I was given this album by a friend a while back, but have found it hard to get my teeth into it. At first I found the name semi meoldramatic and was prepared to dismiss it as celtic twilight 'wishy washy' stuff without even listening to it, but eventually gave it a shot and played it through three or four times.
There can be no doubt that the playing is first class with Jarlath Henderson, Luke Daniels and Chris Stout playing a blinder, but being a meat and three vegetables man, I couldn't really get into the whole Classical/ITM synthesis. I realise that in ways this is what one would might call a concept album, in that it takes Gaelic Music from circa Turlough O'Carolan's time to where it might be today if it was cultivated in the style of classical western music, but I'm not sure that the end product does either genre justice or that it succeeds as a genre in itself.
When the melody went of into figured classical variations (yes, I am aware that variation is part of modern Gaelic/Irish/Scottish music), I just wanted to hear it played again in a traditional way.
It seems to me now that there are several possible conclusions to draw in this argument:
1) That Irish Music and other genres don't mix so well, which I think is untrue.
2) That people who listen to Irish Music almost exclusively find it hard to hear it played in a classical setting.
Of course there may be many other conclusions to be drawn, and that is where the fine denizens of The Session come in............................................
I'm interested in composers'attempts to try and extend / incorporate ITM and related genres into classical or at any rate longer pieces, not that I listen to very much.
The Australian composer Percy Grainger set the reels Temple Hill and Molly On The Shore in a piece with the latter name, in 1920. At 195 bars it's not a very long piece of music, but it involves playing those tunes, with varying treatment, a good many times. It's a spirited work, as I remember.
Something of the feel of a country's trad music can come out in a person's classical compositions which are not attempting to reproduce it - Vaughan Williams' "The Lark Ascending" must surely have been fed into by his studies of English trad, and I can't help feeling that the catchiness and wistfulness of Arthur Sullivan's tunes is linked to his being half-Irish.
"The Brendan Voyage"(Shaun Davey) and "Steel Skies"(Alistair Anderson) were two 80s attempts to create extended suites of new tunes composed in traditional styles, and there have been others. As far as I remember Davey's was the more ambitious in terms of creating a piece of incidental classical music and weaving the instruments into it (though I preferred "Steel Skies"' tunes).
There probably aren't so many around who are fully practised in classical music composition - i.e. with Bach's knowledge of mathematical musical progressions, and / or Beethoven's knowledge of how to build up a gigantic symphony. And there will be less who come out of a trad background or are practised in playing ITM etc. Meanwhile, TM players without a classical background, when composing longer pieces of music, cannot be expected to do much more than string out and arrange a set of separate tunes, sometimes devising a few nifty bars at the joins.
(Still counts as music, though; the other way was taken by Moving Hearts...)
I always thought Aaron Copeland was at his best when he borrowed melodies from American folk traditions--when classical/folk fusion works, it can draw on the best of both worlds--strong clear melodies melded with innovative variations and harmonies.
I am always captivated by orchestral music, I find it amazing that all the fiddle players do that vibrato stuff exactly the same way.
I've always loved Aaron Copeland & Vaughn Williams for the folk flavors that they incorporate into their music.
There's a scene in "Latcho Dram" (beautiful video)
of gypsy musicians in Hungary which takes me straight back to Brahms Hungarian Rhapsody. Brahms was paying attention....
Whilst I would always respect anybody elses opinion when it comes to music, I feel that it was a little unfair for the opening contribution to this discussion to dismiss my last two years work after only a four listens as 'unsuccessful' The group has just performed at the Sionna Festival and at the Royal Opera House so clearly not everyone who has heard it feels this way! I'd like to invite anyone who reads this page to make up their own mind in as informed a way as possible by going to www.gael.org.uk/lmg and listening to the various track samples availble there.
I think you best look at your web address as i just tried it and nothing showed up. I did find another site with 3 samples and had a quick listen, i liked one track but not too keen on the others but i can't give a real opinion unless i hear the thing as a whole, so maybe i'll have to get a copy of the cd.
At the end of the day if you can reach a wider audiance and get them interested in traditional music i don't think thats a bad thing.
Very accomplished playing, but not to my taste. The wrong feel, somehow--"Pavarotti Sings the Beatles" kinda. (The Carolan's Concerto sample excepted--but opinions vary on whether Carolan qualifies as true Irish trad.)
But as iain says, if it gets more people interested in the real thing, that's good.
Oh, dear. Pleasant enough, but the text is all just too pretentious and "celtic twilighty" for me. And I play the harp, so that's saying a lot. Carolan the "Last of the Shaman", the "walker between worlds"? Deliver unto me a break!
