The renowned Scottish fiddler Niel Gow (1727–1807) appears in several portraits. One painted by his compatriot David Allan (1744–1796) shows him next to his brother Donald, playing a cello.
The date of this portrait is uncertain but Allan embedded it in, or extracted it from, another painting titled Highland Wedding at Blair Atholl, dated 1780. Gow was the fiddler at Blair Castle and the Duke of Atholl was his patron, making this a plausible depiction in both social and musical regards. (There is also a piper on a refreshment break behind the Gows.)
Other portrayals of comparable situations include a cello but it is not clear from any of them what its musical role was. In The Compleat Tutor for the Violoncello, published in London in 1764 or shortly thereafter, Robert Crome says, “This instrument may be consider’d as a Large Fiddle, only held the contrary way….” The incorporated collection of tunes includes a jig that is particularly appropriate to the present comparison.
This can easily have been heard at the Blair event with the fiddle and cello playing the melody together. Crome also comments on special considerations that apply when the cello instead plays “the notes in basses.” In the first of several collections of dance tunes that Niel Gow published beginning in 1784, he adds “a bass for the violoncello or harpsichord,” thereby designating both as accompaniment instruments.
An earlier collection of Scots tunes by James Oswald, published in Edinburgh circa 1740, assigns the accompaniment to the harpsichord alone. The cello’s elder relative, the similarly sized bass viol (aka viola da gamba), is listed among the melody instruments.
“Thorough bass” (aka figured bass) is a numerical shorthand that specifies the intervals between a bass note and those in an unwritten chord above it. This system is illustrated in this post’s banner image as taken from an instruction manual by Nicolo Pasquali titled Thorough-bass made easy, published in Edinburgh in 1759. The next example shows its use in a tune from Oswald’s collection, with a comparatively intricate bass line that likely indicates Baroque-style accompaniment rather than a transcription of traditional performance.
The absence of a figure indicates a chord in root position. However, figures are often dispensed with elsewhere if the chords are deemed apparent from the bass and melody lines. Several of Oswald’s basses are completely unfigured despite not being appreciably less intricate than the one seen here.
Gow forgoes figures altogether but uses very simple bass lines, at least initially. Here is the final tune in his 1784 collection. All such arrangements are suitable for a solo harpsichord and some collections are labelled accordingly. The melody and bass are played as written and Pasquali explicitly states that when the harpsichord is alone in playing the melody, it does not additionally realize the thorough bass. (The illustrated type of straightforward bass line is discussed further by David McGuinness in a journal article titled Bass culture in printed Scottish fiddle music sources, 1750-1850, and a video presentation, One Fiddle Tune, Four Basslines.)
The harpsichord family includes instruments of several sizes and profiles. A spinet appears in an outdoor setting with a singer, violin, flute, and cello on the frontispiece of a collection of English and Scottish songs published in London circa 1734.
An indoor counterpart to this scene appears in yet another of David Allan’s paintings from 1780, titled James Erskine, Lord Alva and his family.
The melodic role is the singer’s alone, but as in the preceding engraving, was regularly shared with other fashionable instruments of the day. The cello could take its turn in that line-up. However, when on the accompaniment side, it doubled the bass line played by the left hand of the harpsichordist, whose right hand added a semi-improvised chordal element to the rendition. A more detailed snippet from the Pasquali book adds a flute to the ensemble.
The middle line provides an example of how the right hand might expand the numerical figures into chords on the harpsichord. An actual performance score would only include the first and third lines. This leaves keyboardists with a fair amount of latitude in their right-hand action, as long as it follows the basic rules for moving from one chord to another enumerated in the same book and others like it.
Figured bass fell out of use during the latter half of the 18th century. At the same time, square pianos took over as the favored keyboard instrument in households that could afford one. (The two-manual harpsichord seen in the 1780 painting would have cost three to four times what a square piano did shortly thereafter.) This fueled an upswing in pianos being part of domestic music making, also shifting marketing perspectives for music publishers.
