The flute and Irish history

[PB+J]

"Mostly the same music" is a little tricky though. It's not clear to me that in Ireland they were all playing the same music. This is why I used the subtitle "creation of irish music."

O'Neill spent a lot of time wondering whether tunes like "The Arkansas traveler" or "Turkey in the Straw" were "really Irish," and he spent a lot of time revising tunes, from say, Ryan's Mammoth Collection to make them "more Irish." He rejected certain tunes like "Kitty O'Neill's/Kitty O'Shea's as "too modern," which is interesting because that tune surely came out of an entirely Irish-American context of recent immigrants. He played the scottish pipes, a bit unclear which ones he meant by that, and judged highland piping competitions. His final book took a much broader view of "gaelic melody."

I think a lot of what he accomplished was forming a "canon" of Irish tunes and setting some of the parameters for what would count in the future, although of course his influence is very far from total.

If we consider, say, an agricultural laborer who goes from Donegal to Scotland or England one season a year, as many did, and learns tunes there, are we taking about tradition and continuity, or are we talking about really pretty radical economic and social disruption?

[rykirk]

O'Neill spent a lot of time wondering whether tunes like "The Arkansas traveler" or "Turkey in the Straw" were "really Irish," and he spent a lot of time revising tunes, from say, Ryan's Mammoth Collection to make them "more Irish." He rejected certain tunes like "Kitty O'Neill's/Kitty O'Shea's as "too modern," which is interesting because that tune surely came out of an entirely Irish-American context of recent immigrants.

I think a lot of what he accomplished was forming a "canon" of Irish tunes and setting some of the parameters for what would count in the future, although of course his influence is very far from total.

I am extremely skeptical of any attempt to identify the origin of tunes by analyzing the melodic tendencies or modal quality. Or any attempt to label something more or less Irish or too modern. We know that 'national styles' and pastiche were very popular across North Western Europe, that people were comfortable mixing very old (back to 17th Century Playford origins) and brand new composed tunes in national styles and popular song.

I'll confess I'm much more familiar with English and Scottish sources but there were loads of pocket books, tutors, and tune collections widely published in the late 18th Century. Do we have an inventory of those found or published in Ireland? To me that's a more promising source to look for what people really played than trying to analyze tune types or identify national characteristics or modes, or speculating about what the illiterate peasants and farmers played. That stuff is pure subjective conjecture.

[GreenWood]

That appears to be the great gap in our knowledge rykirk. There are tunes that have a clear Irish related history to say the early 17th century, in that the themes they carried were clearly Irish, but there is no clear way to say that they are representative to the rest of what local Irish were playing at the time. So I take those as music that was acceptable to the Irish ear and so assimilated into Irish tradition, if not originating from it. However the actual style of playing has as much to say as the melody itself, and there I think we are truly lost but for whatever intuition we might have (or subjectively, imagine we have).

There are occasional early references to music in Ireland... 12th century and often quoted

"Of the incomparable skill of the Irish in playing upon musical instruments): The only thing to which I find that this people apply a commendable industry is playing upon musical instruments; in which they are incomparably more skilful than any other nation I have ever seen. For their modulation on these instruments, unlike that of the Britons to which I am accustomed, is not slow and harsh, but lively and rapid, while the harmony is both sweet and gay. It is astonishing that in so complex and rapid a movement of the fingers, the musical proportions can be preserved........ it must be remarked, however, that both Scotland and Wales strive to rival Ireland in the art of music.."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_of_Wales

Which seems reliable given he liked music and the above suggests it is all he thinks the Irish are good at [in the sense that he wasn't so enamored as to write false compliment]...and I suppose that says it wasn't all slow airs.


Then there are the songs (often airs ?) , and these do not change much over time, and some are very old. However it cannot be assumed either that songs represent what musicians were playing on the flute. I'm sure they did to a degree, and I'm sure airs are a very old form of playing, and fortunately they don't change too much I think, being more sentiment to a steady melody, than a technical style.

For the rest though it seems like a lot of guessing , and I also would not try to extrapolate a tune back in time without accepting that being called subjective. There are some older tunes around though. One suggested source

"The great published encyclopedia of Irish melody is of course the two volumes of Aloys Fleischmann’s Sources of Irish Traditional Music c. 1600–1855, which covers over 6,000 tunes or editions of tunes and which was published by Garland Publishing in New York & London, 1998."

https://www.itma.ie/features/printed-co ... -of-melody

On the continent there is various earlier music known. For example the continuity of medieval music and hymns eg. Chris Norman on rennaisance flute

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NYmysChy3 ... E&index=12

is often understood to merge somehow into baroque styles. The same goes for various dance music, where there is an obvious continuity through centuries. So I would think for Irish music the same exists somehow, and lacking earlier documentation we are just going to have to make do with "the sound of it" ? It is good like that maybe, because it makes us use our senses, and I find it is an endless discovery that is not cramped by too much "correctness".

