First of all do you think it’s important that non-pipers listen to uilleann pipe music and just to clarify,when I say listen to, I mean to willingly go to a mainly solo piping concert or buy a mainly solo piping CD , and if so,what pipers do you think non-pipers listen to. Do you think a certain style of piping is easier to listen to and do you think its important that when someone is learning to play the pipes that they should keep in mind, that a musicality should be maintained that non-pipers may appreciate.
It seems that some very accomplished pipers have made pipe music very esoterical in an effort to show off their technical ability and have lost a certain amount of musicality.I personally find that type of piping very boring.
Liam O’Flynn often seems to be the “gateway drug” for the uninitiated. Some of this has to do with the distribution of his recordings, and his production methods.
Or over-production methods.
It helps that he is a terrific piper with good pipes too.
These days I have enjoyed listening to the more “technical/pyrotechnical” players, something I was not able to do in the past simply because I had no resources to understand what the hell was going on there with all the backstitches, the tinniness, the scratching, the thumping and the like (you in piping heaven know who you are!). It takes a real commitment to listen to most of this stuff (note to self: don’t take Patsy Touhey on the long, cross-country car trip with the family). You have to have some understanding of the language of the playing to begin to appreciate it. Something that is only built up over the (obsessive) years. That’s my experience anyroad.
I had the great pleasure of meeting and watching Sean McKiernan play a few years back. Fascinating playing, but I could see that a first timer might be lost in his performance.
Listening to piping as a non-piper gives a better, more holistic understanding of traditional Irish music and provide musical ideas that may be translatable to their instrument. But in this regard listening to piping is no more or less important than listening to any other melody instrument. As much as some might feel that the pipes holds a hallowed place within the tradition, I don’t feel it is necessary for non-pipers to go out of their way to listen to a lot of piping if they are not so inclined.
Broadly speaking, I think that piping has evolved unique manners of articulation and rhythm that gives rise to subtle incompatibilities with the music of other traditional instruments - some styles more than others of course. I think this is something integral to the pipes’ instrument traditions and can lend itself to a certain degree of esotericism. While I’m not for esotericism at the expense of musicality, I find it unimportant to maintain any aesthetic for a generic, hypothetical population of non-pipers to appreciate. If I was worried about that kind of thing I’d be singing pop music and playing guitar. What’s more important to me is to be true to my own aesthetic and measure of musicality, as influenced by those I enjoy listening to and those I esteem.
Agreed. My family can listen to Liam O’Flynn no problem, but when I put on Ennis they get impatient and ask me to play something else.
I’ve been fortunate that they’ve enjoyed seeing O’Flynn, David Powers, Tommy Martin and Kieran O’Hare perform here in Chicago. I think that while these players are all excellent in the technical aspects of the instrument, they play in a manner that makes the music accessible to non-pipers and casual listeners.
I think it is worthwhile for non-pipers to listen to/watch UPs playing ITM so that they can learn to appreciate where a lot of ITM ornamentation comes from, e.g. stops, or rolls as performed in ITM as opposed to turn-arounds in classical music. There are versions of ITM that use less ornamentation, e.g. Clare-style, but these styles are also less associated with UPs, so I think it suggests what an important influence UPs, and their intrinsic ornaments, may have had on those regional styles where UPs have been more prominent.
Agreed. I think the less ornamented style is a preference, but to imply that it is inherently unmusical seems wrong. If it is played musically, then it is musical, regardless of the style. I don’t necessarily believe that a more ornamented style is less accessible. I’ve seen non pipers enjoy Brian McNamara as much as other less intricate players.
I think non pipers will listen to whatever they please. Whatever makes their ear ask questions.
For a piper I think it is essential to listen to solo piping first and foremost until a skill level has been reached where technique is no longer a barrier. Then I think listening to singing, fiddling, boxing is absolutely essential to broaden the horizons, that is if you do infact want your horizons broadened. Some folks choose to stay within piping and delve deeper into particular piping styles and others stray for a while, listening to other instruments a lot, but come back to piping later. In most cases their ear will have developed so much that listening to a piping piece they felt familiar with will sound entirely different and have far greater detail than they realized. It all makes for better music and it is through active listening that style is achieved.
But for some that is essential also. To hear the music on the instrument it was originally designed to be played on. There are many fiddlers and concertina players for example that have researched piping techniques and the limitations of the uilleann pipes to help bolster their own style. On a relatively limitless instrument like the fiddle I think it is necessary to know where you can go within the music and listening to pipes helps in that regard.
I think that works the other way around. The other instruments are later additions to the tradition and have developed their own techniques.
What about Willie Clancy and earlier Garrett Barry (to name but a few)?
Thanks Eldorian for this post… got the ould wheels churning
I anticipated this question, and wondered about answering it ahead of time, but then thought it might get confusing. Nobody knows what Garret Barry’s piping style was. We just have a couple of tunes handed down from Willie Clancy’s dad (who was not a piper IIRC). Willie took his piping from Johnny Doran, though didn’t limit himself to the travelling style. When I think of Clare-style playing I think more of someone like Micho Russel or Martin Hayes; deceptive in apparent simplicity.
