I was listening the other day to a recording of a contemporary piper (to remain nameless) playing a slow air, and was reminded of the fact that I find a lot of people’s slow air playing a bit…well, too slow. Overwrought. Losing sight of the tune a bit.
Now I thought this was mainly down to my own taste, but last night I opened Joyce’s preface to Old Irish Folk music and find that both he and Bunting were in agreement:
“In connexion with the subject of time or movement, I will venture an opinion that our song tunes are generally played and sung (by present-day performers) too slowly : while, on the other hand, the dance music is often played too fast ; and in both cases the sentiment of the air is injured — sometimes utterly destroyed. To understand and appreciate a song tune, the ear of the listener must, as it were, catch the pace of the melody, which is extremely difficult when it is played too slowly, and still more so if it be overloaded with harmony. And in this manner a tune exquisitely beautiful when understood, may be made to a listener — even though he be a skilled musician— quite unintelligible, and devoid of all sentiment. On this subject Bunting makes the following very correct and interesting observations : — ’ The world is too apt to judge of our music as of a peculiarly plaintive character, partaking of our national feelings in a political point of view, and melancholy in proportion to the prospects of its composers. Nothing can be more erroneous than this idea. When the meeting of the harpers took place at Belfast in 1792, the editor, being selected to note down the tunes, was surprised to find that all the melodies played by the harpers were performed with a much greater degree of quickness than he had till then been accustomed to. The harpers made those airs assume quite a new character, spirited, lively, and energetic,certainly according much more with the national disposition than the languid and tedious manner in which they were, and too often still are, played among fashionable public performers, in whose efforts at realizing a false conception of sentiment the melody is very often so attenuated as to be all but lost’ (Ancient Music of Ireland, page 18.)”
I think he hits the nail on the head when he talks about the world being too quick to judge the music “as of a peculiarly plaintive character”.
I was also reminded of a comment made by Barnaby Brown on another bagpiping forum, about another piping tradition, when he talked about the “lamentization of the entire [pibroch] repertory” by the Victorians. Likewise I feel there’s a still a danger that Ireland’s fine stock of airs can easily get buried under an avalanche of misty, dreary sentiment and cliche, and the pipes seem particularly prone to this. Ennis on the other hand can get tenderness, dignity, passion, anger, regret, even humour into an air…much like the best of the sean nos singers can. The full range of human experience.
In short I’m going to try and be a bit less “languid and tedious” in my air playing, as Bunting would have put it.
); for example, a musician might want to break the mold intentionally for artistic reasons. And if an air’s song is lost or nonexistent, then all bets are off, aren’t they, so you might as well do what feels right anyway, because apart from the examples you draw from, what else do you have?