I have copies of a couple of recordings made by Bernard Delany in 1898, in which he plays significantly faster than most modern pipers. Seamus Ennis and Willie Clancy seem to be somewhere in between.
People have commented on a slow-down in Scots piping - the players who recorded 100 years ago got through a march, strathspey and reel in just over two and a half minutes, which had slowed to two-fiftysomething by the second world war, while modern competition players take almost four minutes. There’s more emphasis and there are heavier gracenotes, but by comparison with my gradfather’s day the tunes are dirges.
The Scots piping community has various theories as to why this happened, but if it also happened in irish piping - both in the USA and in Ireland - then these theories won’t explain both strands.
I have put a few relevant MP3s (long out of copyright) on
So far, these are all of Scots players. I’m interested if anyone has relevant MP3s of uilleann pipers, or for that matter Northumbrian (Tom Clough was reputed to play pretty fast). I’m particularly interested in recordings made before 1954, so that copyright’s expired and we can put them online; my Ennis/Clancy stuff all seems to be late 50s / early 60s.
So two questions. Has irish piping slowed down, as Scots piping has, or am I jumping to conclusions from too little data? Is anyone aware of students of the genre writing about a slow-down in pace?
I keep coming across conflicting opinions on ITM. Its difficult to get a good feeling about this. There are old wax cylinder recordings of UPs, and the style is much faster - very much a pippety-pippety-pip style. But was this just a “concert” style versus a dance style? I keep reading complaints, even from the 19th century, that the music was being played too fast, but that that is what the dancers wanted. I read the same complaints about today’s music being played too fast, but that that is what the dancers want. I have read that people didn’t used to listen to the music as they do today, but that it was only for dancing, and that is why it is slowed down nowadays - so that it can be treated as parlour music. Then again, I read complaints about modern playing being too fast, too, especially younger players in sessions.
I guess everyone has their own impressions of what is too fast and too slow. If you’re a dancer you would probably have a different idea of what is right versus a piper. In the end it will be whatever you feel most comfortable with, and that you feel expresses your music best. I would like to be able to play faster than I can now, but not so fast that I would lose the rhythm I like so much in ITM.
I can’t speak for pipers, but many fiddle players play too fast now. personally I love playing the fiddle at a little slower pace, it enables such a nicer tone, swing and better ornamentation. I’ve got some old field recordings of Fred Finn, Martin Wynne, and a few others. They all played a bit slower than today’s players. Of course, some of the old 78’s were pretty speedy. I always wondered if the record companies sped up the recordings afterwards. I’ve heard some record labels would do that. Not necessarily with ITM though.
I received several copies on tape of his reel (Colonel Taylor’s AKA The Beauty Spot) where someone had sped the cylinder up to where he was seemingly playing the tune in B = drones in E. Delaney would have played a somewhat sharp set of pipes but not that sharp. The tune is in the “key” of A. Slow him down to concert pitch or a little bit higher and you get a better idea of his tempo, which according to his brother-in-law Francis O’Neill was perfect for dancing. Not quite so blistering.
But many pipers back then did favor a quite crazed tempo. Some of them could still fit all the ornaments in, others just “played haphazard,” as Patsy Touhey put it in his Hints to Amateur Pipers. But also you should keep in mind that many who recorded were, like Touhey, stage performers - show-offs - and the tempo was part of their act, as it were. On their own, at home, they may have played much slower.
I’ve tapes of Ennis and Clancy where they weren’t exactly putting along, either. And quite a few today play more than fast enough.
…whew!..music slowing down…this is good news. Lately, I’ve been of the opinion that as I get older, music, and especially time, have been going by a lot faster…
