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 but the instrument is not among those normally associated with ITM in its home country. 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. This also suggests that the autoharp was more commonly encountered in such contexts than it subsequently became. 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.

In 1974, the American folk group Pumpkinhead, which had relocated to Ireland a few years earlier, appeared on national television. A significant 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 Kevin Burke.

Billy Connolly plays melodic autoharp in a video recording of the Scottish fiddle tune, My Own House. It was made on its home territory in 1985 – as proximal to ITM as one can get. (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 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 slurred tips heard in the video (“hammering on” discussed further here).

An 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 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 some minor tweaks and a few more extensive rewrites. Since making the last such change, I’ve come across tracks recorded in Scotland during the 1930s, using the autoharp for accompaniment in a manner comparable to the Irish examples presented above. Pending further investigation, details about the Scottish tracks will be detailed in a separate post to which a link will be added here.