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O'Neill - Irish Minstrels and Musicians, Volume 1, Issue 1, Page 64

O'Neill - Irish Minstrels and Musicians, Volume 1, Issue 1, Page 64
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periodical Publisher
Regan Printing House, Chicago, 1913
periodical Editor
[none]
periodical Title
O'Neill - Irish Minstrels and Musicians
volume Number
1
issue Content
The Development of Traditional Irish Music 127CHAPTER XIIITHE DEVELOPMENT OF TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC.THE saying that the invention of writing injured tile power of memory, findsmuch support from the fact that musicians ignorant of written music, possess thefaculty of memorizing tunes to a far greater degree than those who acquiretheir repertory from that source.We have all heard of Irisil seanachies and professional story tellers of Orientalcountries, who could recite hundreds of tales and genealogies in identical phrase-ology from day to day and year after year. Neither historians nor those whoread their works could hope to rival them in that respect.Music it must he granted surpasses every other aid to memory in that itbrings its influence most directly and most movingly to the heart. The old songor strain possesses a power which will turn hack the years even to tile cradleno less than the odor of forgotten flowers.We must not forget however that memory is capricious, and preserves abaffling independence of the will. \Ve cannot always summon up forthwith theimages or combination of tones which we desire. Neither can the untrained earbe always relied on when we wish to reproduce the words or musical formscasually impressed on it.The bards, like their predecessors the druids, concealed with jealous careall knowledge from the vulgar eve. Tile harpers in their turn, Brompton, theEnglish abbot, tells us, taught in secret and committed their lessons to memorybefore the Norman invasiona practice they continued down through thecenturies.Neither harpers nor PiPers made use of printed music even when availablein the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as in fact the majority of them wereblind anti of necessity ol l-iged to learn and teach by the oral method only.Musicians of talent, harpers principally, have exercised their skill in elab-orating simple melodies, and adding variations to the original strains. All of thefour dozen airs in Burk Thumoths collections published ill 1742-1743, whetherIrish, Scotch, or English. are embellished with variations, and the same can besaid of popular Irish anti Scotch airs in OFarrells, Aldays, and other collections,down to the early years of the nineteenth century.Fired by the same ambition, the pipers and fiddlers invoked their muse toemulate the example of the harpers and set about composing additional partsand florid finishes to their simple dance tunes, especially jigs. and before long itwas nothing unusual to find a jig with from three to half a dozen parts orstrains. Not a few had been enlarged to seven, eight. and nine parts. InOFarrclls Pocket Companion for the Union Pipes (third collection about i8io),The Little House Under the Hill jig has no less than eleven parts, while anameless long dance in the Petrie collections is extended to twenty-four parts!Though Bunting tells us that the harpers invariably played and transmittedtheir tunes precisely as they had been taught tllem. it is but reasonable to makesome allowance for lapses of memory and individual taste: for even Bunting him-self included in his later collections variants of airs he had previously printedunder different titles.Quite obviously memorized music disseminated from one generation to anotherby vocal or instrumental means would inevitably lead to the formation of manyvariants from original versions.Traditional music unlike any form of modern composition is not the workof one man but of many. Indeed it can hardly be said to have been composedat all. It is simply a growth to a certain extent subject to the influence of heredity,environment, natural selection, and the survival of the fittest.It may be regarded as axiomatic that the older the melody the simpler thestrain. Melodies consisting of btit one strain are to be found in the Petrie andJoyce collections.The purpose of this chapter is not so much the discussion of the subject, asthe practical demonstration of the changes which time and taste have broughtabout in some pieces of Irish music, and how dance tunes particularly have beenevolved from vocal airs and other forms of the same melody.Tnu Iaisi-i Fox FIUNT, OR Tmi Fox CHASENo piece of Irish music is so widely known by name in the land of its originat least as The Fox ClIase. As an instrumental composition it is attributedto Edward Keating Hyland, a celebrated blind piper who received some lessonsin theory and harmony from Sir John Stevenson in Dublin. The melody or themeon whicil it was founded was an ancient lamentation to which was sung someverses in both Irish and English reciting a dialogue between a farmer and a foxwhich he had detected with the goods on him in the shape of a fine fat goose.From this air then called ..In Jlaidrin Road/i (Modhereen Rua), Hylanddeveloped the famous descriptive piece, introducing the sounds of the chase suchas the tallyho, baying of the hotmds, death of tile fox, etc., and winds up theperformance with The Foxhunters fig as an expression of the general delightat the result.Fortunately we can present a copy of The irish Fox Hunt, as printed inOFarrclls Pocket Com/ an ion for the Iris/i or U;uon Pipes, published about i8o6.This being but seven years subsequent to the date of its composition according toGrattan Flood, it can be safely assumed that OFarrells setting is authentic.The next version, entitled The Fox Hunt, is that found in tile manuscriptcollection of Henry 1-Indson. 24 Stephens Green, Dublin. completed in 1842. Anotation indicates that Mr. Hudson copied this and other tunes from an oldercollection owned by F. M. Bell.Through the kindness of the princely Prof. P. J. Griffith of the LeinsterSchool of Music we are enabled to submit the genial professors own version ofThe Fox Chase, the version by tile way which, enhanced by his skillful execution,WOE tile seal of supremacy at various contests.The fourth and final example of The Fox Chase is that whicll appears inONeills Music of Ireland published in 1903. Although we had been led tobelieve that the setting was that played by tile great Munster piper, Stephenson,it turns out that Patsy Touhev obtained it from John L. \Vavland of tile CorkPipers Club, and that it primarily came from Mrs. Kenny of Dublin.We trust the settings or versions of the once popular piece of music hereinpresented will serve to relieve the anxiety of several correspondents who fearedthat it would be utterly lost, although were it necessary several other versionscould have been submitted.I 2(
issue Number
1
page Number
64
periodical Author
O'Neill, Capt. Francis
issue Publication Date
1913-01-01T00:00:00
allowedRoles
anonymous,guest,friend,member

O'Neill - Irish Minstrels and Musicians

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