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Ireland's Harp: A Story of Survival and the Shaping of Irish Identity
The
history of the wire-strung Irish harp tradition from the twelfth century to the
late nineteenth century is a story of a fight to
survive through regeneration and adaptation in a changing society.
The
Irish harp enjoyed a high status in early Gaelic society due to the
sophistication of the instrument and the considerable technical ability of the
harpers that was acquired from a young age. The harper, along with the file
(poet) and the reacaire (reciter), were the epitome of Gaelic
aristocratic culture.
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Figure 1: The Kingdom of Ireland
In Topographia Hiberniae,
Giraldus Cambrensis, a Welsh cleric who accompanied Prince John on a visit to
Ireland in the late twelfth century, identified the skill of the Irish harpers
as the sole redeeming characteristic of an otherwise barbaric race.
The
anomaly of an uncivilized race fostering such an advanced culture was difficult
for Cambrensis to reconcile, but his acknowledgement of the supremacy of Irish
harpers was cited regularly over the following centuries as proof of the
existence of a highly advanced precolonial Gaelic civilization with a great
tradition of harp music.
Over the course
of the next five centuries the parallel decline of Gaelic civilization and
increasing colonization of Irish society by the English
meant that the role of the Irish harp and harper was gradually redefined.
In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the wire-strung Irish harp
became a popular instrument at the English court and formed an important part of
a distinctive ‘hybrid musical tradition’ called the harp consort. Irish harpers
employed at court adapted aspects of their playing style to perform the
compositions of William Lawes and others in ensembles which included a bass
viol, theorbo, or other instruments.
Following the
decisive defeat of a combined army of Gaelic chieftains by English colonial
forces at the Battle of Kinsale (1601), many members of the Gaelic aristocracy
fled to continental Europe. Some chieftains brought their harpers with them but
the harpers that remained in Ireland were forced to find other sources of
patronage, often amongst English settlers. The complex social fabric of Ireland
from the seventeenth century onwards was reflected by the many groupings within
society which included the aristocracy, gentry, and the Protestant, Dissenter
and Catholic professional and commercial middle classes of Gaelic, English, or
Scottish origin. Irish harpers adapted their repertoire, technique, and
instruments to cater to the musical demands of their new patrons and this often
entailed assimilating foreign musical influences into their repertoire and
compositional techniques. In the early seventeenth century, in an attempt to
emulate contemporary continental developments in keyboard instruments, some harp
makers even tried to facilitate limited chromaticism on the Irish harp.
In the late
seventeenth century, when contemporary audiences viewed the technique of playing
with long fingernails as obsolete, some harpers modified their technique so that
by the eighteenth century, most harpers were performing on thinly-strung
high-headed harps with a fingertip technique. In the eighteenth century, as
musicians were encouraged to become multi-skilled instrumentalists and
pedagogues, Irish harpers, including Turlough Carolan and Arthur O'Neill, duly
obliged and derived an income as travelling musicians and teachers. Every moment
in the history of the tradition was characterized by an impulse to save the
tradition and drive it forward, and its survival was largely due to the
ingenuity and versatility of Irish harpers to adapt constantly to social and
cultural changes.
Although members
of the Protestant Ascendancy and Catholic gentry in Ireland continued to provide
patronage for harpers, in the eighteenth century, the Irish harp tradition was
increasingly regarded as a dying tradition whose practitioners were relics of a
past glorious civilization and whose ‘ancient’ music was in need of urgent
rescue from oblivion. In 1760, the writer Oliver Goldsmith declared the renowned
Irish harper/composer Turlough Carolan (1670–1738) the ‘last Irish bard’ and a
gathering of ten Irish harpers to perform and compete in Belfast in 1792 was
interpreted culturally and politically as the end of Gaelic culture.
