Hello there,
Is there anywhere online (or not online) where I could hear the Humours of Glin the piece way?
I am looking at the Dance Music of Willie Clancy (thanks WJC) transcription and cant really get whats happening. I can read
music well enough but it really is too dense for me (or I am too dense for it).
You will want to hear Willie Clancy, I think there are at least two or three recordings of him playing it. Pat Mitchell is probably a good alternative as versions go. Brian McNamara has recorded it I think and I have heard many more play it, Mick O Brien, Emmet Gill among them.
[edited to add:]
Here’s one of Willie’s although possibly not the nicest one he did but it’s the one I have at hand:
edit:
Where did Willie get this? Also besides Nora Criona Are there other ‘piece way’ jigs?
Why wasn’t this treatment applied to other ‘big’ jigs to make them function as listening pieces?
Not that I can get my head around all that is happening.
Some time in 1971s Willie wrote in to Breandán Breathnach’s journal ‘Ceol’ to ask what was meant when it was said fiddle players only played ‘pieces’ as an old fiddleplayer had told him. And what were those ‘pieces’ anyway?. On the publication of a notation from Willie’s playing of The Humours of Glin (Ceol IV (I)) Breandán wrote Willie had the answer himself in his playing of those two tunes. He goes on to name other tunes that were found in 19th C manuscripts as played ‘the piece way’. I don’t know where Willie got his versions.
It’s originally a song. During the 18th century several different multi-part or variation settings of it were composed. It seems to have been Irish originally but became more popular in Scotland and was more elaborately developed there, though there isn’t much trace of it in Scotland after the early 19th century.
So these piece settings are possibly a sort of folk memory setting of the long variation sets you see in older printed material
Like Maggie Lauder, the Lee Riggs, Paudeen O Rafferty.
I believe they are also popular among northumbrian pipers.
I can see where they’d be sort of listening rather than dance music.
I’ve had a go at a few of them from your flute page in the past, Jack.
I didn’t really connect them due to the brevity of the “piece ways.”
Rereading DMWC it Mitchell says he learned the tunes from older local musicians but does not say from whom.
The Irish pieces don’t have anything to do with the Northumbrian variation sets. With the piece you take a jig and slow it down to waltz time, add in ornaments + elaborations, some rubato, at least to take our cue from Willie’s example. The variation sets have multiple repeats where the melody is busied-up further and further, they have that element in common with piobaireachd, which was much closer to hand for these Northumbrian musicians.
Print versions of the Humours of Glynn like the one Patrick links to do have a bit more of the feel of the variation sets, though; and O’Farrell’s books have a good few tunes with variations. Maybe there’s some material of the piece sort in there, too, haven’t dusted those books off in a while.
I always thought the idea behind the piece could be applied to any jig, not just the usual victims. I’ve never seen these manuscripts with pieces, hopefully NPU will make them available some day. Paddy O’Rafferty and the Gobby O were two entries I recall from Breathnach’s article. I like to play P’OR the piece way sometimes.
Comhaltas Archives has a recording of old time Clare fiddler Patrick Kelly playing it, I see. The jig way. Another version pieceish is on O’Sullivan meets O’Farrell.
What I was suggesting is that the ‘piece way’ were bits of the busied up variation sets that survived out of print and slowed down through folk memory.
Breatnatch suggests Paddy O Rafferty which Ive seen in many old collections with variations.
Not only for Northumbrian pipes but all instruments perhaps originating with harps (playing through the version of Glin I linked from jack it wouldnt be out od place as a Planxty)
They have one thing in common anyway even if there is no direct connection: they seem to be for listening rather than dancing.
No evidence just I thought I had last night but perhaps worth exploring.
At least it may take a bit of the mystery out of them.
Looking at the Glin I linked, though, it is possible that this jig was just always played busy and may have to do with the text of the songs associated with its words.
edit to add:
Thank you for brilliants clips on the youtube channel Kevin, I cant get enough of Joe Shannons Turkey in the Straw.
I am sure Ive thanked you for the Internet Archive stuff before but if not those as well.