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Píobaire, An, Volume 8, Issue 3, Page 21

Píobaire, An, Volume 8, Issue 3, Page 21
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periodical Publisher
Na Píobairí Uilleann
periodical Editor
Chairman, NPU
periodical Title
An Píobaire
volume Number
3
issue Content
Píobaire, An 8 3 21 20120622 21 The music has never been performed separately (to the film), but actually I composed it as a "suite" of separate pieces in the hope that it might be detached from the film. So it's poten- tially a concert work……it's the work in which I most consistently and purposefully used tra- ditional instruments. In Thresholds, the piper is reduced to just sounding the drones of the instrument. When I asked Deane about his use of pipes in Thresh- olds he had this to say: Thresholds was written 23 or 24 years ago, as far as I can recall. Not long before that - in 1985 - I had given a talk on my work in the Univer- sity of Oldenburg, where I lived at the time. One of the students commented on the presence of pedal-points in certain pieces, and asked me "was this the influence of listening to the Irish pipes?" I had certainly never thought of it in this way, but I told her that she might well be right. I thought about this a lot and rather liked the idea, and when it came to writing ‘Thresh- olds’ and I found myself using pedal-points, it seemed natural to use the drone of the pipes to bring out the analogy. With hindsight I think this was both curiously subjective and rather literal-minded, not to say uneconomical. I think I also had the idea that it would be nice to in- troduce a sound I associated with rural Ireland into a piece composed for the Dublin millen- nium - rooting the city in the country, or some- thing like that. The major work in a contemporary orchestral style from the 1990’s to feature the uilleann pipes is Gerry Murphy’s (b.1947) Dialects (1993-1994), composed for his former student David Downes. Dialects, is significant in the fact that it presents the uilleann pipes in an or- chestral context that is, for the most part, quite different to Davey’s use of the pipes. There are several references to traditional music styles but the melodic material given to the pipes is often not particularly idiomatic of traditional music. The writing is infused with chromati- cism and the orchestral palette, though often tonal, is decidedly more dissonant than that of The Brendan Voyage. The chromaticism in the pipes is quite striking for its unconventionality in relation to traditional piping. Elaine Kelly (n.d.) notes how this dissonance and chromaticism was a very intentional aspect of Murphy’s approach, although the limitations of the pipes meant the piece is perhaps not as dissonant or chromatic as Murphy would have liked. The complexity of the instrument presented many difficult problems in the writing of the piece. Gerry’s aim was to write difficult music in keys which were foreign to the instrument, leading to many problems in chromatic runs. Some of the problems being the severe diffi- culty in the cross fingering of the notes and also the fact that Ab did not actually exist. This led to a collaboration between composer and soloist especially due to the fact that Gerry did not play the pipes…..Gerry frequently had to recast several parts because they were un- playable. He finally decided that the pipes sounded best in a traditional mood, so he used a lot of jig and reel time. Dublin-born composer Michael Holohan has written a number of works featuring the uil- leann pipes, indeed he describes them as ‘pos- sibly my favourite instrument’. 2 His main collaborator in this regard is Mick O’Brien. The use of the pipes in his orchestral works rarely deviates from traditional approaches to rhythm and melody. One notable exception to this is the section of The Road to Lough Swilly (2001) called ‘The Running Beast’ which is in the metre of 7/8. Mick O’Brien explained to me how he found this to be a challenging part of the piece because of that fact. The battle scene (‘The Running Beast’) was a 7/8 piece, not generally played in Irish music. That was a challenge to learn that off by heart because it doesn’t fall into any pre-determined box that I have in my head…because it’s not something we’re used to listening to I have to break it down and get the structure in my head. We’re used to listening to jigs and reels but we
issue Number
8
page Number
21
periodical Author
[Periodical]
issue Publication Date
2012-07-01T00:00:00
allowedRoles
anonymous,guest,friend,member

An Píobaire, Volume 8, Issue 3

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