Na Píobairí Uilleann

Chairman, NPU

An Píobaire

1

8 1 23 20120206 23 Whilst Séamus Ennis was not available for the live performances, he was the original piper on Cage’s recording and Cage no doubt used the same process of recording Ennis’ playing as he did with Glackin. He then used these record- ings and incorporated them into the extraordi- nary sound collage that makes up the Roaratorio. The pipes are played no differently in this work as to how they would be in traditional music, however the context into which the pipes are placed is particularly unusual and in the wider world of music this work was considered par- ticularly ground-breaking. Cage received the prestigious Carl Sczuka Prize for Radio Art for Roaratorio in 1979. In his acceptance speech, Cage (1979) described his use of elements from traditional music. All along I had in the back of my mind the plan to make a circus of Irish traditional music. When following Helen Schneyer’s advice I tried to get in touch with Joe Heaney, “the King”, as she said, “of Irish singers”. John Fullemann and his wife Monika and I went to Norwich in England in late April of this year to hear him sing in a pub. It was a delightful ex- perience. He is a marvelous singer and excel- lent for the part of HCE, the aging father in Finnegans Wake. I tried to explain my project to him though I knew very little about it and happily he agreed to come later to Paris, to IRCAM, to be a part of it with his singing of songs, many of them in Gaelic. He also advised me to include music for fiddle, flute, uilleann pipes, and bodhrán drum and gave me the name of Séamus Ennis, a pipes player, who lives in a trailer on the outskirts of a village north of Dublin. Ciarán MacMathúna, in charge of traditional music for the Irish Radio, gave us a list of Irish musicians and his first, second and third choices. He agreed with Joe Heaney’s choice of Séamus Ennis for the pipes. He suggested Paddy Glackin for the fiddle and Matt Malloy [sic] for the flute, and Peadher [sic] Mercier and his son Mell [sic] for the drumming. All of these I contacted and they were all delighted to make recordings to us. Roaratorio lasts for over one hour and remains unprecedented for its scale and the incorpora- tion of six of the finest traditional Irish musi- cians of the time into a piece of experimental music. THE IRISH RAGG I WAS INTERESTED TO READ your article on Aria di Camera in the latest edition of An Píobaire. You mentioned that the only settings of “The Irish Ragg” you had seen were in Aria di Camera and Burke Thumoth. I thought you’d be interested to know that there’s a simpler 2-part setting in the William Vickers manuscript, compiled around 1770 in the North East of England. There’s a facsimile on FARNE, a web resource dedicated to traditional music from North East England >> http://www.folknortheast.com/ Visit The Archive >> FARNE Archive Search >> Ad- vanced Search >> then enter search criteria For- mat: Manuscripts / Title: Ragg / Person: Vickers The entry mentions that it appears in a small number of other collections, though I haven’t tracked them down (yet). Vickers had a num- ber of Irish tunes in his repertoire - he has the only other version I’ve seen of the unusual jig that Seán Keane recorded as The Ballykeal, and which Vickers called The Irish Jigg. I hope the above is of interest, and thanks for all the good work on the NPU website – over the last few years it’s become a fantastic resource! CHARLIE SMALLWOOD CORRESPONDENCE

8

23

[Periodical]

2012-02-01T00:00:00

anonymous,guest,friend,member