Irish traditional music Structures and Contexts Lecture

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Irish traditional music

• Structures and Contexts

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Lecture Plan

• History and social context
• Musical structures
• Performance contexts
• Australian contexts

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Irish music

• Irish history
• English/British colony English control
  gradually developed from 1100s onwards
• After reformation most of Ireland maintained
  Catholic religion and political allegiance
• Series of national movements from 1798 uprising,
  
• National movement continues through 1800s, war
  of independence 1917-1922

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Independent Ireland

• New state established in Southern part of
  Ireland, protestant northern province of Ulster
  remains within United Kingdom
• Sense of national unity continues in South and
  with Northern catholic republicans
• Nationalist ideology and politics receding with
  incorporation into Europe and transnationl
  politics

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Socio-political place of Irish traditional music

• Irish traditional music key symbol of Irish
  nationalism.
• Large group of aficionados and enthusiasts in
  Ireland, supported in principle by the population
• Combination of conservative social tradtion and
  musical innovation and adventurousness
• Cf Country and Irish
• Cf Irish rock, boy bands, Corrs, etc

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Irish traditional music in the Irish soundscape

• Minority interest of enthusiasts
• Given high social and national status by larger
  group perhaps majority
• Often claimed by many musicians as basis or
  influence

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Genres of traditional music

• Irish traditional dance tunes
• Reels, jigs,hornpipes, set dances etc
• Songs
• Irish language songs sean nos old style
• English language traditional narrative ballads
• Local songs, comic songs, love songs, political
  and topical historical songs
• Modern folk songs in this format

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Irish dance music

• Repetoire of tunes
• Binary structure
• Atune
• Bturn
• Rhythmic forms
• Reel 4/4, AABB, 32 bars, qqqq qqqq
• Jig 6/8, AABB, 32 bars, qqq qqq
• Hornpipe as for reel but slower and more unequal
• Slip jigs 9/8 qqq qqq qqq
• Set dances various rhythms with unequal section
  lengths eg 16 bars 20 bars

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Instrumental resources

• Melodic instruments
• Uilleann Pipes (pron illun)
• Bellows blown bagpipe, drones, Keys drones
  called regulators
• Possibility of staccato playing by closed
  fingering

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Fiddle Playing style

• Fiddle violin , seldom retuned
• Playing mainly first position, hence G-b range
• Loose shoulder support, bowed on the string,
  some trebling, much slurred playing, usually
  offbeat phrasing, some finger slides, much finger
  ornamentation

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Flute and Whistle

• Flute baroque wooden flute 6 primary finger
  holes,
• Whistle 6 holes, 2 octaves
• Almost no tonguing, articulation through
  ornamentation

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Secondary instruments

• Accordion button single action accordion
  (different note press and draw, hence phrasing
  implications)
• Plectrum stringed instruments
• Tenor banjo
• Mandolin imitate fiddle tuning and
  ornamentation, especially trebling

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Accompanying instruments

• Piano (now old fashioned sound) vamped bass
  chord alternation
• Guitar modern style often in modal DADGAD
  tuning open chords, sus chords, open drones etc
• Bodhran (pron bow-rawn) circular frame drum,
  played with short two-ended stick

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Melodic style

• Tune range generally d-b
• D or G major scales, finals of D,E,G,A,B
• Modal melodies eg notes c(),f() variable
• dorian with major 6 more common than natural
  minor
• D drone often retains a presence against other
  modal finals

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Ornamentation

• Style as most valued characteristic
• Phrasing, ornamentation
• Ornaments
• Pipes and flute influenced
• Cuts interrupting upper grace note
• Rolls combination of upper and lower grace
  notes, rhythmically executed
• Trebles based on stringed instrunment techniques
• Principle of imitating other instruments
  especially Pipes

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The Silver spear Typical reel
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Variation

• Highly valued, but controlled
• Integrity of tune must be maintained
• Substitution of longer notes, neighbour groups,
  filling in scalar gaps etc
• Tunes sometimes in extended theme and variation
  form

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Social and performing contexts

• Historically rural Ireland social dancing
• Much solo step dancing
• Group dancing
• Crossroads dances
• Post independence national symbolic education
  and display
• Emigration esp USA social dances, nostalgia,
  cultural maintenance

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Modern developments

• Recording of emigrant players esp in 1920s-1930s
  in USA
• Vigorous revival movement in Ireland in
  1950s-1960s greatly expands social reach.
• Breakthrough groups form in 1970s, typical small
  instrumental folk group, inspires Irish music
  performance globally
• Session playing develops esp from 1960s-

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Global Irish

• Session
• Model of cooperative social music making
• Leaderless individualism, but strict
  musico-social control
• Rounds of tunes, 2-3 times each
• Depends on shared repertoire
• Performance without audience, practice,
  sociability, sub-cultural status
• Cf Jazz jam session

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1990s Irish goes Global

• Irish Pubs , Guinness promotion from early 1990s.
  Imitates real immigrant community Pubs, local
  rural and Dublin Pubs
• Popular Culture
• Riverdance from 1996
• Film music Titanic, Lord of the Rings
• Irish or Celtic?

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Australia

• Irish immigration to Australia in 19th C approx
  25
• Influences on vernacular popular song
  (traditional folk music)
• Folk movement in 1970s bases Australian group
  performance on contemporary Irish performance gtgt
  Bush Band

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Irish trad music playing in Australia

• Players in Irish immigrant communities, national
  organisations, dancing classes
• Irish emigrants for 1960s immigration
  discovered by Australian folk and roots
  enthusiasts
• Bands and session scenes develop in Australia

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Current bands and sessions in Melbourne

• Sessions
• Father Flanagan's (Nth Fitzroy)
• Railway Hotel (Nth Fitzroy)
• The Quiet Man (Flemington)
• Bands- eg Triskel, Conundrum, The Beanies,
  Trouble in the Kitchen and others
• Extension of repertoire asymmetric Balkan
  style tunes,