Na Píobairí Uilleann

Chairman, NPU

An Píobaire

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8 4 19 20120927 sion provided a new incentive for re-constructing the piece. Another contributory factor was our acquisition in 2010 of an edition of the Eliza- bethan music collection by William Byrd My Ladye Nevell’s Booke (c. 1591). It was acquired because it contained one of the earliest Irish tunes recorded, ‘The Irish March’. This turned out to be just one part of a suite, a battle piece representing musically a miltary campaign in 1580s Ireland, passages of which were uncan- nily similar to passages in ‘Mairseáil Alasdruim’, and also to passages in other pieces, such as the hounds in ‘The Fox Chase’ or the series of re- peated short motifs in ‘The Battle of Aughrim’. This revelation provoked the realisation that there was probably a recognised musical ‘gram- mar’ which governed the way in which all such items were treated, and that Ennis’s and Cumbá’s piping styles would provide a reliable guide to approaching the transcribed settings. Taking these factors into consideration, Pat re- visited the various versions, applied his own sense of appropriate pace and articulation, and created a composite version, combining in- sights from Walker’s, Crofton Croker’s, Good- man’s, Keane’s and Ó Súilleabáin’s versions to produce a coherent suite which is as close as anyone will now get to the sense of the origi- nal piece. This process – a blend of fidelity to tradition with deeply informed intuition – has to be recognised as a valid and creative effort. It is not as if the piece ever would or could have survived in its ‘original’ form to our times. It was probably re-made again and again over the years. If it was nearly contem- porary with the battle it described, then it was most probably not made for the bellows-blown pipes, but for the píob mhór or war-pipes, which would have been the only form of bagpipe in use in mid- seventeenth century Ireland. It has a greater musi- cal range in the surviving versions than could have been provided by that instrument, so the process of modification could have begun very early. It has in fact been described by one writer as a ‘pibroch’ – a very understandable perception given its struc- ture and its Scottish associations. Pat described his work on the piece at our NOTES & NARRATIVES event in April, and gave it its first public performance in over a century. His audi- ence were unanimous in their praise for his work on the piece and for his performance of the finished product. (This presentation is now available on our SOURCE website.) He will again perform it in October at our ACE & DEUCE OF PIPING concert. The opportunity of hearing this historic piece incomparably performed by its re- creator is reason enough to attend Terry Moylan 19 Courtesy of the Royal Irish Academy

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