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 Celtic 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, as do those of neighboring Scotland. Nonetheless, the autoharp does not have an established position among the instruments normally associated with ITM in its home country. The list of those that do has, however, been less static than might be imagined. Some current fixtures became so relatively recently and others have relinquished their positions.

One particularly relevant example of an erstwhile participant is the autoharp’s cousin, the hammered dulcimer. Its heyday in that role extended through the 1960s and its most prominent exponent at the time, John Rea, was still recording in the late 70s. His performance of O’Dwyer’s Hornpipe follows as a video preface to the main discussion. (He discusses the instrument and his relationship to it in a longer video here.)

The first documented appearance of the autoharp in a traditional Irish context that I’ve located so far was at the National Festival of Traditional Irish Music and Song (Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann) in Kilrush, County Clare, in 1967. Several musicians with such instruments are seen gathering for the event. One of them participates in a performance of the air, The Mountains Of Pomeroy, first heard in the background in 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 suggests that its director, Louis Marcus (Oscar nominated for two subsequent productions), took particular notice of them. If the resemblance between his brother David Marcus (photo) and the featured autoharper is not merely coincidental, it might explain the focus on that instrument.

This would still not account for the number of them present at the event. It does indicate that the autoharp was more commonly encountered in such contexts than it subsequently became, reflecting a further aspect of its kinship with the hammered dulcimer. In any case, the film was intended to introduce an appreciable portion of its audience to ITM and the autoharp was part of that experience.

The one shown in use is well known in the autoharp community 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 autoharp 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.

The instrument is held against the player’s chest, cradled in the left arm. This position had become customary in the US. However, rather than plucking the strings above the bar housing as was part of that style, they are plucked here on the side 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. Whatever its extent may have been, the thought that apparently went into setting up this autoharp and the player’s 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 autoharpers 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 the active player 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. He is clearly a non-casual participant and unlikely to be 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 (available here) 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 such 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,” “tips,” “trebles,” “triplets,” etc. – is another hallmark of Irish playing. American recordings of traditional fiddle and dance tunes where the autoharp plays the melody include little comparable embellishment, but add rhythmic “fill” to the self accompaniment.

Of the characteristic Irish ornaments, triplets are used extensively in the introductory performance on the hammered dulcimer, and are also well suited to diatonic autoharps. The preceding fiddle tune makes prominent additional use of rolls. This is a flagship device on that instrument and several others, with significant variation in its execution from instrument to instrument and player to player.

Billy Connolly uses an ornament specific to the autoharp on a video recording of the Scottish fiddle tune, My Own House, made on its home territory in 1985. I’ve included it here not just due to the proximity to ITM but also because it points from American-style melodic autoharp playing toward one that is more idiomatically Celtic. (He plays a three-key diatonic Festival Model #210, commercially released in 1983 by Oscar Schmidt 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-Scottish style more generally. The trills in the 1784 version foreshadow the more elaborate ornamentation that is now also part of that idiom, manifested by the slurred tips heard in the video (“hammering on” discussed further here).

The autoharp was again used as in the 1972 recording 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 suitability of the autoharp for accompaniment, once more serving that function only, is demonstrated 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 the autoharp at center stage. Uilleann pipes are also on the recording, as heard in the set Blarney Pilgrim—Humours of Ennistymon, which she also plays solo in a live concert.

There are differences in national performance styles with several instruments in the established ITM line-up. Kevin Burke considers the question, “How could an American fiddler sound more like an Irish fiddler?”, in a tutorial video. The aspects of the Irish approach he examines would be largely relevant to a rephrasing of the question as, “How could an autoharper who plays Irish tunes American style sound more like an Irish traditional musician?”

That topic is broached above with the respective roles of ornamentation. Autoharp “fill” is one of an array of American techniques intended to enrich the instrument’s sound beyond the melody, albeit in a manner that a listener attuned to Irish-style melodic rendition might regard as offsetting its clarity. There the stand-alone melody is the musical focus, with the rhythmic aspect of its performance sharing primary significance. Harmonic accompaniment is often forgone entirely in unorchestrated ensemble performance without detrimental consequence.

Instruments capable of both backing and melodic playing normally keep to one or the other in a group setting. They may alternate between them from set to set, or even tune to tune, but self accompaniment is carefully measured if employed at all. Even in a solo context, the chordal underpinning that instruments such as the button accordion and uilleann pipes can readily add to a melody, is used more frugally than is customary with the autoharp.

It follows from this that the speculative development of an Irish autoharp style entails a closer look at how instruments commonly used for accompaniment exercise that role. That examination continues in a separate post. There is a corresponding consideration of traditional Irish ornaments that might suit the autoharp when used melodically in another post.

NOTE

The present post has been revised a few times since its initial appearance, with a few minor tweaks and one more extensive rewrite. Since making the last such change, I’ve come across a few tracks recorded in Scotland during the 1950s, where the autoharp was used for accompaniment in a manner comparable to the Irish examples presented above. The player in the Scottish performances makes no attempt at melodic participation either, but employs a noteworthy chording technique. Pending investigation into its origins, details about the Scottish tracks will either be worked into the preceding text, or fuel a separate post.