[rykirk]

With all due respect, quotes from the Middle Ages don't shine much light here. We can't even accurately say how much continuity there was from the 18th Century to today, suggesting there was any from the 12th to the 18th is pure conjecture.

[GreenWood]

"In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries"

Melodies certainly exist from that time forward, a fast search

https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grove ... c_Eras%3A2

the subsequent styles of music are often clearly derived and a continuation of sorts. To put it another way, if you name any later style of music you will almost certainly find it wasn't pulled from a hat, a new invention, but was drawn from earlier music of some kind.

For Irish music there is simply no documentation through time, most of it is snapshots by collectors or foreign composers and most of that 18th century forward. Music was played previously to a "high enough level" according to various accounts, and the music played now came from somewhere. I don't think it was fully interrupted at any point, then replaced, or later fully reintroduced but in a different style from elsewhere.

Here is one example via dance, it is in Spanish...

http://loquelaspiedrascuentan.blogspot. ... rio-i.html

It explains the style and rhythm origin of Canarios dance is native pre-Spanish of Canary islands (thanks to early documentation), it became widely popular with contemporary tunes created to match (e.g. Canarios), the history of that tune is to be found elsewhere. In other words the dance is from well before 15th century, the rhythm also, the melody at least 16th century if I remember, but set to the older rhythm, and those have barely changed since then. I could search up more on that if you like. Tarantella is another interesting history, as well as types of flamenco tied to regions or specific settings (e.g. mine workers) .

I understand the reticence though, and I think it is good that any of this is challenged, and argued and debated as need be. I just came across an example of the sort of argument that exists, e.g.

https://thesession.org/recordings/3354

Some of that is taste, some of it is method of interpretation (as in not convincingly original, or too far from original to be possible), and some if it is plain historical argument (did they really play that on flute).

I don't mind the discussion of it all, at all, will happily acknowledge "interpretation" vs "invention" vs "factual or not", and I also think musicians should be honest in their description, and with that aside then play as or what they feel to. I would be far easier with "15th century interpreted on flute" than "flute from 15th century" for example, unless anyone was sure it was that...and was playing as known played, or as best to as thought played, in style.

[GreenWood]

This review I have just now read:

Review: The Broken Fiddle? Debunking the Myth of Irish Traditional Music
Reviewed Work: The Making of Irish Traditional Music by Helen O'Shea

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41274493

brings in the various ideas at play on continuity of Irish music from 18th through 20th century well, and in only a few pages.

Unlike O'Shea though I don't believe the tradition is broken or invented, it's continuity being much more illusive than any monolithic description attempted to be used as a meaning of "authentic" . Music cannot be caught and its proper meaning is only fully shared when actually being played. Recordings of it are shadows that echo, and notation only stepping stones that need a river to sound.

[PB+J]

This review I have just now read:

Review: The Broken Fiddle? Debunking the Myth of Irish Traditional Music
Reviewed Work: The Making of Irish Traditional Music by Helen O'Shea

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41274493

brings in the various ideas at play on continuity of Irish music from 18th through 20th century well, and in only a few pages.

Unlike O'Shea though I don't believe the tradition is broken or invented, it's continuity being much more illusive than any monolithic description attempted to be used as a meaning of "authentic" . Music cannot be caught and its proper meaning is only fully shared when actually being played. Recordings of it are shadows that echo, and notation only stepping stones that need a river to sound.

O'Shea is a first rate scholar and also has a deep love of "irish traditonal music" which she played extremely well until arthritis brought a stop to it.

The word "tradition" is always being invoked to make certain kinds of claims--you are doing so yourself in talk about stepping stones and rivers, so you can avoid talking about less comfortable things. Here's a passage from Martin Hayes' recent autobiography talking abut how the landscape of Clare influenced his playing.

"All the experiences of nature, the farm, the landscape, the folklore, my imagination and the memories of great moments of music have become entwined in the tunes. The deeper from within the tune comes, the more powerful it is." Indeed rivers, stepping stones, the trill of the lark, the mist in the valley etc etc.

