0&group_nr=3&topic=18&superselect=0§ion=2
. . .the cave. . .we should never have left!
Beautiful 💖💖💖
GRMA
Nice
I liked this. I never heard that triplet-note, pibroch style, phrasing, on the wire-strung harp before. I don't play, so forgive me if my comment is irrelevant/ignorant, but I imagine that repeated unmuted bass notes could be added to add a harsher, chanter-like feel. The clarsach can produce a very refined tone but, to my ears, it doesn't have to. There is a reason for the bell like tone, akin to the notion of a wind harp, and the idea of a martial-like tune played on the harp fits with that concept (in my imagination anyway!). The German harpist Rudiger Oppermann sometimes explores the harshest possible sounds from the clarsach on his own unique (self-built) variation of the instrument, and by improvising comes up with his own tunes. The ideal most players aim for, though, is the more sonically perfect tone of a modern-day harp in reproducing old airs. That may have been the ideal of court musicians but it may not be the sole way to conceive of the sonic potentials of the instrument. I'd like to hear more experiments done with its sound or tone. Having said that, this performance is wonderful just as it is.
Owen McGee Thanks for your thoughts! This is a very meditative, wistful, supernatural pibroch, hence the more dreamy atmosphere. Check out my other videos for some different sounds including some militaristic tunes!
simonmchadwick I did, and yes: I heard that variation in tone in the different tunes. I liked that sound too. There is an interesting video on youtube of Sean O'Riada interviewed for Danish tv where he compares Irish music to Arabic and Oriental music, in terms of tone and in terms of improvisation. I think that's a concept people interested in old Irish or Scots repertories could explore. Some of Oppermann's tunes sound partly Arabic and partly "Celtic" simply by learning and then improvising using each type of "folk music" scale and drawing on both. Roses for Rumi is a solo performance purely Arabic on the wire-strung harp. The answer to breathing life into a tradition may be in composing, from improvising, and thinking of the common denominators to all folk musics rather than just surviving manuscripts etc. I'm a historian, not a musician, but the old cliché that music is universal and timeless is true; revival is a bit of a mistaken concept, to my mind. It either lives or it doesn't. In Japan, people rediscovered lost music for koto in the early 20th century, but the tradition of koto music (dead since the 16th or 17th century) was reborn only through composing for the instrument "today" and forgetting about "reviving" the court music concept, as if recreating exactly an early modern consort. This contemporary koto music has the same tone and similar techniques but a new sensibility and compositional approach compared to the surviving musical scores of old. An interesting development that also caused the instrument itself to develop. I will check out more of your own music later on. I'm not so familiar with the Scottish repertoire, although I'm fascinated to hear links between what you and pibroch players like Barnaby Brown are doing in that regard. And I much prefer the sound of the clarsach to the pibroch! When budgets allow, I will check out some of your cds as well. Keep up the good work, as they say!
Owen McGee Thanks for the heads up on the Sean O Riada interview, I had not come across that before. Yes it is an old idea, the connections between Celtic and Eastern music. I think at some level these old oral tradition musics are all interrelated back in the mists of antiquity, but I think it can be dangerous to dive too far back in one go, it can become trite and our modern preconceptions and complacent worldviews can take over. I'm looking for the balance of accessibility to a modern ear, and foreignness - I want to find alien sounds that push at our abilities to grasp them. I think it's less about recreating a specific historical scene, than using the foreignness to open a new outlook on things. Like studying poetry in a different language - sure you can translate or paraphrase or make a pidjin, but there is value in trying to see it from the "inside" on its own terms. After a lifetime of such study then yes, it is certainly possible and good to be so immersed in the tradition as to be able to compose fluently in it. I am nowhere near there yet!
simonmchadwick I appreciate and think I understand what you say. The poetry metaphor may be appropriate. But there is also the danger of thinking too much of being immersed in tradition, like someone believing it would be impossible to write a good verse in Greek today unless they were fully versed in Homer. In Ireland, we've had a lot of that sort of mummification of traditions with the end result of no real tradition. A good melody line could have been written in any age, so musical traditions in that sense transcend time, even more so than in the use of written language. A musician is doing the same thing in every age. Immersion in a tradition also means being immersed in the present. Today, I think people are constantly exposed to alien sounds due to the folk, and other, musics of all countries being audible at a click of a button. That can result in superficial appreciations or fusions of style; mere "sampling". But it can also provide inspiration, perhaps, for developing each distinct tradition with regards to individual instruments, in terms of the contexts in which they can play e.g. while Andrew Lawrence King and Jordi Savall are attempting to delve deep into a historic tradition of harp and cello like instruments playing together in early-modern times, at a non-traditional level the likes of Oppermann is playing with Mongolian cello-like instruments as if creating a new folk music for today. The latter may sound rootless, through being "new" or not part of a distinct tradition, but the parallels with what King & Savall are doing is strong, so is the idea of superficiality or rootlessness really the case? In the 17th century, the musicians who did what King & Savall are doing now were no doubt experimenting in a similar way to what more contemporary-minded musicians are doing today. The break in continuity between say Irish or Scots music performances up to the early-modern period and today can be transcended simply by treating the music as timeless rather than seeking to pick up again where the tradition left off, centuries ago. That can't actually be done. The well-tempered clavier didn't even exist then in terms of music too, so therefore the idea of musical scales used in early (European) music forms being similar to the folk music scales used in eastern Europe or 'the east' up until this day isn't something trite. The latter vocabulary actually provides clues as to how to develop the former on its own terms and bring it equally to life. My perspective here will be more superficial than yours, since I'm not a musician and haven't studied the tradition, but I think the idea of seeing music as timeless is never really a case of "diving far back"; it is a question of making it a living thing now. So if someone like yourself or Barnaby Brown understands the pibroch oral tradition of transmitting music, the potential is there to use that skill today in a totally non-historical and living way, so that the tradition becomes instinctual, not an academic puzzle, and it has a vivid context for now. Whatever the end results may be, it at least is a result, rather than a historical curiosity for study. Sorry if this is all impressionable nonsense. But if it provides any potentials for inspiration, no harm done!
Owen McGee Thanks for these thoughts - yes this is all useful and good! I think there is value in all these approaches - I think there is great value in strict historical re-enactment - e.g. playing Bach's arrangements on an original or replica harpsichord - there is value in creative historical collaborations and re-imaginings,, there is value in speculatively pushing the boundaries of received traditions, there is value in totally new creative weirdness. People think I am strict but really I think they can do anything they want!
. . . I wonder if the invention of this
Instrument coincided with the inhabitants of the cave taking to the trees!
this harp has no problems with the water?
Ha, the harp didn't actually get wet...
Taing!