The Irish harp's stringing, A Semiomusicology task ?

Ceol Mòr as a modern harp music genre ? 

By Dr. Vincent Michaud-Laine,  CC-BY-NC-ND 

 As an introduction, we will start by stating that yes, we are aware that some eminently respectable voices doubt that Ceol Mòr was historically played on the ancient Gaelic harp. In short, the main argument would be that we do not have any score rendition of such music played on the harp. It is a valid argument. So valid in fact that it could annihilate any contemporary playing of any repertoire on the instrument on the sole basis that we actually do not have any scores specifically for ancient Gaelic harp per se. There in fact exist more than a few hints about some of these Ceol Mòr pieces played on the harp, and some pieces in the Bunting collection for instance, also display the ground + variations pattern expected in that genre of music. Many types of music explored nowadays on wire strung harps, such as Sean-nòs songs, Robert ap Huw manuscript’s music, music from lute and harpsichord manuscripts are, in fact, exactly in the same position than Ceol Mòr: there are hints or documents that may suggest, depending on how they are interpreted, with what intention behind, that such types could have been historically performed as ancient Gaelic harp pieces at some point. They therefore constitute a legitimate and exciting ground for the contemporary musician to explore in the creative artistic process of re-imagining the ancient harp’s soundscape. But any musician or researcher is however free and justified, on that basis, to also exclude them from their research ventures, or practices. The harp music, when it’s actualised by us, in our world, becomes but a projection of our visions of the ancient music we look at. This vision is by nature situated, if not twisted, by many different influences, not many having much to do with music, or science. The musician, wishing to expand their repertoire in a cultural musical field dear to them, should therefore not allow themselves o be governed by restrictive pseudo-scientific authoritarian prescriptions. On one side the artistic practice does not need to claim to be science, to gain legitimacy in the task of imagining an ancient soundscape , as a “historically informed performance” may be tempted to do, thus cutting itself from a certain freedom of mind and interpretation in the name of an exact adequation to the sources, which is simply impossible to ever reach. On the other, science can be a support to creation in a secondary process, whereas “research by practice” risks sometimes to cut itself from the rigorous and competent preliminary scientific explorations which enriches the range of possibilities. So no, it is not a contradiction to consider that one can aim at being exact on the partial documents and the obtainable, attested, textual, organological data, to which one may indeed access, but only after a stringent and demanding philological and semiotic reconstruction work and an honest, clear and transparent line of interpretation, and, at the same time produce very personal and free musical interpretations. Not being a living tradition anymore, the only access we have to that possible, plausible soundscapes of the instrument would be written documents; texts of very various horizons and scopes, testimonies either direct or indirect, etc., and when all is said and done, it ends up being our own creativity, imagination, “informed” in various modalities, conscious or not, honest or not, and the will to play a reconstructed repertoire on a reconstructed harp in the Now that will produce the music we play. We therefore again, very respectfully acknowledge those who have the intuition that Ceol Mòr was not played on the harp, but do not see fit to comment further on the historical existence or otherwise of Ceol Mòr on the harp. When it comes to playing the harp now, we pretty much can do as we please and see fit, as historicity of ancient Gaelic music played in 2023 cannot be claimed. The purpose of the article is to give core elements and practical information for those who would like to try themselves at Ceol Mòr on the harp.

 DEFINING CEOL MÒR 

The piping tradition itself sometimes divides music into (at least) two main categories: ceol beag and ceol mòr. The first, “little music” describes various types of music, the purpose of which would be light entertainment, such as dance music, marches, or various songs. Ceol Mòr however only applies to a specific type of music with a higher social and cultural purpose that’s also known among modern pipers as piobaireachd or pibroch. “ Piobaireachd is […] is in many ways the greatest, and certainly the most highly organised and extended form of Scottish traditional music…In form, piobaireachd may be described as an air with variation ; but while some of the variations may be of a free melodic character of a simple order, others are of complicated stereotyped form, consisting of the application of certain extended grace-note patterns or formulae to the notes of the ground, or rather selected notes of it ” (Collinson, 1966, p.174-176)  Ceol Mòr however isn’t only confined to the pipes in the tradition. There are specific pieces for the fiddle (for instance in the Dow collection) which are either labelled as Ceol Mòr or Pibroch, they display the same features of a ground and several ornamental variations. The pieces are sometimes specific to the fiddle, exploiting its more extensive ambitus, but there are also pieces in common between the pipes and the fiddle. Such pieces display an ornamental system that is adapted to fiddle sound production. 