From what I recall (I’ll have to check this), JD didn’t teach WC. He was WC’s first introduction to the pipes. Clancy got some initial instruction from a old man called Hugh Curtin “long since retired from music”. He may have then got some tips from Felix Doran, Seamus Ennis and Leo Rowsome (I don’t know what order it came in, though).
Interesting that in later years, Clancy made reeds for Ennis’s pipes.
WC was, by all accounts, already an accomplished flute player (no recordings that I know of), so he was not new to the music. I have read in several places that WC literally followed Doran around, so it wasn’t just a matter of bumping into Doran by chance every once in a while, but a concerted effort on WC’s part to get as much piping as possible from Doran (and who wouldn’t?).
it’s true that pipers often focus on playing for each other, and its easy to lose sight of the audience’s perspective doing that.
“Music for the initiated” we called it in conservatory.
Having said that, the cream always finds a way to the top…
One last thing to consider is the whole marketing aspect: its tough to break even selling your CD’s only to pipers, and the ‘uninitiated’ ( unless they’re an extremely informed consumer) will undoubtedly go for the slickest package. ( OOO- looook… its red and shiny…)
Granted he did learn a lot from Johnny Doran but he also learned a lot from Leo Rowsome and Seamus Ennis too, just to mention the pipers. Remember too that he played flute and whistle long before he took up the pipes and the Clare style was firmly in him by the time he got to playing the pipes. The pipers he met would have influenced his playing but his style is quinntessential Clare. Micho Russell and Martin Hayes (Paddy Canny) are styles within the style, as is Clancy, all these guys have individual style dripping from them but you could sit Clancy down with another West Clare player and they would be able to play common settings of tunes for days.
Pat.
By the time I posted this others had already said the same thing and beaten me to the stile. I leave it anyway for posteriorority.
Hi Pat,
I believe we’re in agreement that as a piper its absolutely essential to listen to piping, and I would say the same for flute players listening to fluting, etc. The statement mentioned about listening to piping being no more important was a bit vague but I had meant that to be in the context of non-pipers listening to pipes.
I’m not sure about the Irish music being “originally designed” to be played on the pipes though. I’m not well read enough on the early history of Irish traditional music, but I would imagine the evolution of this music to be less linear and discrete than everything being primarily descended from the pastoral pipes and harp? Moreover, I think that the way the pipes were played back in the day would be very different from how they are commonly played now, judging from how much the popular styles changed since the advent of uilleann recordings. I would even go further to say that piping as it is most commonly practiced today is largely offshoots of Seamus Ennis’ music. In that sense arguing that the pipes present a facade of the music that is most original feels tenuous and a tad romanticised. If anything I think that the fiddle had the most influence in the music for as long as the past century at least - so that throws another spanner in the works. I just don’t think that in our current time and day, piping can authoritatively and relevantly play the role of the progenitor of the music as we know it.
This is not to belittle the benefits that non-pipers might have gotten from researching piping techniques. But I’m of the opinion that these benefits also come with studying/listening to good players of other sufficiently developed instruments, and the pipes are not unique in that sense.
I think the main difference between pipes and ALL other session instruments is that you can´t change the loudness while playing, which means that you can´t do s. th. by loudness, that all non-pipers do by loudness automatically: Putting stress on certain notes - e. g. the first in a bar or e. g. the third in a jig-rhythm etc. The pipes have developed other distinctive (necessary) techniques wihch might appear as purely decorative ornamentations on other instruments.
I think the main difference between pipes and ALL other session instruments is that you can´t change the loudness while playing, which means that you can´t do s. th. by loudness, that all non-pipers do by loudness automatically: Putting stress on certain notes - e. g. the first in a bar or e. g. the third in a jig-rhythm etc. The pipes have developed other distinctive (necessary) techniques wihch might appear as purely decorative ornamentations on other instruments.
Nobody knows what Garret Barry’s piping style was. We just have a couple of tunes handed down from Willie Clancy’s dad (who was not a piper IIRC). Willie took his piping from Johnny Doran, though didn’t limit himself to the travelling style.
Willie sought out many people who knew Garret Barry and who heard him play, it didn’t come all down to him from Gilbert. Willie chased down Garrett’s tunes where he could, Ellen Galvin, Thady Casey and others gave him tunes. There is a fairly large body of lore associated with Garret Barry still in existence among people who’s fathers or grandfathers heard and knew Barry. Willie will have known people with first hand experience, even I have met one or two very old people who claimed they heard Garrett play when they were toddlers and played at his feet while he was piping and singing.
There are several houses within two miles from where I am writing this that were on Garret’s ‘tour’, where he stayed for extended periods. The same families are still in them and the memories and stories passed on through the generations.
I think that when Willie Clancy sat down with Ellen Galvin. Thady Casey and other who had heard Barry play, they could have given him an indication of the sounds he made as well as passing on the tunes.
By all accounts it was wild music. Thady Casey once remarked Willie didn’t have Garrett’s wildness.
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