The Autoharp in Irish Traditional Music

My interests in the autoharp and Irish traditional music [ITM] should be apparent from the topics of the most recent dozen or so posts on this blog. I’ve approached them separately as a musicologist specializing in the history of musical instruments. This post marks a shift toward their intersection in performance from the perspective of a musician whose journey started on the autoharp in 1952 and found its way into Scottish music a decade later via the Highland bagpipes. I’ve since become comfortably conversant with the Irish idiom on the tin whistle and would like to be able to say the same about the autoharp.

Irish dance tunes and airs figure prominently in its repertoire but the instrument is not among those normally associated with ITM in its home country. Nevertheless, the wave of popularity that the autoharp enjoyed during the first few decades of its existence also spread across Ireland. Its sale was regularly advertised in the daily press nationwide beginning in 1893 (likely reflecting an expansion in the way the initial Zimmermann autoharps were manufactured and marketed described here).

An editorial promotion for the Butler Music House in Dublin appearing in the 21 December 1893 issue of that city’s The Freeman’s Journal notes:

…Butler also offers two other instruments which of late have become popular, namely, the American autoharp, which can be played without any knowledge of music…

The 15 February 1896 edition of Wexford People includes a review of a concert where the Wexford parish organist and multi-instrumentalist George Archibold Thornton went on the written record as the first melodic player of the autoharp in Ireland (or, as far as I’ve yet been able to determine, anywhere else outside the US).

As a violinist Mr Thornton is quite at home, his selections were difficult, still he overcame them with an ease which proves him to be a thorough master of the instrument, and in reply to an encore he gave a selection of melodies on the autoharp which greatly pleased his audience. The instrument was somewhat of a novelty, and was listened to with great attention.

Nothing links Thornton specifically with ITM but a rogue’s gallery of autoharpers in that context is about to appear, and it seems fitting to head it with the first Irish exponent of melodic autoharp playing regardless of style. The photo is taken from the 27 May 1906 issue of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, a city to which he had emigrated (with more information about his activity there in the 24 August 1913 issue of the same newspaper).

Subsequent mentions of the autoharp in the Irish daily press provide useful insight into the competition between its manufacturers in Germany and the US on this shared export market. I’ll go into this further in a separate post, including evidence of the autoharp in Ireland during the interval between the preceding and following images. The first visual association of the instrument specifically with ITM that I’ve identified so far is a photo taken at the 1966 Connacht Fleadh (Festival of Traditional Irish Music and Song), held in Mohill.

The autoharp and mandolin players are seen more clearly in another photo from the same event, where they are identified as Brendan Byrne and Gerry McCartney.

Byrne also appears in a documentary film made at the fleadh in County Clare, held in the towns of Kilrush and Quilty from 30 July to 1 August of the same year. He is one of a number of autoharpers seen gathering for that event, and participates in a performance of the air, The Mountains of Pomeroy. It is first heard in the background of the following snippet and then brought into view.

This short film, Fléa Ceoil, received awards at several international film festivals and can be viewed in its entirety here. The concentrated scene with autoharps shows that its director Louis Marcus (Oscar nominated for two subsequent productions) took particular notice of them. The number present at the event bolsters the surmise that the autoharp was more commonly encountered in such contexts than it subsequently became. (I am grateful to Jack Daly for his comments on a previous revision of this post, and the subsequent clarification in direct correspondence of Byrne being featured in the film.)

The autoharp seen in use is widely referred to as the Rosen model, so called for the large rose decal on its soundboard. It was made in East Germany and readily available in most European countries. The tune is played in D major but the corresponding chord bars are not in their factory positions. Their labels have also been removed, corroborating a reconfiguration. The cloth cover over the hitch pins is another non-standard detail.

Byrne holds the instrument in a position that had become customary in the US. However, rather than plucking the strings between the bar housing and tuning pins, as is part of that style, he plucks them toward the lower string support. This was the initial practice in the US (discussed here) and remains characteristic of autoharp playing in some European countries (exemplified in a Latvian performance here).

The hybrid position seen in the Irish film therefore hints at an influence of more than solely US practice, and raises an intriguing question about the broader influence Thornton may have had. Whatever its extent, the thought that Byrne apparently put into setting up this autoharp, and his intent facial expression, indicate that he took it quite seriously. If his playing technique was informed by observing other players, the question about where they were located becomes all the more interesting.

The film does not show how the other autoharp players at the fleadh held or used them, nor how far they had traveled. The only exception is the one wearing a jacket with a hand-embroidered “Birmingham GB,” corroborating the attendance from the neighboring island that might otherwise be expected. The Rosen model appears consistently where detail permits a manufacturer to be identified, suggesting their owners were European. Visitors from the US would be expected to have Oscar Schmidt models and, if shown using them, plucked the strings between the bar housing and tuning pins.