 A TRADITIONAL TRANSMITTING SYSTEM: THE CANNTAIREACHD 

 Canntaireachd (roughly pronounce can-tie-raCHk) can be defined as a sung memorising tool for transmitting and acquiring Ceol Mòr pieces in which the performer would sing a piece, using vocables which transmit fingering, dynamics, and ornamentation. It is worth distinguishing between canntaireachd in the tradition and canntaireachd in the manuscripts. In the tradition, a master piper would transmit the Ceol Mòr pieces by singing, at least as much if not more than by means of a practice chanter. That singing often varies from piper to piper and there is often no consistency in the vocable used within a single piece. It is however possible to trace a certain use of particular vocables throughout dynastic lines of pipers, thus suggesting the existence of older coherent systems.

 On this video you can hear The Lament for the Children being sung by a master piper:

 https://youtu.be/UrgjRv-uh3s 

Note that a particular phrase, being sung twice, will be sung the same, but the same fingering/movement/note in another phrase won’t necessarily be performed by means of the same vocable and the master transmits the phrase and intensity principally by means of the singing itself, with some additional information possibly conveyed by the vocable. This of course makes total sense in the context of a direct oral transmission from master to pupil which doesn’t need to enshrine the transmission within a code; code that would be needed if the transmission occurred without the physical presence of a master (i.e. from written sources to player). The passage to written form does indeed add the necessity of encoding more information. Canntaireachd rightly regarded as a notation and transmission system independent from and devoid of any influences of the classical musical notation system attracted the interest of some pipers who tried to drag it into written form. We do have several manuscripts which collect pieces in a vocalic system. They use different vocables and often aren’t consistent within themselves, they act mostly as a memory aid to someone who would already know the piece or the idiom and most of them cannot really be used to learn a piece from scratch. However, in 1797, Colin Campbell, piper to Earl John Campbell, compiled pieces in a book of music, commonly referred to as ‘The Nether Lorn Manuscript’. The manuscript can be consulted in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh as a microfilm, under the quotation MSS.3714-3716, it contains the following files: "Colin Campbell's Instrumental Book, 1797. The First Volume Continuing [sic] 83 Tunes", 1797 (MS.3714), “Colin Campbell Second Volume Containing 86 Tuns”, [1814, or after] (MS.3715) ; Transcript of Angus Mackay's 'Specimens of Canntaireachd', of about 1853, and a note, dated 1950, by Archibald Campbell, on points arising from a study of the Nether Lorn and Mackay manuscripts (MS.3716).

This manuscript displays a highly systematised vocalic array which is both efficient and consistent. This system is used as a base by many later and contemporary musicians as a very good and efficient tool for transmitting Ceol Mòr. This system is devised by a bagpipe player and therefore has only 9 notes in the great highland bagpipe’s scale. We propose below a table of possible renditions of that system as a synthesis of nowadays possible practices: 

 

IN THE SCALE	VOCABLE	Observations
Subtonic	(h)em	The grapheme <m> is the important one here the vowel may vary
TONIC	(h)en	The grapheme <n> is the important one here the vowel may vary
Degree 2	o	Sometimes a little diacritic – is added above or below the o to specify it. I would suggest replacing the higher <o> by <ao> (pronounce /ö/) so as to erase the possible confusion.
Degree 3	o
FOURTH to the tonic	a
FIFTH to the tonic	(d)e
Degree 6	ve	Variations can be found. Campbell often draws abbreviation graphs for the higher note in conjunction with the previous note.
Degree 7	Di or hi
OCTAVE UP to the tonic	hi

 Ornaments such as birls are rendered by means of combining the vowel of the scale with a descriptive consonant introduction, such as, for instance: 

 Dri -> being a birl on the fifth (sometimes spelled dre )  

Tro -> being a birl on the degree 2 

Tra -> being a birl on the fourth. 

Specific classical movements will receive a specific vocable, for instance taorluath will be darit, barit,   or dare,  while crunnluath will be bandre or bandri.

Specific sorts of crunnluath (fosgailte or a-mach) sometimes receive a vocable which very precisely describes what is needed to perform: 

Ex.: hiotrodre this ornament starts with a seventh grace note on the second degree, quickly followed by two successive birls, one on the second and one on the fifth. 

 This system in short not only truly empowers the written transmission of tunes but, is also a great way to memorise and sing pieces and gives the performer freedom from a classical musical notation system that can never render the subtleties of that music and therefore is more a hindrance than a help in learning pieces. 

