Flutes in Irish Music - How far back?

[Gordon]

Not to cling too tightly to what may be more myth than fact, I was talking about the banning of war pipes in Ireland, not Scotland, which was having a different set of ups and downs with England. Still, and on second thought, it is a bit unlikely to me that a sophisticated piece of work like the Uillean pipes would simply rise out of the banning of a mouth blown war pipe - had to be more to its evolution; it certainly was an easier, quieter way to bring the piping sound indoors for musical purposes.

Of course, so was playing the flute.

Hey...

[Nanohedron]

[The uilleann pipes] evolved fairly early on...to a seated, slightly more palatable...instrument.

Not altogether a fan, I take it.

[cadancer]

My dad talked about cutting a kind of whistle from the bark of a tree. Unfortunately, I never saw him do this, but from the way he talked about it, it was a pretty common thing when he was growing up.

My dad was from Kentucky and I *did* see him make a whistle from a tree branch. Picture the bark on the outside and the wood on the inside of a branch that was finger-sized in diameter. The bark was smooth (I am not sure what kind of tree/bush it was) and if you cut the branch, you could slide the wood right out of the bark and end up with a tube of bark. I believe he cut the holes and fipple opening before he slid the wood out from the bark. Then he slid the fipple block back in after shaving some wood off the top for an air-stream passage. Bingo! one new flute.

...john

[cadancer]

-- duplicate removed (due to slow-as-cold-molassas update) --

[awildman]

Willow is good for this. Of course, they don't last too long. Wikipedia has a short article on them. Some cultures used them with no finger holes and cover the end to increase note range.

[AaronMalcomb]

The bark was smooth (I am not sure what kind of tree/bush it was) and if you cut the branch, you could slide the wood right out of the bark and end up with a tube of bark.

I know a lot of cultures do this with birch bark.

[peeplj]

I wish I had seen my dad make a bark whistle like that, or that I knew more about it.

I have learned a lot from this thread--but this info about the bark whistles is pure gold to me. I appreciate ya'll so much for sharing that!

--James

[jemtheflute]

Jean George's well known and excellent children's novel set in the Catskill Mountains in the 1960s, My Side of the Mountain, has a description of making a swanee whistle from willow in just this way. I wonder if it is something peculiar to American species of willow because I've never managed to do it with British ones despite trying a good few times over the years since I read the book in the 1970s! Doesn't matter how smooth a section of willow shoot you get, without nodes, kinks etc, or what time of year (I think the book says it's a Spring thing, when the sap is rising), the wood just isn't loose inside the bark in any willow or sallow I have tried. Of course, I haven't done a botanically thorough survey and I may simply not have found the right species......

[Gordon]

[The uilleann pipes] evolved fairly early on...to a seated, slightly more palatable...instrument.

Not altogether a fan, I take it.

Well, actually, I like hearing the pipes -- except when I'm playing with them. The first several ITM groups I was in were built around pipers. Besides the volume problems (us against them , and their tuning issues as the seasons change or the pub doors open , there were also always stylistic issues. I don't play in a "piping" style, but always felt compelled (no, make that pushed to the wall), to play whatever rhythm or setting the piper played - kinda like trying to sweep back the tide. Some give and take is fine, but...

Of course, don't get me started on accordians...

Okay. So I discovered the emoticons..

[Jon C.]

Here is a nice article by Hammy Hamilton on the history of the Irish flute.
http://www.bfs.org.uk/pan/historyoftheirishflute.pdf

[Denny]

thanks Jon...

I was wondering if they were gonna post it.

edited to add:
I just noticed that I hadn't checked my email...

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

Daiv wrote:

this is sort of a side question, but does anybody know of any singing traditions that sound similar to the sean nos?

If you listen to field recordings of old ballads collected in rural Newfoundland, the singing style is very similar in many respects to Irish "sean nos" singing. This is evident even in songs of English origin collected from areas of the province where the population is overwhelmingly of West Country extraction.

SteveB

I think Ozarks singer Almeda Riddle sounded a bit "sean-nos" in ways too. Very slow, sliding into notes, rubato, little whoops in the melody.

House Carpenter.

Another fascinating old American singer was Horton Barker. These were strictly solo singers, which used to be very common in America (and everywhere else of course).

Who are some of those Newfoundland singers you have in mind, Steve? I know about the MacEdward Leech website where you can hear all the samples of recordings. I like Mike Kent a lot, he sounds very Irish, but that's no surprise since he was from (IIRC) Waterford.