According to the website, Carolan "unfettered traditional music from the confines of tradition...he set it free from the Pharisees and purists to become its own creature; to embrace and make a marriage with whatever was worthy and inspiring..."
Do we know enough about the history of Irish harp-playing before and up to his time to be sure that he was up against confines, Pharisees and purists? As far as I see, Carolan's musical range was almost entirely locked into the traditional diatonic system. He wasn't regarded as a particularly good player, but did have an aptitude for creating good tunes and verses to go with them: I imagine much of his preoccupation was with working on the latter. What strikes me is not how Baroque Carolan is but how unlike most Baroque music Carolan's is - and how much more elementary. It's trad. Don't get me wrong - lovely tunes.
The Welsh harpers took a step further technically, adopting the chromatic harp as their own. Who knows what they got up to with it. Presumably some Welsh players have played both trad and classical, and maybe tried to hybridise them, or extend trad a bit.
I was afraid from the website that it was going to be some kind of Celtic Woman kind of pseudo-Celtic commercial production. But it's not that way at all---the music is nice! I would even go to see it performed.
Anyone know why they say Carolan and some others say O'Carolan?
I stated my personal scruples about this album at the start of this discussion, but be that as it may, I find that one of the most valuable things about this offering are the notes which come with it. I don't think that there is anything wrong with an artist interpreting his music in written form in an artistic manner.
I realise however that this is a contentious issue. In the same way, although I find it a positive thing, I know some people who scoff at the notes in albums like Martin Hayes' The Lonesome Touch.
However, If we have musicians who can provide intelligent and useful commentary on their music, surely this is a sign of coming of age and suggests new levels of interpretation and sophistication in Gaelic music.
Ottery, that was my "man in the street" impression of the sample clips from that CD. I am not nearly as well educated about ITM as some members here, and I am not at all familiar with the individual players.
By "the real thing" I mean albums like Paddy in the Smoke, or Tribute to Joe Cooley. For me, Lost Music of the Gaels, for all its technical virtuosity, lacks a certain something that those albums have. (And what is that "certain something"? Beats me. That's why I read stuff on this site, trying to figure that one out.)
Just wanted to point out that the album notes were written by Brian Keenan, not myself or yes that would have been a bit pretentious!
I'll look at the web site issue as it seems to work for some users but not others??
Please continue to give the music a chance though, I'm as big a fan of Joe Cooley and Lucy Farr as anyone but also of the mind that their music and tunes should have a place in today's wider musical world.
Ottery i didn't mean that Chris Stout, Luke Daniels and Jarlath Henderson are not the real thing,i have a lot of respect for them, but that the music i heard on the sample clips was not my idea of the real thing.
The concept of what constitutes 'the real thing' in regard to Irish Music is one that's come up a lot on this board. Usually phrased as 'what is traditional?'.
Albums like Paddy in The Smoke are fantastic, grainy snapshots of something which I think probably inspired us all to a greater or lesser extent - the urban session scene in the middle to late twentieth Century.
However, outside those that actually play the music, most people who listen to Irish music do listen to it fused with other genres. What are O'Carolan's pieces if not a synthesis between folk tunes (and forms), and Classical(Baroque?) music? And what was Planxty if not a synthesis of Folk, Rock and Eastern European Music?
Try listening to Purcell's Abdelazer suite also - a lot of the themes and styles pop up in Playford.
And of course the Bach orchestral Suites ...
Delius
Vaughan Williams
Percy Grainger
Music like that on 'In The Smoke' is simple, exciting and immediate. It either grabs you at once or you don't get it at all. It grabs a lot of people to the extent that they rush out and borrow or buy a fiddle and spend the rest of their lives trying to replicate that excitement.
Other sorts of music, like Delius, say, are mellower and take a bit of repeated listening to get into. The experience can be worth the effort.
Bearing in mind that most of the music we now think of as Irish Trad, has in fact been composed since Carolan's time, how different really was Carolan's music from that of the other harp players of his day?
If in fact it was similar to most of the music that other harp players were playing, then perhaps it 'WAS' more representative of the traditional music of that era than we like to think & we perhaps then do him a disservice to poo poo it as pseudo classical?
Listening to much of the material of Ancient Ireland, it strikes me that Carolan was perhaps no different from the musicians & groups of today who are using their musical imagination.
Actually I take back a bit of what I said about Carolan not being influenced by the Baroque - he's known to have taken a keen interest in visiting musicians and his splendid "Carolan's Welcome" does sound like a Baroque theme. However, the limitations of his instrument seem to me rather akin to those imposed on a one-row melodeon player trying to include the odd Beatles tune or Strauss waltz in his repertoire.
