I’ve been tripping over Eliot Grasso’s CD Standing Room Only and in particular the Jerry Holland tunes. (track 9 for those of you playing along at home) I love the energy and drive of the Cape Breton stuff and have great admiration for pipers who are able to capture that “feel” in their playing. (I don’t have Fiddler’s Choice yet but I’d imagine it has some great piping as well )
While I realize that there is a pre-requisite level of technical competence required for any musicality to appear in an individual’s piping, I’ve often wondered how and when one begins to express something (emotion or feelings?) through your playing. Is it a conscious decision or does it leak in? In my relatively limited experience with ITM, I’ve seen some musicians of great technical merit, guys who have all the chops, but their playing leaves me cold. I suppose this is a very subjective thing… but maybe there is a nugget of truth here.
I think music becomes art when it transcends appreciation only by an “educated” listener (by this I mean somebody who understands the idioms/techniques being used) and begins to “communicate” with the average joe/jane. Does this make sense?
Is creating “art” (as I’ve tried to loosely define it here) a defined goal that anyone else has in their playing?
Those of you who might have some insight to share, was this the point of the “old” masters (Ennis, Clancy, <insert your piping hero’s name here> ) playing – to communicate something? For that matter, do you believe they even were thinking in these terms?
O’Flynn talks about becoming a servant to the music as it takes over. Nice interview on the Tara web site. One of my favorite piper photos is the color one of Seamus Ennis in Miltown in the Hannon/Garvin book - clearly ‘lost’ in what he’s doing. The photo was taken in 1955 or so by an American who was living in Phoenix. He fell into conversation with a native of Miltown Malbay and that photo and one of Willie emerged (as well as many others). Color photography was still uncommon.
Another great photo is Leo Rowsome on stage in a tux - just fabulous.
When I was at Willie Clancy this summer, there was one piper that really made an impression with me. That was Brian McNamara. When he played it seem to me that he truely enjoyed what he was doing and the music he was making.
Too often I think pipers are looking a bit too serious…perhaps it just intense concentration.
Jeff, I believe it ‘leaks in’ … once someone is at a high enough level of playing ability to where the mechanics of making the sounds is automatic, there becomes a more direct link between what’s in your head and the sound(s) you are making. This is a process that happens over time, not all at once.
For piping, I think there is a level of experience required by the listener as well. When I first started listening to piping..I could not hear half of the nuances that I now hear…and after only a couple of years (5 more years of listening to go!).
That doesn’t prevent a ‘non-educated’ listener from appreciating the music (otherwise piping probably would not have captured most of us)…just that your ear becomes better trained over time.
My defined goal is to enjoy playing the pipes, I hope that feeling will come out in the music…if not, at least I’M still enjoying it.
-gary
Curious is good. Whether or not they were thinking in these (our) terms they were succesful in making music that was very often extremely expressive of themselves . It was/is generally instantly recognisable to the listener with a small bit of experience (BTW, I have no reason to believe that they were’nt thinking about it, albeit in their own way). Even to those ‘uninitiated’ technically I think it would be hard not to hear differences in the approaches of Rowsome, Reck, Clancy, Delaney, Touhey etc. if you played them back to back for a listener. These levels of involvement with the instrument (i.e. highly developed and unique sounding levels of expression coupled with a long standing and commited rapport with ways of playing the instrument) tend to produce that coherency betwix technical mastery and self expression which can make the neck hair stand up on the listener with any lack or level of technical understanding. The fingers were unblocked by a neurotic (but sellable) need for squeaky clean technical sanitisation and the self was expressed through this, their style, and a full commitment to the instrument as a sole means of expression while the performance lasts. If they were concerned with control then they weren’t ‘control freaks’ who would sweat blood worrying about somebody listening to them dropping a note or fluffing a triplet… “focus and fun, not fear and failure” as I once heard an eminent jazz trumpeter say. It’s all about intent, what you want to put across from yourself. Doing it without an inhibiting fear of a mere technical breakdown tends to make it sound more ‘generous’ to my ear.
In the area of self expression I think that this was down to different ways of expressing intent in most aspects of playing. An awful lot of modern playing that I hear treats ornaments (particularly tight technique) as a sort of ’ clever appendage’ to the melody (… indeed some players leave me with the distinct feeling that the music is an appendage to themselves and not something of themselves). There is not that sense of commitment and coherency apparent to my ear. The technique does not sound so integral to the piece and therefore the piece does not sound so integral to the player. Sometimes they just don’t sound like they mean it. Lack of involvement? Overpractice? The devaluation of the creative process by any number of subsequent pressures?
It may be explained to an extent in how the pipes and ITM in general 50, 80, 100 yrs. ago had a much stronger solo playing ethic. Players had more of a sense of being solo entities, they much more generally had to round their performances without the comfort of external accompaniment or the luxury of a large accordeon to give their chanter playing cover fire.