This is reflected in a four-volume production initiated by Gow in 1799. The final installment was completed posthumously by his sons in 1817. The appearance of the harp at the top of the list of instruments merits further comment. The point for now is that neither it nor the piano are ascribed accompaniment roles.
The melody is notated in a reasonably consistent style but there are several differing approaches to its harmonization. These range from simple basses with one note per beat as in the Gigg above, to a variety of what would be seen as pianistic settings involving both hands in the production of chords. An increase in that complexity can be traced through the successive volumes.
The following example is from the second, published in 1802. It uses the left hand for both the bass line and simple chords. (The ornate upward arrow following the clefs indicates that the “tune…may be played slow when not danced.”)
Ornamentation is marked with familiar signs but diverges from mainstream classical style. This would be a reasonable way for Gow & Sons to convey an important attribute of traditional performance to musicians otherwise unfamiliar with it. A tune in the fourth volume contrasts the “original” approach to chordal arrangement with a “modern” one.
This tune is labeled as Irish but in fact provides a good example of material appearing at different locations in Britain and Ireland, variously identified as having originated in one or another of them (c.f. this discussion of The Black Joke). Similar considerations attach to performance practice, with varying regional attitudes about such things as the utility, or even acceptability, of accompaniment. Whatever the original Irish perception of its manifestation in Scotland may have been, that basic approach is still encountered in a collection of 52 piano arrangements of Popular selections from O’Neill’s Dance Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1910, by Selena O’Neill.
She was a classically trained violinist unrelated to the author of the monumental parent publication, Francis O’Neill, but one of his collaborators. Her “simple accompaniments” are somewhat idiosyncratic. Nonetheless, they are prefaced with a useful “Word of Advice” that includes the observation:
The harmonization of traditional Irish music, easy as it may appear, is not unattended with difficulties; and while most modern musicians render Irish Airs acceptably, few of them have a true conception of the peculiar rhythm or swing of Irish Dance Music, without which it loses its charm and spirit. For those reasons we can understand why their best efforts at arrangement, though technically correct according to musical ethics, leave much to be desired.
Unlike the older sources, there are recordings with which these arrangements can be compared. The piano is the most common accompaniment instrument on them and the history of its association with Irish traditional music is commonly reckoned from its recording studio debut. These piano accompaniments reflect varying degrees of familiarity with the appropriate musical idiom. However, there is an underlying stylistic commonality that harks back to the early 19th-century collections where the instrument made its actual introductory appearance, and has carried through to the present day.
The alternating bass/chord pattern O’Neill assigns to the left hand alone, is divided between both hands on the recordings. The staggered rhythm necessitated by one-hand execution is therefore not the sole option. The bass and chords can also be aligned vertically just as they initially were on the harpsichord. This is illustrated by a recording of The Flogging Reel made in New York City in 1928, with Peter J. Conlon playing the melodeon.
In a recording of the same tune by the fiddler Frank O’Higgins in 1938, Julia Gray retains the same basic accompaniment style but adds an occasional flourish paralleling the melody.
The more spartan approach is again taken by Charlie Lennon when accompanying the accordionist Joe Burke in a recording made in Dublin in 1973. Despite his low-key presence in it, Lennon was a skilled and highly regarded fiddler, performing extensively as a soloist. Other virtuoso players of traditional instruments who alternately serve as keyboard accompanists are similarly subservient to the melody.
The same can be said of musicians who are primarily known as pianists, even when pushing the stylistic envelope of keyboard accompaniment. This is typified by the composer and performer Ryan Molloy (who is also a fiddler) as he backs up the fiddler David Doocey and the banjo player Brona Graham, in a recording from 2012. She is entirely on the accompaniment side in the first tune and shifts fully to melody in The Flogging Reel.
Molloy comments on general perceptions of accompaniment and how liberties came to be taken with the long-established approach to it, in the following video interview from 2020. Anyone with more than a passing interest in the accompaniment of Irish traditional music should find it well worth watching, at the very least from the linked point through a performance with the fiddler Fergal Scahill.