The flute and Irish history

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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by Mr.Gumby »

why not note down relevant links..
As I said, I found the article in a dark corner of my computer, where it has been sitting for perhaps a decade snd a half. I had no clue where I found it originally and quick look for a source showed Pan journal as a members only site. I didn't have the urge to go looking further.

But aside from that, I am not concerned with building c&f as a long term source of information. Threads are like a conversation, of the moment. They're not about building future resources. As far as I am concerned anyway.
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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by GreenWood »

That was not said refering to you Mr. Gumby or as prompt/criticism , it was only to say pasting in any relevant links is ok, might be useful to others. I view chiff as both discussion and resource, because even without searching the site itself if you try a web search on anything flute it almost always appears in the first few links offerred, and often with information or discussion not found anywhere else. Permission to add the

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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by GreenWood »

That's not to say to turn a conversation into an academic rut either. I think it was Dowling above who described a modern "superfluity of good players" for example, but I don't think there can be too many players... as many people who enjoy playing music is good by me. I don't know though, maybe he felt rejected or something.

Some discussion at the session as well which is current now but historical tomorrow , the session seeming more orientated towards performing and social ? For example

https://thesession.org/discussions/47583

Not sure if OP there walked into a pub that had been taken over for the night or who in following comments was right, but all combined it sort of exemplifies how shifts in trend might be understood (or not) by musicians.
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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by GreenWood »

I will write my own summary of William H. Grattan Flood's book to spare anyone reading through brief note on each chapter below.

The whole presentation looks like how Irish music is still presented nowadays. There is a lot of useful information of various kinds to explore further from, or to contest, but it is also quite heavy reading and very historical in a wider or cultural definition sense, as opposed to simple relate to the kinds of music being played over time.

My impression is that it presents a certain strata of music only, the recognised in terms of standing, whether liturgical, bardic, gentrified, Anglo, or revived Irish, with all of that framed in a limited formal description of history and sometimes romanticised, which was much the manner up until more recently in the west.

We have the impression of "inclusion" of Irish tunes, origins that are tempered by ecclesiastical refinement and so on.

If you visit peoples outside of modern distraction (TV, www, radio) though, they all have their own music and song. A greater part is local or informal, with "official" music (religious, ceremonial, organised) the more impressive but the lesser in terms of amount played. Maybe Ireland was different, but that side is simply not presented in the work beyond a few references that admit it existed.

That is said just in relation to how I approach music and related, others will likely have different opinions.


[1200 to 1500 Anglo influence cont.

Some mentions of instruments but otherwise mostly putting everyone (the English) in their proper place.


1500 to 1600

About suppression. A historic reality all the same, and with named examples of people to lead into further research, little information on the music until late in that century but some contemporary descriptions of its place, or the place of some of its musicians, in society. Towards 1600 a few known ballads and tunes are accounted for.

To sum up to 1600, certain settings and music are mentioned, but I think they are only a small part of all the music occuring.



Prereform church music
Church music.
Mostly history, notes church music texts of around 1500 held in Ireland.


Church music 17th century.
Church music.
Mostly history.


Anglo-Irish 16th century
Looks at dances, introduction of English ballads, and some personal histories. Mostly history.

Shakespeare
Suggests Irish origins of tune mentions by Shakespeare, interesting if only because of the references and tune history brought in to relate between tunes.


From here known information on music steadily increases.

Irish music 17th century
Here mixed in with historical account we find the origins of various early tunes suggested or presented. Descriptions of music playing is limited.


Anglo-Irish 17th century
Covers the introduction of theater and related goings on, suppression of minstrels and some moving towards authorised performance. Descriptions of dance and music being common towards end of century are included, some sources for early printed tunes.


O'Carolan
Is a biography that also covers his tunes. Probably updated more recently but a fair amount is presented.

Jacobite 1705-1755
Mostly presents various tunes associated, and related history to each. Origin of melodies is often contested so probably this has been both expanded on and updated more recently.


Pipers in 18th century
Gives a recent history of bagpipes, players, some settings and goings on, tune books.

Anglo-Irish music 1701 to 1745
Basically a run through of outside music and performance found in cities.

Handel and Arne
As title and as above , notes inclusion of one Irish tune, and later some airs. So many names that here and other chapters sometimes it is difficult to read, more a reference.

Anglo-Irish 1750 to 1800
As above, mostly gentry or city and notes the inclusion of various Irish tunes to that world. Ends noting act of union ended some patronage.

Irish Harp Festivals and Harp Societies
More a history of later harp playing than its music or everyday setting ]
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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by Mr.Gumby »

I came across thus one at a local library a few days ago, by accident, and couldn't help thinking of this thread. There was some description of crossroads dancing. I didn't pursue it and left it on the shelf.

Image

Plenty of traveller's impressions that occasionally touch on music, from Giraldus Cambrensis onward. Clare library's local studies project published an anthology 'The stranger's gaze', for example. It's a decade or two since I read that though. No exact recollection of the content.