We mostly rely on O'Neill's mention of the flute being the most common instrument in the old days. Don't believe he mentions homemade instruments much, he does relate how his brother-in-law Barney Delaney actually made a set of pipes in his youth out of "feleastroms," whatever that is. O'Neill also says Delaney first expressed himself as a musician on a penny whistle; perhaps those pipes were just a plaything, ala the set of sticks made to look like pipes Seamus Ennis is pictured with as a young tyke. Delaney was about O'Neill's age, born in the late 1840s or so. That would be pretty young to own a Clarke's instrument. O'Neill left Ireland at 16 (in 1864) able to play the transverse flute so he at least was able to obtain one. O'Neill was slightly more upper crust than most though.

I believe flutes/fifes are more common worldwide than whistles. The fifes Mississippi fifer Otha Turner made couldn't be simpler, a bit of cane with seven holes burnt into it with a hot poker.

Reg Hall writes of music making mostly being for professionals until the late 19th century. You had professional pipers/fiddlers along with your dancing masters. Perhaps it was at this later stage that flute playing really took off. One more thing, there were apparently early forms of the fiddle being played, one interviewee in the book the Northern Fiddler mentions how in the old days people played an fidil cam, the fiddle with a crooked neck - possibly something more akin to the medieval rebec.

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

Oh boy! Lotsa stuff to comment on here.

What was considered Irish music, pre-1700, is pretty hard to determine and could have been radically different, depending on where you were. On one hand, most of the country was Irish-speaking at this time, and there was a healthy dose of foot, horse, and sea traffic, so tunes could have-- and probably did--spread a lot orally. Around the Pale, the influence of art music of the period would have been most distinct, at least in terms of instrumentation. The preeminent instruments of Irish-speaking Ireland would have been the wire-strung harp (clairseach) and bagpipes (píob mhór). Fiddles and viols would perhaps have been present, but from what I've read, the standard of fiddle playing in Ireland did not become particularly high until the mid-19th century. I have never heard of any historical documents stating that the bagpipes were ever banned in Ireland; this seems likely to be a fanciful and convenient myth to lay the blame on the English for everything bad that ever happened rather than acknowledge that the Irish became incredibly adept at deliberate cultural neglect. The last recorded use of bagpipes in Ireland was in 1745 and they had likely died out by around 1800. The reason for their disappearance is likely the same as the reason for the pipes' dramatic decline in Gaelic Scotland at the same time: without the patronage of the clan system, there wasn't much in it for pipers; by 1780, the MacCrimmons, most celebrated of all Scottish piping families, declined to pass the tradition on to their own children because piping had lost all sense of respectability.

Tunes played on the harp and bagpipes in Ireland would likely have resembled the ceòl mór (aka "pibroch") music of Scottish piping--though not as it's played today. Anyone curious about this music should track down the playing of Scottish pipers Allan MacDonald and Barnaby Brown, who have done significant research on the subject of Scottish piping, pre-1780, and found several ceòl mór tunes with definite Irish connections. Tunes later absorbed into the pastoral/union pipe repertoire, particularly jigs, sometimes display unmistakeable ceòl mór attributes. "Fraher's jig" and the "The Humours of Ballyloughlin" are two particularly apt examples.

There would have been dance tunes played as well. By 1700, there would have been jigs in 6/8 and 9/8, some common time tunes rather like reels if not reels by name, and perhaps also some tunes in 3/2, which were quite popular in England and parts of Scotland at that time. They were called "hornpipes" but bore no similarity at all to modern hornpipes. Given how popular variation sets (i.e. dance tunes with anywhere from 4 to 20 + parts) were in England and Lowland Scotland, I wonder how present they were in Ireland.

Whistles made from reeds had probably been played and made by children for hundreds and hundreds of years--and they continued to be until the mid-20th century. There were probably some people playing traditional music of some sort on baroque flutes, but probably mostly gentleman musicians playing genteel arrangements of what they regarded as quaint and primitive Irish airs. Given the flute's reputation among the common people as a vector of disease that lasted up until the early 20th century, I doubt it had much, if any, caché with most people in Ireland pre-1700.

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

Fiddles and viols would perhaps have been present, but from what I've read, the standard of fiddle playing in Ireland did not become particularly high until the mid-19th century.