And he writes: We then went downhill, past Malley’s Stream at the bottom, before we began another climb up towards Moroney’s Flat, the second short piece of flat road on the journey….but nobody seems to know who the Malleys were. There is, however, something very beautiful about a family name long gone from the area, but still being remembered in the name of a picturesque mountain stream.

Of course history knows what became of the Malleys: they either died in the famine, or far more likely emigrated. Martin Hayes is a great musician, with a moving and distinctive style, but in this passage the absent Malleys authenticate Hayes’ playing: he is authentic because he grew up in a landscape depopulated by emigration. It’s akin to how Americans think of Indians as pleasantly vanished, the impediments they posed to the acquisition of land erased, leaving place names and a comfortable melancholy. The Irish economy has for centuries been structured around the necessity of emigration. He describes the Sheedy family. "The Sheedys’ house that we were visiting that day, which was constructed from clay, has since melted back into the earth. Bushes and briars have reclaimed the homestead, but I hold on to the memory of the times spent in that small, thatched cottage."

He concludes "They were trapped by poverty, as well as lack of opportunity and perhaps an unwillingness to emigrate. there you have it: tradition. The sheedy's probably didn't feel they were growing up in tradition: They were growing up under intense pressure to emigrate.

And indeed if you read the autobiography you see the Hayes' family was very politically connected and well positioned to gain after the establishment of the free state: "After Irish independence, my grandfather was given the whole mountain by the Land Commission." he notes, and "My father was a big De Valera supporter all his life and was an active member of the local Fianna Fáil party." This is the party which helped insure that emigration would be constant feature of Irish life well into the 1980s.

And of course Hayes himself had to emigrate and spent decades gigging in Chicago and the US, developing his distinctive style with the late Dennis Cahill.

Hayes is again a wonderful player, and there is nothing wrong with being involved in politics, but look at the work "traditional" is doing, the complicated history it's obscuring. It was not tradition that caused the Malleys or the Sheedys to vanish: tradition is what Hayes uses to fill the vacuum created by their absence.

[rykirk]

Unlike O'Shea though I don't believe the tradition is broken or invented, it's continuity being much more illusive than any monolithic description attempted to be used as a meaning of "authentic" . Music cannot be caught and its proper meaning is only fully shared when actually being played. Recordings of it are shadows that echo, and notation only stepping stones that need a river to sound.

I'm sorry but this is just romantic nonsense. We can study the history of music thru the massive corpus of evidence and what it would generally show is that the majority of the tunes you hear at any given session were probably composed within the past hundred years and most of what is accepted as appropriate performance style, ornamentation, etc is probably even younger, possibly post-WW2 era.

Of course you could find an album's worth of tunes that have documented roots in the 1700s, but that is not the bulk of the current ITM repertoire, to say nothing about HOW its played. And that's still a million miles from any supposed medieval roots. There is no magical pre-modern stream or well of tradition. History is full of massive upheavals and innovation, the people of the past were essentially the same creatures as we are, curious, innovative, and loved novelty and invention. Just looking at what we have solid evidence for, there was massive shifts in what was popularly played and how it was performed within 50 years from 1750 to 1800, for example.

None of this is value judgement, the music people play today stands on its own merits. It just is what it is. It's the romantic types who try to claim or invent ancient roots that introduce that value laden dispute on authenticity themselves.

[Nanohedron]

It’s akin to how Americans think of Indians as pleasantly vanished, the impediments they posed to the acquisition of land erased, leaving place names and a comfortable melancholy.

There's a load of stuff for me to nitpick over with this analogy, well-intentioned as it is in striving for concision. Suffice it to say that unlike the Irish emigré, the Native American hasn't vanished, but the overarching US cultural narrative tends to render Indian Country irrelevant to the point of virtual nonexistence. That detail out of the way, I get your point.

'Nuff said, and on with the show.

[PB+J]

I'm sorry but this is just romantic nonsense. We can study the history of music thru the massive corpus of evidence and what it would generally show is that the majority of the tunes you hear at any given session were probably composed within the past hundred years and most of what is accepted as appropriate performance style, ornamentation, etc is probably even younger, possibly post-WW2 era.

Of course you could find an album's worth of tunes that have documented roots in the 1700s, but that is not the bulk of the current ITM repertoire, to say nothing about HOW its played. And that's still a million miles from any supposed medieval roots. There is no magical pre-modern stream or well of tradition. History is full of massive upheavals and innovation, the people of the past were essentially the same creatures as we are, curious, innovative, and loved novelty and invention. Just looking at what we have solid evidence for, there was massive shifts in what was popularly played and how it was performed within 50 years from 1750 to 1800, for example.