Although about pipers, the recent enough Garrett Barry and Gandsey books may give some impressions of where music was at, at the time. No flutes mentioned though. The new John and Tom Ennis biography I linked earlier may shed some insight. They were part of O'Neill's circle and John played the flute as well. Haven't read that one yet though.
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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by GreenWood »

I will try to find those online, the book looks like a must read because it would be sort of the culmination of all the previous changes before the famine.

Going back in time a bit, a chapter from this book

EARLY MEDIEVAL IRELAND AD 400–1100

is available at

https://www.ria.ie/sites/default/files/chapter_3_1.pdf

which looks at habitations and organisation of dwellings during that period, and that gives a certain idea, possibly in some ways even up to Anglo-Norman times or later still.

This must have been linked somewhere here previously, and I wouldn't know how to place it (I'm not a piper for starts). It is more recent, but still...

COPPERS AND BRASS : The Piping Tradition of Irish Travellers

https://vimeo.com/131638804
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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by GreenWood »

I could not find the book on before the famine online, but a later one by Ignatius Murphy was at wayback

Looking for textual references to flutes in 18th century rural Ireland ... there are various flute makers listed for Dublin along with some ventures, but Dublin was not rural Ireland.

A couple of references I did find outside of that though are listed below. Actually almost all the texts available are travel writers or gentry or academic, mostly with a very limited view of rural Ireland. There are plenty to search through and not all accessible. This post

http://cstair.blogspot.com/2019/11/iris ... hy-of.html

has a good explanation on lack of use of Irish literary sources. As elsewhere at the time the rural Irish were probably relatively illiterate, and did not seem to have the foundations (library, secure dwellings etc.) for storing writings in Irish. What is available seems neglected. There must be some sympathetic middle-class accounts somewhere I should think, even if in English. Also there was repression of expression during that century.



Anyway... the two Twiss ?

So the first reference is odd, because it is a translation English traveller "Twiss" to French, and books lists it as Richard Twiss, but English books only give a known Robert Twiss writing in English to same theme, and the text of that doesn't seem to match... at least no flutes or violins mentioned (by quick search) in

https://archive.org/details/atourinirel ... /page/n164

However In

Voyage En Irlande Richard Twiss

https://books.google.pt/books?id=tz9WFf ... te&f=false


pg 176 he says the Irish much enjoyed dance, dance masters would go cabin to cabin to teach, accompanied by a flute player or a blind violin player.


Someone else might figure out the confusion.


Also in the translation of a Frenchman's walk in Ireland 1796

https://archive.org/stream/frenchmanswa ... t_djvu.txt

"I passed five or six charming days at Hazelwood. On the evening of my arrival here I was invited to a concert at Sligo It was given in the Hall of Sessions, and appeared like a complete revolution of the usual sittings. The big drum was on the Throne of Justice, the fifes and flutes in the barristers' quarters, and the audience in the place of the culprits. "

But I guess that is more town setting.

Anyway, both sort of point to flute being played before 1800 among the rural Irish, which though I take that for granted just seems to lack certainty elsewhere.
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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by Mr.Gumby »

Just came across this one, which I have seen before, in a book I was looking through. The schoolmaster's moment of leisure, Howard Helmick, c. 1888

Image

There's another painting in the same book: A Tune for the Baby', also bij Helmick, 1874, of a man in a rural cottage setting playing the flute for a baby in a straw cradle. I couldn't Immediately locate that one online.
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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by GreenWood »

A scrap book of images collected.

Flute, whistle, pipes.....

NOT Irish except where noted. 19th to early 20th century mostly. Mostly europe, a couple from America . Gives a comparison of some kind. Would have to reverse image search for details.

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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by Mr.Gumby »

There's another painting in the same book: A Tune for the Baby', also by Helmick, 1874, of a man in a rural cottage setting playing the flute for a baby in a straw cradle. I couldn't Immediately locate that one online.
So here's a scan from the book:

Image
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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by GreenWood »

That's a great picture . I expect there were different cabins and cottages of sorts, but I've explored a lot of ruins etc. from 19th century in Spain and that does not look any the less...just remembering one article I read of a family of 15 in Spain raised in a 20m2 cane hut early 20th century, had a picture to go with it. Here in Portugal taipas are mud construction houses, not so common now but still some around. In Huelva until recently they would build large reed houses for the summer while collecting rice. Early 19th century there were also famine in Spain, some rebellions, not on the scale of Ireland though. In Portugal the gypsies will still camp under makeshift tents in spare land, local gypsies have a sort of heritage status. Nothing like finding horses out grazing, or driving by standing in coloured carts, or a family all loaded in. There are fewer people nowadays who own their own world.

Here is an unusual flute listed as Irish but with no other detail

http://basenationale.philharmoniedepari ... LE/0961813


Here is a text for flute playing in Ireland 1660, a picture of whistle player England, dancers Germany.