It is not clear whether Byrne is straddling the border between accompaniment and melodic playing or is simply a lively accompanist. Either way, his style differs from those presented in the following examples. It is also clear that he was not making a debut appearance.

In 1972, the Irish fiddler Kevin Burke recorded the album Sweeney’s Dream in the US. At the unanticipated suggestion of the producer, he was backed by a local group of what the liner notes call old-timey musicians. The set beginning with Tuttle’s Reel is accompanied by Henry Saposnik on the autoharp without any attempt at harnessing the instrument’s melodic potential, with which he was doubtless familiar.

Burke plays eighth notes with a clear rhythmic swing that is one of the fundamental attributes of native Irish style. Although similar rhythmic inequality is also commonplace in the performance of American old-time music there is nothing noteworthy about its absence. The regular use of patterned melodic ornaments — cuts, rolls, slides, tips, triplets, etc. — is another hallmark of Irish playing. American recordings of traditional fiddle and dance tunes where the autoharp plays the melody include significantly less, if any, comparable embellishment.

In 1974, the American folk group Pumpkinhead, which had relocated to Ireland a few years earlier, appeared on national television there. A large part of their repertoire consisted of ITM, using an autoharp for chordal accompaniment. In the following year, the same group released a CD titled Pumpkinhead (produced by Donal Lunny who also joined the group on it, as did Burke).

The Irish singer and multi-instrumentalist, Chris Twomey, began playing the autoharp in 1967 as part of his activity with The Lee Valley String Band, based in Cork and specializing in American old-time music and bluegrass. He also played it in another group founded in the same city in 1970, Stoker’s Lodge, which focused on Irish folk and traditional music. They recorded their first album, The Boys of Fairhill, in 1977.

One of the tracks is the song, When I First Came unto this Country, sung by Jimmy Crowley and paralleled melodically on the autoharp by Twomey (beginning at 1m 20s) with minimal harmonic support. In contrast to the chromatic instruments heard thus far, a diatonic autoharp was used for this recording (produced by Mícheál Ó Domhnaill who plays the harmonium on it, and also collaborated extensively with Burke).

Turning briefly to neighboring Scotland, the autoharp is heard on recordings made there during the 1930s, used for accompaniment in a manner comparable to the Irish examples. They are detailed in a separate post about autoharp recordings from that decade and the one before it. The earliest recording of melodic autoharp playing that has thus far come to light was made in the US in 1925.

Keeping with the present chronology, Billy Connolly plays melodic autoharp in a video recording of the fiddle tune My Own House, made in 1985. He uses a three-key diatonic model released commercially in 1983 specifically to facilitate melodic playing.

This tune can be traced back to a collection published by Patrick McDonald in 1784, as the jig John Bain’s Sister’s Wedding. It is notated in what remains the conventional manner, which does not indicate the rhythmic swing that characterizes Connolly’s rendition and, as already noted, Irish and Scottish styles more generally. The trills in the 1784 version foreshadow the more elaborate ornamentation that is now also part of that idiom, manifested by the slides and slurs (discussed further here) heard in the video.

A chromatic autoharp was again used for accompaniment on several tracks of the album An Buachaill Dreoite, recorded in Drogheda, Co. Clare, in 1992 by the Irish fiddler Joe Ryan. The reel Trip to Durrow provides another good illustration of intricate melodic ornamentation. The autoharp is played by Ryan’s compatriot Jim MacArdle (who describes the genesis of the album in a podcast).

In the following year, the American autoharper Karen Mueller released the album Clarity. This juxtaposes American and Irish tradition with a diatonic autoharp at center stage. Uilleann pipes are also on this recording, as heard in the set Blarney Pilgrim—Humours of Ennistymon, which she also plays solo in a live concert.

In 2004, Twomey recorded a solo CD, Midnight on the Water, using a chromatic autoharp and three different diatonic instruments. Its title signals the presence of American material but three of the 13 tracks are Irish tunes, performed in native style. Here is a snippet from one where he plays The Bells of Shandon.

Twomey’s use of ornamentation was not as spartan as it would seem from this segment. He restricts it there to slides into the main notes of the melody from below, but augments this with the important Irish ornament, the triplet, on the two other tracks. One of them is excerpted in a separate post that extends the present discussion. The other will be included in a later one. (I don’t have reproduction rights and am keeping to a single truncated example per post.)

Twomey was a left-handed autoharper who consistently played instruments built for right-handed use. As such, his playing has a somewhat idiosyncratic effect. Nonetheless, it provides a benchmark for the melodic use of an autoharp in ITM as approached by a native musician.

Kevin Burke devoted a tutorial video to the question, “How could an American fiddler sound more like an Irish fiddler?” This could reasonably be rephrased as, “How could an autoharper who plays Irish tunes American style sound more like an Irish traditional musician?” I’ll be pursuing this in separate posts, including the one linked to above, which delves further into Twomey’s work, and another already online illustrated with two more older dance tunes.