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9 1 12 20130207 12 THE COMPLETE CAROLAN SONGS & AIRS ARRANGED FOR THE IRISH HARP CAITRÍONA ROWSOME (Walton’s Music Ltd., PB, xvi+254 pp, ISBN 978-1- 85720-212-0) Available from Waltons : www.waltons.ie ~ NEW PUBLICATIONS ~ The Harp that once . . . T HE INCLUSION of one of Carolan’s tunes – ‘Mrs. Anne McDermott Roe’ – in the last issue must have been inspired by something in the air, for in response, and by co- incidence, several facts and publications have arrived in our ‘in-tray’. Firstly the responses! Several readers remarked what an attractive tune it is, and most expressed surprise that such an appealing item had seemed to have escaped the notice of recording artists. However one correspondent pointed out that it had been recorded quite recently. The harper Aibhlin McCrann, who once played with Ceoltóirí Laighean, played the tune for the compilation album Masters of the Irish Harp which was released in 2011 by RTÉ, and is available on their online shop shop.rte.ie. On seeing the reproduced image which accom- panied the tune, said to be of Turlough Carolan, harper Siobhán Armstrong immediately re- marked that the instrument looked more like a Welsh harp than an Irish one, and the dress of the player does look more 19th c. than 18th. The coincidence consists of the arrival over the past month of three new publications with a harping connection. These are described below. C AITRÍONA ROWSOME, the daughter of piper Leon Rowsome, has accomplished a task that needed doing for many years – re-uniting the song texts of Turlough with the airs that he created for them. It’s really strange that this has not happened be- fore. Both the music and the songs have each been expertly, but seperately, dealt with, the music by Donal O’Sullivan in Carolan, the Life, Times and Music of an Irish Harper (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958) and the songs by Tomás Ó Máille in Amhráin Chearbhalláin/The Poems of Carolan (Irish Tests Society 1915). The texts of

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2013-02-06T00:00:00

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