Image



Other interesting references found are southwest Ireland having Spanish as second language (16th century) , as well as a description of Portuguese pinaces being built to trade with Ireland around that time.

Below is an unusual but difficult to read account of what some in England had in mind for Ireland. Setting aside the reality of a forced sovereignty, and that descriptions of foreigners are inevitably biased (everywhere), the author looks at how the Irish were framed as a race in wider european thought, as well as the ideas of "freeing them" from tribal realities to create an agrarian reality of land ownership... that obviously didn't work out too well as planned... but more as a shuffle of authority maybe.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3039188


Also

https://cryssabazos.com/2020/04/22/ramb ... y-ireland/

and

https://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/ ... rnDay.html

have some insight.
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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by PB+J »

Mr.Gumby wrote: Sat Nov 12, 2022 1:16 pm Just came across this one, which I have seen before, in a book I was looking through. The schoolmaster's moment of leisure, Howard Helmick, c. 1888

Image

There's another painting in the same book: A Tune for the Baby', also bij Helmick, 1874, of a man in a rural cottage setting playing the flute for a baby in a straw cradle. I couldn't Immediately locate that one online.
So when I look at this I first look at the date. 1874. And then I'm thinking "is this documentation, or is this a representation of something else?" Was the artist out to capture a moment in the reality of 1874, or was the artist out to idealize something? There are only five students in the class. In real life there could be more students but he set this up to show only five. I'm thinking this is a "hedge school" and so this is an idealization of an earlier period, not a record of 1874.


Clearly a lot of poverty there: also you could say a lot of social fracture. The schoolmaster is glad to have the other kids gone. The kid in the dunce cap has been punished, but the kid also seems to be enjoying the playing, as if the schoolmaster set this scenario up deliberately, seeing some fellowship with the kid. it's obviously important--otherwise why have the kid at all? The schoolmaster is dirty like maybe he also does farm work. But the moment he gets a bit of leisure out comes the flute. A parable about the position of musicians in society? The painting pairs the bad student and the teacher, while absenting the "good" students. It's a very interesting painting

Ok I see the Journal of Music did a little essay on this--well done. Helmick was an American educated in Paris and residing in London, so I'm inclined to suspect he's got a lot of "notions" about the irish typical of his time and background. There's lots of stereotypes of bumbling irish people circulating in england and the US, Irish people as stubbornly pre-modern and unsuited for modern society. Sometimes that could be presented as anachronistic and charming, sometimes as disruptive and threatening. But knowing a bit more about Helmick makes me think the "dunce" cap refers to stereotypes about "paddy." That might not be fair because he taught at Georgetown in DC later, a jesuit university. It's a little ambiguous. there's a bond between the dunce and the musician.

Really interesting, thank you. There are a couple paintings by helmick at the Smithsonian Museum of American art--now I have to go take a look
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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by Mr.Gumby »

So when I look at this I first look at the date. 1874. And then I'm thinking "is this documentation, or is this a representation of something else?" Was the artist out to capture a moment in the reality of 1874, or was the artist out to idealize something? There are only five students in the class. In real life there could be more students but he set this up to show only five. I'm thinking this is a "hedge school" and so this is an idealization of an earlier period, not a record of 1874.
I have seen the scene described elsewhere as a 'hedge school' so that fits. I would look on scenes from that period as generally romanticised, idealised scenes with varying degrees of stereotyping. Terry Moylan did an iconography of the pipes. to which I contributed some, there are an awful lot of images of pipers in that vein from the latter half of the 19th century (that stuff is up on the NPU website).

In the case of the two paintings by Helmick, they're very accurate in their detail, the furniture, the bird cage, the plaited straw cradle. Also the grip of the fluteplayer in the second image.

As an aside, photogrqapher Enda O'Flaherty did a project on Disused School Houses of Ireland. Perhaps a bit heavy on the HDR and post-production at times, but worth a look.
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Re: The flute and Irish history

Post by PB+J »

Thanks for that too--I got very interested in "genre" painting when i was doing the O'Neill book. All these people are "outsiders' in one way or another, like Helmick, but there's often a lot of empathy for the subject amidst the picturesque sentimentality. Erskine Nicole is fascinating.

There's a very good book on William Sydney Mount, an American "genre" painter. It focuses on the black/Irish music and dance in ports an waterfronts

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p080524
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Re: The flute and Irish history

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It is interesting to see the series of 'Saturday evening' and 'Pattern Day' in Connemara. I believe the setting for those is Mám Éan (or Maumeen),w hich is still a place of pilgrimage in the Maamturk mountains (there was a lovely video on youtube of Joe John Mac Con Iomaire singing Caoineadh na dTrí Mhuire that was partly filmed there). Anyhow these patterns were wellknown for debauchery, drinking, fighting and all sorts of vices and were stopped/suppressed at some point. Not quite the pastoral scenes, I imagine, you see in the paintings.
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