For illustration, here is the canntaireachd of The Lament for the Viscount of Dundee (Piece known under the Piobaireachd society’s quotation PS114:  see https://pibroch.net/ps114/) , The traditional version as sung and performed on the practice chanter by Master Donald MacLeod:

 https://youtu.be/dcmYrIP3cE8 

 Phrase 1 noted with a system inspired by the Campbell system:

 Hi em otra hi a ohio em oden otra che laloho den Hi ara emtra hi otro hi ara emtra hi a en ho em. 

Played on the pipes : https://youtu.be/qW6YaJZGbwc 

 GENERAL STRUCTURE OF A CEOL MÒR PIECE 

 Let’s attempt now try to describe one possible structure of a Ceol Mòr piece.

 The Ground, also called in Gaelic Ùrlar: 

The ground is the key to understanding a whole piece and the part to which a lot of attention will be devoted when learning from a master. The ground is a melody line arranged in phrases in which there are strong notes, medium notes, and weak passing notes notes. The strong notes are usually sung or played longer than the other notes and frame the melodic/harmonic structure of the entire piece. It’s usually these notes which will be used as base notes for the variation. They are of the utmost importance. Then these strong notes group together with weak and medium notes to form melodic patterns. In classical music notation systems, usually the time signature will show the expected grouping around the strong notes (in groups of 2, 3, or 4 for instance). The classical musical system however cannot always adequately render the subtleties of a Ceol Mòr phrase, so if a sung or played recording is available it is always a better option. The ground is divided into parts, which can repeat or wedge between each other, each part can contain similar patterns thus creating a strong hypnotic effect by repetition. These parts’ general repartition is usually reused for variations. 

 The variations:

 They are based on a framework of strong notes related to the ground and usually following its melodic pattern. Each one is centred around a specific type of ornament. The variations are usually progressive in terms of complexity and may be ‘doubled’ i.e. having a double part, consisting of a diminution or more complex repetition. Here is, as an illustration, a list of the possible but optional variations in the piping tradition: 

URLAR - GROUND	Might have a variation played just after, and/or a doubling or an attached variation
DITHIS or SIUBHAL	With or without doubling or even a third part
LEUMLUATH	With or without doubling or even a third part
TAORLUATH	With or without doubling or even a third part
TAORLUATH FOSGAILTE or BREABACH	With or without doubling or even a third part
TAORLUATH A MACH	With or without doubling or even a third part
CRUNLUATH	With or without doubling or even a third part
CRUNLUATH FOSGAILTE or BREABACH	With or without doubling or even a third part
CRUNLUATH A MACH	With or without doubling or even a third part
RETURN TO THE GROUND

 CEOL MÓR AND PLAYING THE HARP NOW

As stated before, as there is no extant score of this music specifically for harp, we do not know what a historical performance of that music on the harp could have been. It however is possible to make a certain number of critical observations and compare pieces together, to try and see what structural passages are of the essence and compare common fiddle pieces and bagpipe pieces to see what’s kept and what’s different from one instrument to another. It should therefore be possible, using this methodology, to extract what it is that commonly make these pieces a piece of Ceol Mòr, and what differences they present, which do not alter their Ceol Mòr status, and on which modalities they are based. Observing what these pieces have in common will give us the characteristics with which these pieces were understood as being part of the Ceol Mòr style. The observable differences between the two instruments’ renditions will inform us about the characteristic features within the style that were implemented when a piece would move from one instrument to another and therefore give us tools to perform such a transition to the harp. Indeed, when we compare common pieces between the pipes and the fiddle such as, for instance, A ghlas mheur (Sources and versions can be seen at https://www.piobaireachd.co.uk/library/tunes-index/t-z?tune=the-finger-lock-a-ghlas-mheur) , it is possible to observe that the general “ground + variations then back to ground” structure is preserved, as well as a certain sense of the melody of the ground, organized in little combining formulas, with ending cadences, being the same, and the selected ground notes for the variations also being the same. However, in terms of harmonics and ornamentation possibilities, the different dynamics and range of the instruments are noticeably implemented. For instance, the fiddle might get more range than the 9 notes of the bagpipe and equally might ring by means of double stopping other than that of the strict drone at the tonic, which the bagpipes cannot stop sounding. The ornamentation system is also observably different. Individual grace notes often serve in bagpipe playing to separate repeated melodic notes which, as the bagpipes cannot stop the sound, serve the purpose of making the separation more audible. Such separating grace notes are not present in the fiddle versions as they are not necessary, the fiddle being perfectly able to stop the sound. Equally, the complex alternations of notes that form the core of the classical ornaments such as leumluath, taorluath and crunluath aren’t playable as such on a fiddle and are therefore transposed as bow beating ornaments much more idiomatic to fiddle playing. It is therefore observable within the preserved tradition that Ceol Mòr, as a style, will adapt its precise technical rendition to the dynamics and range of the performing instrument. Such an adaptation is eminently possible and legitimate on the harp. Like the fiddle, the harp can stop sounds and separate individual notes without having to separate them by means of a gracenote. It however has more possibilities than the fiddle here as it’s able to also sound those grace notes but will require to possibly stop them due to the high ringing sustain of the wire or gut/nylon strings. Unlike the fiddle though, the harp, as each note has its own string, can perform the complex alternations demanded by the classical ornaments of the bagpipes, ornaments which are in spirit and description quite akin to a certain type of attested harp ornaments transmitted by Edward Bunting and noted under the Barrluth labelling (See the terms Barrluth, barrluth beal an aired, casluth, barluth fosgailte in the table starting p. 25 of Bunting E. The ancient music of Ireland, University Press, Dublin, 1840.). Finally, the harp can sound different harmonies and generally has a fuller range than bagpipes or fiddle. These features form the core of the possibilities in making musical choices towards a modern contemporary rendition of such music on the harp. 

