Three Irish Composers You Should Know (But Probably Don’t) - PHH 043

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery Podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan, and I'm a harpist, teacher, and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want the way they want. But as a harpist who nearly flunked out of one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, I, although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there. I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Welcome to the show. Well, it's almost the middle of March, and that means it's almost St. Patrick's Day, a day which is important to many of us, not just because we might happen to be Irish. I mean, my last name is Sullivan, after all. Right? Or maybe you're just Irish for a day. But as harpists, many of us raise a glass on St Patrick's Day to celebrate the amazing legacy of the Irish Harpers and to the Moder Day Harpers who continue this rich tradition. But on today's show, we're going to pay tribute to another facet of Irish music with a tradition just as rich and as beautiful. I'm going to introduce you to three influential Irish composers. Not composers of traditional music, but composers more linked to classical music. One who made his musical mark in the court of Queen Elizabeth I of England. One who invented a musical form that became a staple of classical music composers, and one who is considered responsible for the resurgence in the 1960s of the popularity of Irish traditional music. Three very different composers, all linked by a common heritage, a heritage I am proud to share. And I will share a little bit of some of that music with you as well. And be sure to stick around to the end of the episode, because I'm going to. I have a little gift for you for St. Patrick's Day as well. Now, before we get started, I want to thank everyone who joined me for my webinar last week, the Check Check what's yous Level Webinar. We had some really great discussion on that call, and I heard from so many of you how much you learned from our discussion about the skills you need to move up to find that next level of harp happiness. I just want to thank everyone who attended live and those who listened to the replay. We had nearly 300 people register for the webinar, so that's a lot of harp happiness, and that makes me happy. So. And don't forget, I've got that little St. Patrick's Day bonus for you. So stick around and you'll find out how to get that. But right now, let's start our discussion, and let me introduce you to our first Irish composer. Imagine for a second what it must have been like in the court of Queen Elizabeth I of England. You know, picture one of the movies you've seen, right, and think about the dresses and the ruffs and the hairstyles and everything that was going on in the world at that time. This was right in the middle of the English Renaissance, the 16th century, and so much was happening. There were some amazing English Renaissance composers that were working at that time. Thomas Tallis, born in 1505, died in 1585. You perhaps know the very famous Tallis canon. And William Byrd, another major composer of the time, born in 1543, died in 1623, just a little bit younger than Thomas Tallis. But another very significant Renaissance composer and English Henry Purcell, another name you might know from this relatively the same time period. He was a little bit later. He wasn't born until 1659, so he came just a little bit later than the time period that we're talking. We're talking squarely in the 16th century here. Now, court music at that time.

Also had a particular fashion. And the kind of music that had come into fashion at that time was called consort music. It was instrumental music that was played in an ensemble. Sometimes consort music used music played by instruments of all the same family, like all viols or string instruments or all wind instruments. Sometimes it mixed instruments, in which case it was called a mixed consortium.

And here's where our Irish composer comes in. The Irish composer and harper named Cormac McDermott.

Went to the Elizabethan court. He was appointed in 1605 to the Royal Music in London, and he was the first harper to have been appointed there since the death of a harper named Blind William Moore in 1565. So he worked in the court of Queen Elizabeth I composing and performing music. And in fact, he's credited in some sources with actually having brought this consort form of music to England from Ireland. But his compositions weren't particularly Irish traditional music. That was not what he was playing, that he was writing the music that was appropriate to the time. So his music sounds like Renaissance music. Now let me just play one of his pieces for you. This is a pavane from a book of airs that he wrote. And this pavane was originally written for viols for bowed string instruments. And it's called Sir John Palton's Pavane. So I've arranged it for harp. It's a very simple piece, but it's simple in its texture. It would have been a completely different piece played on the appropriate instruments. But you can tell that this is English Renaissance music, yet it's an Irish composer giving it his own spin.

Sam.

I bet it sounds like you expected if you were are at all familiar with English Renaissance music, this sounds just like it. There's nothing that particularly identifies it as coming from Ireland, but it did certainly come from an Irish composer. I gave you some English composers birth and death dates just a little bit ago, but I thought it might be interesting to have frame of reference from an Irish composer you do know. Just to let you know, Cormac McDermott. They don't know exactly when he was born, but he died in 1618.