To try and put his pieces through extended modulations etc. sounds a worthwhile experiment, if only to see whether it works or not. I haven't heard the CD so can't comment on it. Luke and the others - good luck.
I thought I had posted a comment on Scottish Highstyle fiddle music, but is seems to have vapourised (maybe it was taken off for being irrelevant but anyway I am reposting)
There are some high style CDs around , in particular Puirt a Baroque, which showcase traditional scottish fiddle playing of the 18th century, which, seems to me, combine a more 'classical' approach to the tunes but one which is also very 'traditional'. Many of the tunes are still played today.
Some of the tunes are very long and complex like Black Jock which is a towering tune with many many parts and subtle variations
Anyway I would not claim to be any expert, but this would seem to be a close cross fertilisation.
I wonder what the trad fiddlers of Norway and Hungary, and their fans, thought or said when Grieg and Bartok used their tunes to compose classical, albeit national, music; and the Finns of Karelia, when Sibelius (whose Karelia Suite I like very much) did likewise.
We should not be surprised to have Mr. Daniels chime in--you never know who is behind those screen names on The Session!
After seeing him a few times in past years with the group Broderick (and being awestruck by his playing), I had wondered what he was up to lately.
There are a number of experiements going on at the edges of what we call 'traditional' music, and it doesn't pay to reject them out of hand--approach them with open ears and minds!
Lost Music of the Gaels
Lost Music of the Gaels
I was given this album by a friend a while back, but have found it hard to get my teeth into it. At first I found the name semi meoldramatic and was prepared to dismiss it as celtic twilight 'wishy washy' stuff without even listening to it, but eventually gave it a shot and played it through three or four times.
There can be no doubt that the playing is first class with Jarlath Henderson, Luke Daniels and Chris Stout playing a blinder, but being a meat and three vegetables man, I couldn't really get into the whole Classical/ITM synthesis. I realise that in ways this is what one would might call a concept album, in that it takes Gaelic Music from circa Turlough O'Carolan's time to where it might be today if it was cultivated in the style of classical western music, but I'm not sure that the end product does either genre justice or that it succeeds as a genre in itself.
When the melody went of into figured classical variations (yes, I am aware that variation is part of modern Gaelic/Irish/Scottish music), I just wanted to hear it played again in a traditional way.
It seems to me now that there are several possible conclusions to draw in this argument:
1) That Irish Music and other genres don't mix so well, which I think is untrue.
2) That people who listen to Irish Music almost exclusively find it hard to hear it played in a classical setting.
Of course there may be many other conclusions to be drawn, and that is where the fine denizens of The Session come in............................................
# Posted on December 13th 2006 by Sinocal
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
I'm interested in composers'attempts to try and extend / incorporate ITM and related genres into classical or at any rate longer pieces, not that I listen to very much.
The Australian composer Percy Grainger set the reels Temple Hill and Molly On The Shore in a piece with the latter name, in 1920. At 195 bars it's not a very long piece of music, but it involves playing those tunes, with varying treatment, a good many times. It's a spirited work, as I remember.
Something of the feel of a country's trad music can come out in a person's classical compositions which are not attempting to reproduce it - Vaughan Williams' "The Lark Ascending" must surely have been fed into by his studies of English trad, and I can't help feeling that the catchiness and wistfulness of Arthur Sullivan's tunes is linked to his being half-Irish.
"The Brendan Voyage"(Shaun Davey) and "Steel Skies"(Alistair Anderson) were two 80s attempts to create extended suites of new tunes composed in traditional styles, and there have been others. As far as I remember Davey's was the more ambitious in terms of creating a piece of incidental classical music and weaving the instruments into it (though I preferred "Steel Skies"' tunes).
There probably aren't so many around who are fully practised in classical music composition - i.e. with Bach's knowledge of mathematical musical progressions, and / or Beethoven's knowledge of how to build up a gigantic symphony. And there will be less who come out of a trad background or are practised in playing ITM etc. Meanwhile, TM players without a classical background, when composing longer pieces of music, cannot be expected to do much more than string out and arrange a set of separate tunes, sometimes devising a few nifty bars at the joins.
(Still counts as music, though; the other way was taken by Moving Hearts...)
# Posted on December 13th 2006 by nicholas
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
I always thought Aaron Copeland was at his best when he borrowed melodies from American folk traditions--when classical/folk fusion works, it can draw on the best of both worlds--strong clear melodies melded with innovative variations and harmonies.