I also accept that a lot of people think that piping has improved considerably since what is now considered ‘classic’ piping. Some feel that the levels of technical consistency and standardised, art/ pop music-ised tuning and sensibility is desirable over the sort of stuff I’m talking about here… they’re just wrong of course
Each piper seems to have a definite personal slant on what they’re trying to achieve. Appreciation of what a player is doing is definitely enhanced by the experience of the listener, but a really masterful player communicates with all listeners, not just a few aficianados. There is nothing more frustrating for me than to know what I want to achieve but not have the chops/control/understanding to produce it.
What you refer to as “art” is still very much up to the personal tastes of each player as to what they think is important. For me it is rhythm, but others may be more focused on technique or skillful variations.
I have a tape of Seamus Ennis talking about his music at teh WIllie Clancy week of 1975, he clearly talks about the expression of feeling a tune needs to have in the hands of a good player.
Another indication older player did think in the terms mentioned above are expressions like ‘he can make it talk’ or ‘she has great heart in her music’ as attributes of good players.
Maybe the greatest example was the wording John Doorty choose for his play about Micho Russell, which he based on taped interviews he had with Micho. In the play he has Micho say something like ‘music comes from hardship, music comes from seeing a baby being born and the death of a loved one. Music comes from working in the bog, getting drenched by the rain. It comes out of the heavens in showers’.
Good music is the voice of the player’s life experiences speaking.
I agree with peter that after you have some comfort level with the instrument that your personality, which has been shaped by your life experiences, will come through. My Highland pipe teacher used to say that I had a very good ability to put the “music in the music” to give it the personality that makes it enjoyable. My piano teach had made similar comments. I am a novice at the UP’s and hope to get to some decent mastery. I just need to stay with it and practice for a few dozen years.
Also, I had the great fortune of seeing Brian McNamara play at our Tionol last year. He just smiled and bobbed his head the whole time he play.
Not exactly a quote but roughly how I remember it, the way i said it covers roughly the idea of what was being said in the play. the play was called ‘Out of the Heavens in Showers’ it was written by John Doorty and was performed by himself with music by Tommy McCarthy, Marion McCarty and Michael Hynes and some beautiful dancing as a bonus.
I’m not sure if I follow this thread fully - I must admit I find some of the posts a bit heavy. Am I right in thinking that it’s being suggested that pipers have a tendency to sprinkle ornaments liberally throughout their playing without really considering whether they’re needed to enhance the melody being played? I think this debate represents what listeners sometimes say about particular players - that they play from the heart, on one hand, or on the other, that they play from the intellect. To my ear it seems that a player like Ronan Browne is someone who puts feeling and expression first, only using technique as a means to achieve this. Robbie Hannan, on the other hand, sounds to me to have a more intellectual approach to playing, with his playing sounding overtly technical with complex syncopated variations. Not that I’m dissing Robbie Hannan at all - I’d be happy to have half his ability.
Sometimes a bit of showing off for it’s own sake isn’t a bad thing in moderation. Paddy Keenan plays a version of Harvest Home which to me sounds like nothing more than an opportunity for him to show he can play unbelievable long, fast runs of tight triplets intersperced by single-note trebles on A. Which is great in it’s own way, but I think if he played like this all the time people would get tired of the overt flashiness of it all
I’m not sure if I follow this thread fully - I must admit I find some of the posts a bit heavy. Am I right in thinking that it’s being suggested that pipers have a tendency to sprinkle ornaments liberally throughout their playing without really considering whether they’re needed to enhance the melody being played? I think this debate represents what listeners sometimes say about particular players - that they play from the heart, on one hand, or on the other, that they play from the intellect. To my ear it seems that a player like Ronan Browne is someone who puts feeling and expression first, only using technique as a means to achieve this. Robbie Hannan, on the other hand, sounds to me to have a more intellectual approach to playing, with his playing sounding overtly technical with complex syncopated variations. Not that I’m dissing Robbie Hannan at all - I’d be happy to have half his ability.
Sometimes a bit of showing off for it’s own sake isn’t a bad thing in moderation. Paddy Keenan plays a version of Harvest Home which to me sounds like nothing more than an opportunity for him to show he can play unbelievable long, fast runs of tight triplets intersperced by single-note trebles on A. Which is great in it’s own way, but I think if he played like this all the time people would get tired of the overt flashiness of it all
i’d have to agree with peter, it’s your life comig out. i feel i can do it on the nylon strung guitar now, after 30 +plus years and a bit at times on the whistle. one day i pray on the pipes.
andreas segovia once told a student who had just performed in a master class that " he needed to drink a glass of wine and look a woman in the eye" and then come back and play the piece again.
an audiance-listener with a good imagination does wonders also.
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