O' Carolan wasn't born until 1670 and died in 1738. So he's quite a bit later in time. So just I wanted to give you that little perspective. So there's just a little bit about Cormac MacDermott, the next Irish composer that you probably have run into at some point. Maybe you have and didn't know it, but this composer is one of the more famous classical composers, especially among pianists. His name is John Field. John Field was born in 1782, died in 1837. So it. His birth and death dates put him musically in the classical and romantic eras. He was certainly Irish, came from an Irish musical family. But his famous, his biggest, I should say his biggest contribution to classical music is that he is considered the creator of the nocturne. Now you've probably run into a nocturne someplace in your music making a nocturne, you know, it would be sort of a night composition or a composition inspired by or evocative of the night. And it doesn't necessarily have a night reference, but it does have a very romantic sort of connotation. And of course the most famous composer of nocturnes would have been Chopin, the Polish French composer.

But it was Field who first invented the nocturne, composed the first nocturnes. And that set of nocturnes was published in 1814.

The Chopin's Nocturnes came just a little bit later. But this form attracted composers Robert Schumann on upward, Hindemith, Debussy. All these sorts of people wrote nocturnes. And this is the form that was invented by John Field. His music was not written for harp. He was writing for piano. But some of his nocturnes just sound so lovely on the harp. And I thought I would like to share just an excerpt of that very first nocturne, Nocturne Number One, by John Field. It's just. Just a little. A little snippet of it. The piece itself isn't long. There's a middle section that. That I haven't played for you. And then the. The ending is similar to the beginning, but I just thought I'd share the first couple of pages so you can get a taste for what Field's.

It's beautiful music, isn't it? And now that you've met John Field through his music, I'll give you just a little glimpse into his life. He was born in Dublin. His. His parents were musical. His family was music. His father played the violin in theaters in Dublin. His grandfather was an organist. And actually his grandfather was his first teacher. But the family moved to London and John Field got some notoriety as a pianist, as a performer. His performances were praised by all kinds of people in the musical world of the time. And he took to. He began to study under Museo Clementi. You might know Clementi from piano sonatas and sonatinas. And John Field and Clementi began an association that lasted for the rest of their lives. In fact, John Field was a pallbearer at Clementi's funeral. But the two of them became fast friends and traveled all over Europe, traveling to Vienna and St. Petersburg and Moscow. And Field was also a very good businessman, working on publishing his music. He had business arrangements with the most. With the biggest Russian publishing house, along with the. The biggest German publishing house, Breitkopf. And so he was, you know, doing quite a bit with that, but he was also leading a pretty adventurous life. And this took a toll on his health. He had numerous hospital stays, but this did not stop him from giving concerts, from writing music. He was very prolific, and apparently he was. He was a man with a sense of humor as well, because according to a report from an eyewitness, they were. He was on his deathbed. He died of pneumonia in Moscow in 1837. And he was on his deathbed. And they asked what his religion was, and he said that he was not a Calvinist, but a claveciniste. Claveciniste being French for harpsichordist. So he wasn't A Calvinist, he was a harpsichordist, and that was his religion. So there you go.

But his nocturnes will have earned him a place forever in the musical pantheon. They're beautiful pieces. They're remarkable in their grace and, you know, chromaticism, the rolling sorts of left hands that we hear, they're remarkable. And Field, of course, was also influential as a teacher. One of his students was Mikhail Glinke. And some of you harpists may have played Glinke's very famous Nocturne for Harp. And you might notice some similarity between that piece and the piece I just played for you. So that's John Field, once again an Irishman, but with a classical music bent. But the last composer I have to tell you about is one who does have a strong association not only with classical music, but also with film music and with Irish traditional music. So let me tell you a little bit about Sean O'Reidy. Sean O'Reidy was born in Cork City, grew up in County Limerick. He had a musical education all through college. He studied violin, piano and organ.

After graduation from his college, he got married, was a director for an Irish radio group, and during the evening he played piano with dance bands. Now, this sounds like every other musician's story in the world, right? Well, you know, he's got his day job, but he really wants to play, so he played piano with dance bands. Now, eventually he became musical director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, and he wrote and arranged and directed music for the pit orchestra for the shows there. So the music he was writing were compositions for small orchestras. There's nothing necessarily.

