In an article about the Chieftains touring USA Paddy Moloney says he played a lament, “I am Asleep, do not Wake me” as he stood at Ground Zero after September 11. Does anyone know where I can find this tune?
I believe it is tune #65 on page 39 of Mel Bay’s “Ireland’s Best Slow Airs”.
Thankyou Kyrios, I don’t have the book, but will try to get hold of it…I was hoping I may be able to find the tune online!
Liz, I did a search for you on ABC’s tune finder and found, with the search word “asleep,” a tune called “I am asleep and don’t awaken me.” Is this what you are looking for?
trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/findtune.html
Hope this helps,
Kiirsi
PS I clicked on the .gif link to get a look at the sheet music once it brought me to the tune.
The tune Paddy was referring to is also known as Táimse Im’ Chodladh. It’s pieces like this that give credence to the camp that espouses the importance of developing the skill of playing by ear. Trust me that if you play this tune from sheet music it will never sound right. You really need to hear it played. Slow airs like this defy conventional music transcription. You can hear Paddy Moloney play it on (the Chieftains) “The Celtic Harp” and Liam O’Flynn does it on (Planxty) “Words & Music”.
Cheers,
David
The tune I was refering to is titled Ta me ‘mo Chodladh. I don’t know anything about the Irish language.
Feadan is right, though, the printed music for the above air is only loosely related to the played version on the accompanying CD.
I haven’t heard the CD’s that Feadan referred to, but I did hear Paddy Maloney play the piece at the Chieftains’ concert in Minneapolis in Jan. It was very moving.
The tune I was refering to is titled Ta me ‘mo Chodladh. I don’t know anything about the Irish language.
Feadan is right, though, the printed music for the above air is only loosely related to the played version on the accompanying CD.
I haven’t heard the CD’s that Feadan referred to, but I did hear Paddy Maloney play the piece at the Chieftains’ concert in Minneapolis in Jan. It was very moving.
David is absolutely right - you need to learn it from one, or preferably more than one, recordings by good musician(s).
Some would go farther and claim that you should know the words and learn it from the singing of an Irish-speaking séan-nos singer, so that your phrasing makes sense. Not really practicable for most of us. (Séan Potts answers a question about this in the interview on the Scoiltrad site).
Talking of airs, in 1984 fiddler Matt Cranitch put out an absolutely sublime album consisting entirely on slow airs. It’s called “Éistigh seal” and was released on Gael-Linn.
There is a fine version of Táimse im’ Chodhladh on it, and 13 other lovely airs. I’ve never heard anyone play airs on the fiddle as beautifully as Matt Cranitch.
I don’t know if the album is available on CD, but if it is, and you like airs, get it! Put it on late at night, turn down the lights and settle down for a sublime listening experience…
Edit: just checked on the web, no sign of this album. Great pity. But Cranitch does play the air on his album Take a Bow, which is available.
[ This Message was edited by: StevieJ on 2002-02-09 12:29 ]
In a slightly impatient mood I add to this all that in the past few months we have gone through exactly the same motions about this tune two or three times. How about an archive search?
In a slightly impatient mood I add to this all that in the past few months we have gone through exactly the same motions about this tune two or three times.
We were all asleep and not wanting to be awoken.
I think that anyone coming to this message board should feel free to ask the members their whistle questions. I think newcomers questions are a good way for them to learn about various whistle topics and to get to know other members who have been around awhile. There are some very knowledgable members who have alot to teach newcomers. Patience.
It is the very knowledgable members whose patience we ought not to try. So do an archive search first. It’s good nettiquette. And appreciate the fact that you are in an environment where you get a friendly reminder and not a flame.
On 2002-02-09 15:39, kyrios wrote:
I think that anyone coming to this message board should feel free to ask the members their whistle questions. I think newcomers questions are a good way for them to learn about various whistle topics and to get to know other members who have been around awhile. There are some very knowledgable members who have alot to teach newcomers. Patience.
Ofcourse everybody is free to ask their question, but the information is out there waiting to be found and the last thread on the subject was hardly three weeks ago. Trying to obtain information is fine, putting in a slight effort to do so yourself is not a bad thing, you learn something on the way too, find things you weren’t looking for that are still useful, learning by serendipity is a great way of learning. Also, after obtaining the existing, available knowledge, you can ask further and build on the knowledge already imparted on the board, accumulate and increase the amount of information available.
Maybe your knowledgeable members are there to engage in a dialogue about the music, not to be drained of the same information time and time again. Information is given for free, effort is being made but sometimes it seems the only effort being made is that by the people providing not by the people asking for it.
There is something to be said for treating the board as a sustainable resource of information, if you bore the shite out of people by asking the same question again and again you maybe find you are using up your available resources very quickly.
And all that after one mild remark in a slightly cranky mood.
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-02-10 10:21 ]
if you bore the shite out of people by asking the same question again and again you maybe find you are using up your available resources very quickly.
Peter, your frustration and response here (after a mild remark indeed) is quite understandable. However I think we all need to remind ourselves that not every one in the world is savvy as to how messageboards work. A newbie may not even think to look for a “Search” feature and those very small letters in the upper right are not real noticeable. As someone who daily works with computers & users who, for example, don’t know how to set up an email account with yahoo, then once shown need their hand held to get through emailing something (probably the first few times they use it), I advocate patience. Just for the heck of it I tried the search feature using the phrase “i am asleep do not wake me” and also a separate one using “chieftains asleep”. Probably I missed something but I didn’t see anything relevant as new as three weeks old. I did see two threads from last October. In those the music and links I saw were for the wrong tune. The music you sent to Dale which he had posted does not seem to be available anymore. So had it been me searching for this music I would have posted again about it as well.
Cheers,
David
As I said, I was a bit on the cranky side of things, don’t worry about it too much, it was just there third thread this week that was a replay of a very recent one.
I sent Neil Dickey and a few others copies of the tune under investigation on 24 jan 02 after the latest thread on the subject, so you’ll find that thread around that date.
It’s just a shame to go through the motions again, there’s a lot more to be said about the tune and what the song is about and honestly I couldn’t bring myself writing the same things we went over before for the third time.
OK, after all that giving out:
Taimse mo choladh is na duistear me is an aisling or vision poem in which the poet dreams how he will overcome his oppressors and eventually will have them pull his plough for him and sow his seeds.
A version from the old harpers was published in the Bunting collection, it is this version O’Neill copied in his Music of Ireland. This version however is not quite the one played these days, one close enough is to be found in Tadgh Crowleys Tutor for the Uilleann pipes.
It is a defiant tune.
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-02-11 08:55 ]
That’s really interesting, Peter. Hornpipes are called that because they’re played on a hornpipe, right? And where can I buy one? 