As the practice
of wire-strung harp declined through the centuries, however, the harp icon
became increasingly prominent as a symbol of Ireland under English rule and
later as a marker of identity in contemporary Irish politics and culture. The
harp was employed as a symbol of English rule in Ireland from the mid-sixteenth
century when a harp surmounted by a crown was minted on Irish coinage in England
during the reign of Henry VIII. During the eighteenth century, a winged-maiden
harp was used as the symbol of the Protestant Ascendancy, the dominant political
power in Ireland.
Figure 2: The Three Jacks |
During the late
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the visual and metaphoric
significance of the Irish harp usurped its musical importance as every
aspect of the Irish harp tradition was linked with changes in
contemporary Irish politics, society, and culture. In the final decades
of the eighteenth century, images of winged-maiden harps were ubiquitous
amongst political and revolutionary movements, including the Society of
United Irishmen who adopted an uncrowned harp icon along with the motto
'It is new-strung and shall be heard' as the official insignia of their
Movement in 1791. From the 1830s onwards, an image of a harp similar to
the oldest extant Irish harp, the 'Brian Boru' or Trinity College harp,
gradually replaced the winged-maiden harp icon. This type of harp, often
referred to as a 'plain harp' because of the absence of the
winged-maiden design, was a recurring image in the iconography of
various movements seeking political autonomy for Ireland, including the
Repeal Association and the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
In the early decades
of the nineteenth century, writers such as Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan)
and Thomas Moore (the 'Bard of Erin') used the Irish harp and harper
metaphors in contemporary literature and song to address social
injustices, in particular, the extreme poverty of many of the native
Irish. In Patriotic Sketches of Ireland (1807), Owenson
considered the voice of the poor as analogous to the music of the Irish
harp; she noted that the tender, indignant voice of Ireland's poor,
'like the tones of her own harp, vibrates in sad and plaintive fondness
unheard or unheeded.'
Patronage of
Irish harpers in the early nineteenth century was perceived as a tacit
articulation of patriotism and the establishment of Harp Societies and
schools at Belfast, Dublin, and Drogheda to provide harp tuition for
disadvantaged and/or visually impaired boys and girls was seen as an
important means to revive the Irish harp tradition and symbolically
revitalize the Irish people and the Irish nation. |
Figure
3: John Egan Harp |
The
political and cultural significance of the Irish harp in this period
fueled an unprecedented interest in the performance of harp music. There
was an increase in the production of wire-strung Irish harps for the
students of the Harp Societies, but also mass production (in
contemporary terms) of a newly-invented type of portable Irish harp by
John Egan c. 1819.
This
newly-invented instrument, and the tradition which originated from it,
was influenced by the design and technique of performance of the
European pedal harp and, although it had little in common with the
wire-strung harp tradition in Ireland, Egan's portable harp was the
genesis of the modern Irish or folk harp. |
Figure 4: Patrick Byrne, Harper |
The
revival of interest in the wire-strung Irish harp and harper in the
early nineteenth century, however, was short-lived. In the latter half
of the nineteenth century, a period marked by increased Anglicization
and urbanization, Irish harpers struggled to find patronage. Some of the
harpers who were educated at the harp school of the Irish Harp Society
of Belfast travelled abroad and sought patronage in Britain or North
America. In this cultural vacuum, a tradition of pedal harp performance,
which had been growing steadily from the early nineteenth century,
established itself as the dominant tradition of harp performance in
Ireland. Although the Irish Harp Revival Festival which took place in
Dublin in 1879 failed to achieve its objective of reviving an interest
in the instrument, it was a seminal event in the history of what would
later be called the ‘early Irish harp tradition’. The Festival was
significant for two reasons, firstly, the performance by a blind Irish
harper was a rare opportunity to hear a wire-strung Irish harp played in
public, and secondly, it was the last formal attempt to revive an
interest in the performance and patronage of the wire-strung Irish harp
in the nineteenth century.