Based on what? Only first-hand account of fiddle playing quality I can think of is that of the hilariously named Richard Head's comment about the fiddle sounding "worse than a key on a gridiron." Doesn't really address the quality of the playing, either!

There's that bit about the populace greeting James II with an armada of "vile little viols and rebecs" or the like.

The last recorded use of bagpipes in Ireland was in 1745 and they had likely died out by around 1800.

What about the Donegal Dohertys and their kin? Don't sound like revivalists from what I've read. Johnny D's grandfather played the piob mhór all through the 19th century. They may have been an exceptional case (can't think of another family that was at it through the duration, actually).

Tunes played on the harp and bagpipes in Ireland would likely have resembled the ceòl mór (aka "pibroch") music of Scottish piping--though not as it's played today. Anyone curious about this music should track down the playing of Scottish pipers Allan MacDonald and Barnaby Brown, who have done significant research on the subject of Scottish piping, pre-1780, and found several ceòl mór tunes with definite Irish connections.

There were harp-like movements in some traditions of slow airs, the struth mór-esque run of notes Willie Clancy put into the Dear Irish Boy for instance, which has analogues in transcriptions printed in Petrie, Joyce, Goodman, Roche, etc. I wouldn't think that would be an analogue to ceòl mór though - unless the harpist used their nail like a flatpick...has someone attempted to compare the two traditions directly?

Tunes later absorbed into the pastoral/union pipe repertoire, particularly jigs, sometimes display unmistakeable ceòl mór attributes. "Fraher's jig" and the "The Humours of Ballyloughlin" are two particularly apt examples.

Piob mhór maybe. Patsy Touhey's playing had hints of the complex gracings of ceòl mór, and the clean playing of his tradition seems more similar to the sound of your typical bagpipe, rather than the more "sound effects" heavy playing of other pipers. But I've never heard any old recording of Irish pipes that put me in mind of ceòl mór per se. Some of the more unusual pieces in old transcriptions like the caoine(s? what's the plural, my man?) printed in O'Neill's, or the Battle of Aughrim, might be more to the point.

There would have been dance tunes played as well. By 1700, there would have been jigs in 6/8 and 9/8, some common time tunes rather like reels if not reels by name, and perhaps also some tunes in 3/2, which were quite popular in England and parts of Scotland at that time. They were called "hornpipes" but bore no similarity at all to modern hornpipes. Given how popular variation sets (i.e. dance tunes with anywhere from 4 to 20 + parts) were in England and Lowland Scotland, I wonder how present they were in Ireland.

O'Farrell's is chock full of multi-part tunes, they were quite the rage. Dunno how early the reel and hornpipe made it into print, or how prevalent dance music is in the Neals' book (never seen a copy).

Whistles made from reeds had probably been played and made by children for hundreds and hundreds of years--and they continued to be until the mid-20th century. There were probably some people playing traditional music of some sort on baroque flutes, but probably mostly gentleman musicians playing genteel arrangements of what they regarded as quaint and primitive Irish airs. Given the flute's reputation among the common people as a vector of disease that lasted up until the early 20th century, I doubt it had much, if any, caché with most people in Ireland pre-1700.

Hey, we're back on topic! Disease, eh? Why would the well-to-do be puffing away regardless, using a bit of powder from their wig for headjoint traction (Quantz's advice)?

What's your source for that one? It's pretty funny if true, the Irish have certainly done a 180 there. I've heard about a handful of anecdotes about old flutes that positively had little bacteria colonies on the inside.

The Kerry piper Gandsey made instruments out of reeds as a child, as I mentioned before. That would've been late 18th century.

[tin tin]

Given the flute's reputation among the common people as a vector of disease that lasted up until the early 20th century, I doubt it had much, if any, caché with most people in Ireland pre-1700.

Hey, we're back on topic! Disease, eh? Why would the well-to-do be puffing away regardless, using a bit of powder from their wig for headjoint traction (Quantz's advice)?

What's your source for that one? It's pretty funny if true, the Irish have certainly done a 180 there. I've heard about a handful of anecdotes about old flutes that positively had little bacteria colonies on the inside.

The first time I heard of the flute being associated with physical ailments was on Mike Rafferty's Speed 78. Here's part of what he relates on track 7, Story about my mother:
"She never liked the flute much. I suppose maybe she thought my father went blind from playing the flute. ...that was her thinking...she said 'make you go blind, don't play it,' which I suppose, that was the way it was."