The Raveled Hank of Yarn

12 March 202419 November 2025 stringbedLeave a comment

Every now and then the topic of a post here bridges the two areas of cultural activity that have been the main focuses of this blog. This time, the link is the dedication of a recording of an Irish dance tune by the fiddler Fergal Scahill: “Here’s a tune for any fellow knitters out there, ’tis the knitting season after all!”

There are a few more words to it in the video and I’m passing the dedication onward a while after it was first made, but the sentiment remains the same. This rendition is used below, with other recordings of the same tune, to illustrate specific aspects of the native performance practice of Irish traditional music (ITM). This is also a major source of tunes played on the autoharp; another topic of intense recent attention on this blog.

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Musical Instruments

Articulation on diverse pipes

12 December 202330 March 2026 stringbedLeave a comment

The preceding two posts examine instruction manuals for woodwind instruments and compilations of popular dance tunes published in the 17th and 18th centuries, looking for evidence of continuity between the way such music was ornamented in earlier periods and present-day practice. The collections include tunes that originated in Ireland and remain part of the traditional repertoire there, providing a useful basis for tracing the development of the battery of ornaments associated with that genre. The investigation continues in the present post but considers an expressive technique not covered by the title of the previous installments (Turns and Rolls — Part 1 and Part 2).

In a demonstration of Sligo-style flute playing here, Seamus Tansey says of ornamentation that “it all came from the pipes.” Players of other instruments have made similar statements. Such claims are as likely to trigger debate as avert it but uilleann pipes do have a particularly rich repertoire of ornaments, including pretty much all those used on other traditional Irish instruments.

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Musical Instruments

Turns and rolls — Part 1

10 October 202329 June 2025 stringbedLeave a comment

This post examines historical descriptions of a musical ornament that appears in several genres. In Western classical music it is referred to by the Italian name gruppetto (small group) or a native designation in the language of discourse, such as the English “turn.” Its manifestation in Irish traditional music is called a “roll.” Tutorial presentations in that context frequently mention its resemblance to the classical ornament but caution against confusing the two. Each has its own range of variants and differ in the rhythmic attributes of their performance, but share a basic five-note configuration — note; note above; note; note below; note.

An ornament called a gruppo appears in a treatise on improvised embellishment and ornamentation in vocal performance by Giulio Caccini titled Le Nuove Musiche (The New Music), published in 1601. The five-note figure now called a gruppetto is a diminutive of it in both grammatical and structural senses, formed by the final thirty-second notes of a long trill. The execution of the eponymous trillo is similarly apparent. It is the single-note ornament now referred to as a tremolo. As written, both labeled ornaments accelerate over the first several notes.

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Musical Instruments

The Autoharp in Irish Traditional Music

8 November 202228 April 2026 stringbed2 Comments

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.

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