 CONCLUSION: CEOL MÒR IS A GENRE OF MUSIC NOW 

 Modern Gaelic music has a rich heritage, both humanly transmitted and archived and wildly reinterpreted if not down-right made up; as a modern style of traditional music, it reinvents and defines its own modalities. The piping tradition, in addition to keeping the old forms played and beloved, has also explored many modern alleys both in terms of arrangements and musical possibilities. The singing tradition has also explored from the old to the very contemporary forms of performances, including rap, orchestral or electronic performances. In this context, “tradition” bearers, truthful or not, reenactors, and continuers of the harping tradition are free to invent and reinvent old and new forms of music inside their own living tradition of the Now which necessarily needs to distinguish itself from the old harping tradition which only survives in texts, although it might share a certain genealogy with it. Ceol Mòr as a genre has this power to be able to bridge ancient Gaelic culture to contemporary forms of it. From the old pieces to new compositions or the possibility to fit any melody with variations in the style of the Ceol Mòr, the only limits are those of our creativity. It can be embraced as a new-old genre of music in a new-old “tradition”, at the image of our cultures, alive and evolving, which forever will generate new forms from old ones. It can deflect any ill-placed identitarism, racism or otherwise foolish folkloricism by simply assuming its status as a genre of music of its own. And perhaps this is the highest scope. Stephen Olbrys-Gencarella warns about the appropriation of “folk-studies” by a new kind of self-proclaimed specialist “researcher” who, in fact, turns up to be a relay of many identitarist biaises and of certain form of anti-intellectualism that goes with it:

This essay is a commentary on the rise of “folk research”, the “research” conducted by individuals who claim the status of folklorist in public venues without formal training, engagement with learned societies, and other markers of expertise.  […]  This essay describes and critically analyses 3 stances of the folk researchers: the enthusiast, the self-proclaimed expert, and the professionally unreasonable. This essay further argues that fork researchers should be considered a concern for academic and public sectors folklorists […] it contends that folk researchers pose serious issues for professionalism in the discipline and as potential perpetrators of anti-intellectualism, misinformation and even racist or otherwise socially problematic perceptions of folklore and folklore studies. “Folk Research, A Query and a critique”, in Cultural Analysis, vol. 20, 1, 2024

 

In the precise context of the wire-strung harp sphere which has a strong presence of such “specialist” “researchers”, it becomes extremely important to dissociate the artistic musical creation, and the wish for music, from historicist, cultural and identity angles. Appropriating Ceol Mòr on the harp, as a genre of music, inside an artistic and musical wish for music, with respect for the original historical tradition, but making no claims nor revendications in the historical, scientific or ethnic field, is a good way to do so, and a good way to celebrate, perpetuate and love a powerfully unique genre of music and protect it from politized and ideologized doxas. 

Bibliography: 

BASSO FOSSALI Perluigi, Vers une écologie sémiotique de la culture, Limoges, Lambert-Lucas, 2017. 

BOUQUET Simon et RASTIER François (dir.), Introduction aux sciences de la culture, Paris, PUF, 2002. 

 CANNON Roderick, The Highland Bagpipe and its Music, Edinburgh, J.Donald Publisher, 1995.

COLLINSON Francis, Traditional and National Music of Scotland, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966.

FAVRIAUD Michel, « Le plurisystème ponctuationnel : constituants et modes de structuration » in Livres de poésie – jeux d’espace, I. Chol, B. Mathios, S. Linarès, eds, Paris, Champion, 2016, p. 472 – 487.

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