None of this is value judgement, the music people play today stands on its own merits. It just is what it is. It's the romantic types who try to claim or invent ancient roots that introduce that value laden dispute on authenticity themselves.

This seems right to me

[GreenWood]

Rykirk

I don't disagree with that at all (apart from the description of "romantic nonsense" ) Personally I leave it all as a mystery, because it is clear Irish music as a whole is distinct and that distinction and ability goes back to before records began, is applied to whatever music is currently at hand. Irish music when played by Irish tends to have a different sound. I don't know the repertoire or players all that well, but nine times of ten I will be right on a new tune being from Ireland or not. That isn't value judgement either, just how subtle the differences are that we are able to note, and I could not even say what gives away the difference.

What that does all add up to on my side though, is that attempts to devalue any claims to authenticity are as fraught as the making of the claims themselves. The reason for that is simply that no-one I think is able to properly explain in exchange just why another is playing the way they do. The tune history for sure can be contested, the broader style of playing being used as well, but the ability, sense, or sentiment the player carries through in their playing is something that is beyond those and would only be belittled or mistranslated by attempts at further classification. So, there is room for everyone to be right, somehow...does that lead to argument or understanding though ?

[PB+J]

It’s akin to how Americans think of Indians as pleasantly vanished, the impediments they posed to the acquisition of land erased, leaving place names and a comfortable melancholy.

There's a load of stuff for me to nitpick over with this analogy, well-intentioned as it is in striving for concision. Suffice it to say that unlike the Irish emigré, the Native American hasn't vanished, but the overarching US cultural narrative tends to render Indian Country irrelevant to the point of virtual nonexistence. That detail out of the way, I get your point.

'Nuff said, and on with the show.

yes this is the point I was trying to make. I certainly understand native people are still very much here, especially in the West. Washington DC, across the Potomac river, though, is full of iconography of noble vanishment--there is a stereotypical Indian on the top of the capital for example. There are bridges and building with native iconography, and paintings in government building put there as part of a symbology of melancholic absence.Team names. It's doubly awful in that as you say native people are by no means vanished.

The larger point I was trying to make earlier is about how what gets presented as tradition is often rooted in the most extraordinary forms of disruption and discontinuity. People try to create continuity in the face of disruption, and the idea of "tradition" is one of the ways they do it. .

[Nanohedron]

The larger point I was trying to make earlier is about how what gets presented as tradition is often rooted in the most extraordinary forms of disruption and discontinuity. People try to create continuity in the face of disruption, and the idea of "tradition" is one of the ways they do it.

Understood.

[bigsciota]

I'm sorry but this is just romantic nonsense. We can study the history of music thru the massive corpus of evidence and what it would generally show is that the majority of the tunes you hear at any given session were probably composed within the past hundred years and most of what is accepted as appropriate performance style, ornamentation, etc is probably even younger, possibly post-WW2 era.

I'd push out the composition of the "majority of tunes" a little bit further to give us some wiggle room, but otherwise I think this is essentially accurate as it pertains to the music/style it's played in today. The ornamentation and playing style aspect is especially something that is little talked about (or talked about in generalities) without much explicitly said. Even putting on records of players from the first half of the 20th century you'll find them sounding very different to many current players. I remember talking to Catherine McEvoy when the McKenna CD set was released, she was remarking about his phrasing and how you just don't hear people playing with that way of phrasing now. Plenty of examples of that sort of thing when you look/listen.

[GreenWood]

PB+J

"..you are doing so yourself in talk about stepping stones and rivers, so you can avoid talking abut less comfortable things."

I am not uncomfortable talking of the famine and Irish history beyond knowing that I know little, that it is not really my business at all, and that to do so as British would invalidate any perception of impartiality in anything I said. So I will just banter accepted facts presented by others without opinion if nescessary. I feel able to talk of the history of Britain though, as well as to criticise any nation or person as I see fit . I feel no personal guilt for what happened to the Irish, I count myself responsible for my own actions in this world not those of others, present or historic.

For Hayes I personally don't read any of that as of making him more "traditional". Possibly he is playing into the American drama, possibly he is simply being sincere and on a memory trip, I wouldn't know.

"...there is nothing wrong with being involved in politics"

In politics the currency is lies.


Some have the tradition of disguising their own existing guilt of occupying the lands of others by insinuating they had only two options, to emigrate to that land, or die. They show token sympathy to those they displaced and criticise the nation they are part of, but while still remaining part of it.