Various
attempts to revive the Irish harp in the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries resulted in a tradition of wire-strung Irish harp performance
which, by the time it died out in the late nineteenth century, differed
significantly from what remained in the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries. In the nineteenth century, harpers primarily played popular contemporary
repertoire, for example Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies,
with fingertips on wire-strung harps made by John Egan and earned a
living performing at public houses or hotels. The wire-strung
Irish harp tradition up to 1880, however, was part of an unbroken
tradition or cultural practice that tried to regenerate itself through
the centuries in order to survive and to meet the demands of Gaelic
society, Hiberno-Norman society, Anglo-Irish society, and the
bourgeoisie.
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The popularity of
the pianoforte, the genesis of an Irish pedal harp tradition, and a period of
social and cultural flux in Ireland from the 1840s onwards transformed the Irish
harp tradition into a complex, fractured tradition, which struggled to survive.
The paucity of information on Irish harpers in Ireland from the 1880s onwards
suggests that there were few, if any, professional harpers deriving an income
from performance. The unique and intimate connection between wire-strung harp
performance, patronage, and Irish society, which had its origins in early Gaelic
civilization, was broken forever by the 1880s. In the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries harpers such as Owen Lloyd and Gráinne Yeats attempted to
revive the performance of the wire-strung Irish harp in Ireland. Because these
harpers were self taught and acquired their knowledge solely through the study
of extant sources of harp repertoire, they were not part of the unbroken
tradition of wire-strung Irish harp performance which was passed down orally
from generation to generation in Ireland for almost a millennium. Although there
has been a revival of interest in the performance of the wire-strung Irish harp
in recent decades, the modern Irish or folk harp (strung with gut, nylon, or
carbon) is now the most widely practiced type of harp in Ireland.
Figure 5: The Spirit of the Nation |
The Irish harp icon has
remained an important marker of Irish identity in Irish politics and
culture to the present day. The Coat of Arms of Ireland and the
Presidential Standard include an image of a gold harp (similar to the
‘Brian Boru’ harp) with silver strings set against a blue background.
The instrument is also the main element in the seals of office of
Uachtarán na hÉireann (the President of Ireland) and all government
ministers and departments. For centuries the Irish harp tradition and
harp icon has been embedded in Irish politics and culture. The history
of Ireland's harp is one of resilience and reinvention; it is the story
of a tradition which endured for so long because it was a mediating
symbol between Irish and colonial cultures and it became the
quintessential musical, visual, and metaphoric representation of Ireland
and the Irish people
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Illustrations:
Figure 1: A map of Ireland which reinforces the harp as a
symbol of colonial culture from The Fovrth Booke: Containing the Kingdome of
Irelande, by John Speed (London, 1612). (Courtesy of the Special Collections
Department, Glucksman Library at the University of Limerick.)
Figure 2: The three-headed hound represents three figures –
John Fitzgibbon, John Beresford and John Foster – who served in the Irish
parliament in the late eighteenth century and who were regarded in the
nineteenth century with scorn for their perceived betrayal of Ireland. The hound
is pursuing Erin clutching a winged-maiden harp which represented Ireland and
the Irish people. 'The Three Jacks', The Irish Magazine, and Monthly Asylum
for Neglected Biography (June 1809) (Courtesy of the Special Collections
Department, Glucksman Library at the University of Limerick)
Figure 3: Portable Irish harp with blades, by John Egan.
(Courtesy of Museo dell'Arpa Victor Salvi, Piasco Cuneo)
Figure 4: Patrick Byrne, often referred to as the 'Last
Minstrel', was one of the most renowned Irish harpers of the nineteenth century
and he spent much of his career in England and Scotland. 'Patrick Byrne', The
Illustrated London News (11 Oct. 1856). (Courtesy of the Irish Traditional
Music Archive, Dublin)
Figure 5: The Irish harp and harper were frequently used
during the nineteenth century in the iconography of various political and
revolutionary movements. The Young Ireland movement employed the contrasting
images of the old bard with his harp of broken strings and a young, virile man
carrying a harp on the frontispiece of The Spirit of the Nation (1845),
by F.W. Burton. (Courtesy of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, Dublin)
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