Na Píobairí Uilleann

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8 2 14 20120411 14 THE UILLEANN PIPES IN CONTEMPORARY CONCERT MUSIC Part 2 – Roger Doyle, The Godfather of Experimental Uilleann Piping Dr. Dave Flynn A SIDE from an incidental role in William Reeve’s late 18th Century comic opera Oscar and Malvina, the uilleann pipes remained unused by classically trained com- posers until 1973 when Ireland’s electro-acoustic music pioneer Roger Doyle (b. 1949) composed Ceol Sidhe for uilleann pipes, tin whistle and Irish harp. This short work was the first piece composed by a contemporary classical composer exclusively for traditional musicians. Peter Browne was the original piper for the piece and he explained the work’s genesis to me. The Oireachtas 1 had a competition for written music and Roger wanted to put a piece in and he thought he’d have pipes. So he called to me and asked could he see them. So he came to the house and I showed him the possibilities of the pipes, you’ve the chanter, you’ve two octaves, you’ve the regulators, you’ve the drones and he said “That’s great thanks a lot, if I write a piece will you play it?’’ and I said ‘‘I’ll try’’. So there’s an interesting thing for a start – know- ing the possibilities of an instrument from the start and then having a particular idiomatic take on it, which is all I had, is miles apart. So he came back with this yoke, right, which, if I knew everything about rhythm, everything about tonality, I couldn’t do it. So he would have you playing ‘da da da dum’ while you were doing counter-rhythms with the regulators and it was all out of key like disharmony, atonal sort of stuff. The drones, he didn’t want three ‘D’s, he wanted one in D, one in C-sharp and one in E- flat. So he was going for some extremity. You’d want to have full command of being able to read written music. So he showed me and I said ‘Look, in a million years, I couldn’t do it.’ So he scaled it back quite considerably. Doyle’s motivation for writing the piece was not really the Oireachtas competition; he just liked the idea of composing a piece for the selected in- struments. He told me ‘I had no interest in tradi- tional music then in 1973. I just thought: what an interesting combination of instruments.’ Due to Doyle’s admitted lack of interest in tradi- tional music, Ceol Sidhe does not bear much re- semblance to traditional music and Doyle recounted to me how ‘The official printed com- ment from the Oireachtas was that the music was “not in the Gaelic mode” and was unplayable.’ In retrospect this judgment was misguided. The piece certainly is playable, as evidenced by the subsequently released recording. Peter Browne explained to me how the recording process was not without its difficulties. Jolyon (Jackson) was the whistle, I was the pipes and Gráinne Yeats was the harp and there’s a spe- cific point in it where she’s playing a 4/4 and in the middle of that I’ve to come in with a 6/8 and I just couldn’t get it. So when you hear the record- ing, you’ll actually hear the biro going on the music stand, going (taps a 6/8 rhythm) and then you’ll hear (sings 6/8 melody), so that’s the only way I could get that start of the thing. I couldn’t start a 6/8 against her 4/4. So finally you get a take that works. I know she was getting weary. It was cold and the many retakes occasioned for the most part by myself. So finally there’s a great take and it finishes off with her running the fingers up the full harp and next minute you see the tape it fin- ishes and the tape just shot out, the end of the reel and they said “God we got a good one and we’ll have to do it again’’ and she said, more or less “We are NOT doing it again.’’ So on the record-

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2012-04-21T00:00:00

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