Irish or with an Irish traditional flair about them, but, you know, this was the work in which he was trained, and this is how he was writing. He also composed and directed orchestral music for theater and film. And for this he. He followed in the footsteps of some other very great composers who were combining the music of their native lands.

In new ways to bring them sort of pull those native tunes, traditional tunes, into classical music. Dvorak did it. Ralph Vaughan Williams did it. Bartok did it. All kinds of composers were using this sort of new nationalism and bringing this. These, you know, their native music into their compositions. And Orita did it, too. So in 1959, he scored music for a documentary film called in English, called I Am Ireland, and it was about the founding of the Irish Republic. He conducted the orchestra that did the recording of the music for this documentary. So his interest in Irish national music clearly had begun. That traditional music germ was in there. And between 1961 and 1969, he led a little Irish group called Chilchorry Chulan. Now, that's the last time I'm going to say that for you, because my pronunciation will stink. But in any case, these. This was a group that played in concert halls, but they were doing their concerts using traditional Irish songs and tunes. So this wasn't your ordinary band. That was a show band that would have, you know, been. Been doing other kinds of music. This was a band that was playing more traditional tunes with very spare sort of arrangements that had a really traditional sound. Although Oreda brought in instruments like a harpsich, that would not necessarily have been part of a traditional Irish group. Original members for the Chieftains also played in this group. And this was where his biggest contribution was, because this was how Irish traditional music got a foothold.

Oreda started writing more Irish traditional classical music. He wrote music for a Mass. It was the first mass written in the Irish language, and it became a standard. But his work with this band was so powerful, and, in fact, their last recording already died very young, just at the age of 40, I believe. And, you know, so there's another. Another interesting thing. So many composers died young. Think about Mozart, Gershwin, Georges Bizet. These are people who died before or shortly after their 40th birthday. And you think, you know, what kind of contribution would they have made if they had lived? But this last recording that this group made was so powerful. Just to give you background, this recording was a recording of the band's last public performance in 1969.

The School of thought here is that this particular performance changed Irish music forever. And.

People use phrases like, this was when Ireland was reintroduced to its musical heritage. The CD that is now released, of course, they weren't doing CDs back in the 60s, but if you are to get this recording, it's called Oreda in the Gaiety, the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, and you can get that CD and you'll find that it has this.

In the notes. So much of what we take for granted in Irish traditional music has not, in fact, been passed down through the centuries, but was rather brought to the world stage on a Dublin April evening in 1969. So that's the level of influence that Sean Orita had over Irish traditional music, and, of course, with a foot firmly in the classical music world as well. Now, I am not going to play any of Oreda's work for you because I couldn't do it justice. But I know that you can go onto YouTube and you can find wonderful recordings of his music. Whether you're looking for music from his Mass or for music from that last performance at the Gaiety Theater, I strongly suggest that you listen to it. A fascinating man, amazing music, and just not your usual Irish fare. However.

This is the man that is credited with the resurgence of interest of Irish music. I did read somewhere that during the time he was writing Irish music, Irish traditional music was being played in English pubs, but not in Ireland. It was in England that there was some interest in this, and it took Sean O'Reidy to actually bring the interest back to Ireland. So fascinating stories and amazing music from not only Sean O'Reidy, but from all three of these amazing gentlemen. Go ahead, do your research and look up a little bit more about them. I think that you'll really enjoy the music that you find. Now, I did tell you that I had a special St. Patrick's Day gift for you, and it is this. I printed up a copy of the John Field excerpt that I played for you on this show. It's a free PDF, just my little St. Patrick's Day gift to you. And there's the version that I played, and I also put together a slightly, slightly easier version that is also playable on lever harp. So the PDF comes with both of those versions. I just thought I'd like to share that and share some of the beautiful Irish music that exists in the world with you. So I hope you have enjoyed this look at this different facet of Irish music today, and I hope you enjoy it always. Right. Don't miss next week's show because I'm going to reveal some of the things you thought you knew about fingering and why those things might actually be wrong. So. Yeah, that's. That's right. You heard me. Some of the things you think about harp fingering could be wrong. So don't miss next week's show. I look forward to talking with you then. In the meantime, go ahead, please click on that link in the show notes and download your free John Field piece. And in the words of the Irish, wherever you go, whatever you do, may the luck of the Irish be there with you. Happy St Patrick's Day to you. And I will look forward to talking with you next week. Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.