I am always captivated by orchestral music, I find it amazing that all the fiddle players do that vibrato stuff exactly the same way.
# Posted on December 13th 2006 by AlBrown
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
I've always loved Aaron Copeland & Vaughn Williams for the folk flavors that they incorporate into their music.
There's a scene in "Latcho Dram" (beautiful video)
of gypsy musicians in Hungary which takes me straight back to Brahms Hungarian Rhapsody. Brahms was paying attention....
# Posted on December 13th 2006 by morning star
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
Whilst I would always respect anybody elses opinion when it comes to music, I feel that it was a little unfair for the opening contribution to this discussion to dismiss my last two years work after only a four listens as 'unsuccessful' The group has just performed at the Sionna Festival and at the Royal Opera House so clearly not everyone who has heard it feels this way! I'd like to invite anyone who reads this page to make up their own mind in as informed a way as possible by going to www.gael.org.uk/lmg and listening to the various track samples availble there.
cheers
Luke Daniels
# Posted on December 13th 2006 by lostgael
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
I think you best look at your web address as i just tried it and nothing showed up. I did find another site with 3 samples and had a quick listen, i liked one track but not too keen on the others but i can't give a real opinion unless i hear the thing as a whole, so maybe i'll have to get a copy of the cd.
At the end of the day if you can reach a wider audiance and get them interested in traditional music i don't think thats a bad thing.
# Posted on December 13th 2006 by iain beag
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
http://www.gael.org.uk/lmg/
# Posted on December 13th 2006 by Ottery
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
Very accomplished playing, but not to my taste. The wrong feel, somehow--"Pavarotti Sings the Beatles" kinda. (The Carolan's Concerto sample excepted--but opinions vary on whether Carolan qualifies as true Irish trad.)
But as iain says, if it gets more people interested in the real thing, that's good.
# Posted on December 13th 2006 by John Galt
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
Oh, dear. Pleasant enough, but the text is all just too pretentious and "celtic twilighty" for me. And I play the harp, so that's saying a lot. Carolan the "Last of the Shaman", the "walker between worlds"? Deliver unto me a break!
# Posted on December 13th 2006 by Tracie
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
Mickray writes: "But as iain says, if it gets more people interested in the real thing, that's good."
And Jarlath Henderson, Luke Daniels and Chris Stout are not the 'real thing'?
Hmmm!
# Posted on December 14th 2006 by Ottery
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
According to the website, Carolan "unfettered traditional music from the confines of tradition...he set it free from the Pharisees and purists to become its own creature; to embrace and make a marriage with whatever was worthy and inspiring..."
Do we know enough about the history of Irish harp-playing before and up to his time to be sure that he was up against confines, Pharisees and purists? As far as I see, Carolan's musical range was almost entirely locked into the traditional diatonic system. He wasn't regarded as a particularly good player, but did have an aptitude for creating good tunes and verses to go with them: I imagine much of his preoccupation was with working on the latter. What strikes me is not how Baroque Carolan is but how unlike most Baroque music Carolan's is - and how much more elementary. It's trad. Don't get me wrong - lovely tunes.
The Welsh harpers took a step further technically, adopting the chromatic harp as their own. Who knows what they got up to with it. Presumably some Welsh players have played both trad and classical, and maybe tried to hybridise them, or extend trad a bit.
# Posted on December 14th 2006 by nicholas
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
I was afraid from the website that it was going to be some kind of Celtic Woman kind of pseudo-Celtic commercial production. But it's not that way at all---the music is nice! I would even go to see it performed.
Anyone know why they say Carolan and some others say O'Carolan?
# Posted on December 14th 2006 by kennedy
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
I stated my personal scruples about this album at the start of this discussion, but be that as it may, I find that one of the most valuable things about this offering are the notes which come with it. I don't think that there is anything wrong with an artist interpreting his music in written form in an artistic manner.
I realise however that this is a contentious issue. In the same way, although I find it a positive thing, I know some people who scoff at the notes in albums like Martin Hayes' The Lonesome Touch.
However, If we have musicians who can provide intelligent and useful commentary on their music, surely this is a sign of coming of age and suggests new levels of interpretation and sophistication in Gaelic music.
# Posted on December 14th 2006 by Sinocal
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
Ottery, that was my "man in the street" impression of the sample clips from that CD. I am not nearly as well educated about ITM as some members here, and I am not at all familiar with the individual players.
By "the real thing" I mean albums like Paddy in the Smoke, or Tribute to Joe Cooley. For me, Lost Music of the Gaels, for all its technical virtuosity, lacks a certain something that those albums have. (And what is that "certain something"? Beats me. That's why I read stuff on this site, trying to figure that one out.)
# Posted on December 14th 2006 by John Galt
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
Just wanted to point out that the album notes were written by Brian Keenan, not myself or yes that would have been a bit pretentious!
I'll look at the web site issue as it seems to work for some users but not others??
Please continue to give the music a chance though, I'm as big a fan of Joe Cooley and Lucy Farr as anyone but also of the mind that their music and tunes should have a place in today's wider musical world.
Luke
# Posted on December 14th 2006 by lostgael
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
Ottery i didn't mean that Chris Stout, Luke Daniels and Jarlath Henderson are not the real thing,i have a lot of respect for them, but that the music i heard on the sample clips was not my idea of the real thing.
# Posted on December 14th 2006 by iain beag
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
The concept of what constitutes 'the real thing' in regard to Irish Music is one that's come up a lot on this board. Usually phrased as 'what is traditional?'.
Albums like Paddy in The Smoke are fantastic, grainy snapshots of something which I think probably inspired us all to a greater or lesser extent - the urban session scene in the middle to late twentieth Century.
However, outside those that actually play the music, most people who listen to Irish music do listen to it fused with other genres. What are O'Carolan's pieces if not a synthesis between folk tunes (and forms), and Classical(Baroque?) music? And what was Planxty if not a synthesis of Folk, Rock and Eastern European Music?
Try listening to Purcell's Abdelazer suite also - a lot of the themes and styles pop up in Playford.
And of course the Bach orchestral Suites ...
Delius
Vaughan Williams
Percy Grainger
Music like that on 'In The Smoke' is simple, exciting and immediate. It either grabs you at once or you don't get it at all. It grabs a lot of people to the extent that they rush out and borrow or buy a fiddle and spend the rest of their lives trying to replicate that excitement.
Other sorts of music, like Delius, say, are mellower and take a bit of repeated listening to get into. The experience can be worth the effort.
# Posted on December 14th 2006 by Ottery
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
Bearing in mind that most of the music we now think of as Irish Trad, has in fact been composed since Carolan's time, how different really was Carolan's music from that of the other harp players of his day?
If in fact it was similar to most of the music that other harp players were playing, then perhaps it 'WAS' more representative of the traditional music of that era than we like to think & we perhaps then do him a disservice to poo poo it as pseudo classical?
Listening to much of the material of Ancient Ireland, it strikes me that Carolan was perhaps no different from the musicians & groups of today who are using their musical imagination.
http://pybertra.free.fr/ceol/homepage.htm
Mmmm - The eternal conflict between the purist & the innovator!
# Posted on December 14th 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
Actually I take back a bit of what I said about Carolan not being influenced by the Baroque - he's known to have taken a keen interest in visiting musicians and his splendid "Carolan's Welcome" does sound like a Baroque theme. However, the limitations of his instrument seem to me rather akin to those imposed on a one-row melodeon player trying to include the odd Beatles tune or Strauss waltz in his repertoire.
To try and put his pieces through extended modulations etc. sounds a worthwhile experiment, if only to see whether it works or not. I haven't heard the CD so can't comment on it. Luke and the others - good luck.
# Posted on December 14th 2006 by nicholas
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
I thought I had posted a comment on Scottish Highstyle fiddle music, but is seems to have vapourised (maybe it was taken off for being irrelevant but anyway I am reposting)
There are some high style CDs around , in particular Puirt a Baroque, which showcase traditional scottish fiddle playing of the 18th century, which, seems to me, combine a more 'classical' approach to the tunes but one which is also very 'traditional'. Many of the tunes are still played today.
Some of the tunes are very long and complex like Black Jock which is a towering tune with many many parts and subtle variations
Anyway I would not claim to be any expert, but this would seem to be a close cross fertilisation.
Nick
# Posted on December 14th 2006 by nick b
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
I wonder what the trad fiddlers of Norway and Hungary, and their fans, thought or said when Grieg and Bartok used their tunes to compose classical, albeit national, music; and the Finns of Karelia, when Sibelius (whose Karelia Suite I like very much) did likewise.
# Posted on December 15th 2006 by nicholas
Re: Lost Music of the Gaels
We should not be surprised to have Mr. Daniels chime in--you never know who is behind those screen names on The Session!
After seeing him a few times in past years with the group Broderick (and being awestruck by his playing), I had wondered what he was up to lately.
There are a number of experiements going on at the edges of what we call 'traditional' music, and it doesn't pay to reject them out of hand--approach them with open ears and minds!
# Posted on December 15th 2006 by AlBrown