title: Loughborough

text: Loughborough station is a mainline station serving the town. In 2012, Network Rail redeveloped the station increasing the length of the platforms and improving access; concurrently, the local council made improvements to the surrounding area. East Midlands Railway is the primary operator providing services on the Midland Main Line south to Leicester, Market Harborough, Kettering and London St Pancras stations and north to Nottingham, Lincoln, Derby and Sheffield stations. The link to London is twice-hourly and provides a link to Europe via Eurostar. Leicester and Derby stations allow transfers to CrossCountry trains running between the north-east of Scotland and the south-west of England.


title: Loughborough

text: There were at one time three railway routes to the town: the still-operating Midland Main Line, the Great Central Railway that closed as a result of the Beeching cuts and a branch line from Nuneaton that was part of the London & North Western Railway. Loughborough Central railway station served the Great Central Railway. It was opened on 15 March 1899 and closed in 1969 but re-opened in March 1974 as part of the Great Central heritage railway. The railway is split into two sections north and south of Loughborough. Loughborough Central station is the northern terminus of the southern section of the railway and services run daily. As of 2017, there were plans to fill the gap and link the two halves of the railway again. Thus, a new bridge was installed over the Midland Main Line, the A60 and the Grand Union Canal. Work is now progressing on restoring another bridge over parking lot of an industrial estate.


title: Loughborough

text: Brush Traction, a manufacturer of railway locomotives, is also located in the town, adjacent to the Midland railway station.


title: Loughborough

text: Loughborough sits at the crossroads of three main roads, two of which begin in Loughborough itself. The A6 main road begins at Luton before running north through places such as Bedford, Leicester, Loughborough, Derby and Manchester, and ending at Carlisle.


title: Loughborough

text: The A60 begins in Loughborough and goes north to Nottingham, Mansfield and Worksop. The A512 begins in Loughborough and runs west towards the M1, Shepshed and Ashby-de-la-Zouch, while the A6004, which was originally proposed as a bypass for Loughborough, runs from just south of the town around the western and northern suburbs of Loughborough, ending near the railway station at the A60.


title: Loughborough

text: Other signed routes are the B589, running between the A6 and the A60, and the B5350, running between the A6 and the A6004.


title: Loughborough

text: The M1's Junction 23 lies just to the west of Loughborough. The north of the town can be accessed from Junction 24, travelling through Kegworth and Hathern on the A6 road and the south-west of the town from Junction 22, via Copt Oak and the small hamlet of Nanpantan.


title: Loughborough

text: Buses in and around Loughborough are operated by Arriva Midlands, Kinchbus, Midland Classic, Centrebus, Nottingham City Transport and trentbarton.


title: Loughborough

text: Buses around Loughborough town centre depart from on-street stops on either Baxter Gate, Swan Street, High Street or Lemyngton Street, until around 2001 bus services were operated from a bus station on Swan Street/The Rushes within the town centre but this was demolished as part of the town centre regeneration with The Rushes Shopping Centre being built on the site.


title: Loughborough

text: The River Soar passes by to the east of the town. Navigation from Loughborough north towards the Trent was achieved in 1778 by the "Loughborough Navigation", which terminates at Loughborough Wharf between Derby Road and Bridge Street. Subsequently, the Leicester navigation was constructed, connecting to the Loughborough Navigation at Chain Bridge and to the River Soar south of the town. Both form part of the Grand Union Canal.


title: Loughborough

text: The now derelict Charnwood Forest Canal once linked Nanpantan (on the west side of Loughborough) with Thringstone, with goods being carried into Loughborough by a horse-drawn wagonway.


title: Loughborough

text: The centre of Loughborough's shopping area is the pedestrianised Market Place and Market Street, which maintain a number of original art deco buildings, such as the building that currently houses the town's Odeon cinema. A large outdoor market is held in the Market Place every Thursday and Saturday. There is a monthly farmers' market. The first mention of a market in Loughborough is in 1221.


title: Loughborough

text: The Rushes shopping centre has also been built on the site of the former bus station and is occupied by national chains. The Rushes is linked to the town centre area by Churchgate and Churchgate Mews; the latter has independent shops.


title: Loughborough

text: A major new development, the Eastern Gateway, that developed the area around the railway station with a new road and new housing, was completed in 2013.


title: Loughborough

text: Pedestrianisation of the town centre was completed in November 2014. The scheme is intended to improve the economy within the town centre and reduce pollution from traffic congestion.


title: Loughborough

text: A new Cineworld cinema complex with several restaurants on Baxter Gate, on the site of the former General Hospital, was completed in 2016.


title: Loughborough

text: Loughborough's local weekly newspaper is the "Loughborough Echo". The town is also served by Leicestershire's daily newspaper, the "Leicester Mercury".


title: Loughborough

text: Like most of the British Isles, Loughborough experiences a maritime climate with cool summers and mild winters. The nearest Met Office weather station is at Sutton Bonington in Nottinghamshire, located 5 miles due north of the town centre. The highest temperature recorded in that area was on 25 July 2019.


title: Loughborough

text: The town was once home to a professional football club, Loughborough FC, which played at the Athletic Ground and was a member of the Football League in the late 19th century. Loughborough Dynamo of the Northern Premier League Division One South East (Level 8 of the men's football pyramid), Loughborough University of the United Counties League Premier Division (Level 9 of the men's football pyramid) and women's team Loughborough Foxes of the FA Women's National League North (Level 3 of the women's football pyramid) are the most prominent football teams in the town currently.


title: Loughborough

text: Cricket is prominent, with the Old Contemptibles, Loughborough Town CC, Loughborough Outwoods CC, Loughborough Carillon CC, Loughborough Carillon Old Boys' CC, Loughborough University Staff CC, Loughborough Greenfields CC and Loughborough Lightning of the semi-professional Women's Cricket Super League representing various standards of cricket in the area. Loughborough Town has since 2000 been the most successful club in the Leicestershire and Rutland Cricket League. The university is home to the ECB National Cricket Academy, used by the England team as their primary training centre.


title: Loughborough

text: The town rugby union club, Loughborough RFC, play at Derby Road playing fields. The club was formed in 1891.


title: Loughborough

text: The University's 1st XV rugby team, the Loughborough Students RUFC, were promoted to the National One division in 2012, which is the 3rd tier of English rugby.


title: Loughborough

text: Other sports teams include the Loughborough Aces (collegiate American football), Loughborough Lightning of the Netball Superleague and Loughborough Hawks, an amateur netball team. The town also has its own swimming club, Loughborough Town Swimming Club, which is based in the town and trains at local venues.


title: Loughborough

text: London Roar head coach and former swimmer Melanie Marshall resides in Loughborough and is the lead coach in the Loughborough National Swimming centre where she trains multi-champion Adam Peaty.


title: Loughborough

text: Loughborough has five museums, the largest being the centrally located Charnwood Museum, which houses a range of exhibits reflecting the natural history, geology, industry and history of the area. Nearby in Queens Park is the Carillon and War Memorial, home to a small museum of military memorabilia from the First and Second World Wars. Loughborough Library is on Granby Street.


title: Loughborough

text: Also to be found in the town centre, near the fine medieval All Saints parish church, is the Old Rectory. Dating back to 1288 the remaining portion of the Great Hall has been restored and houses a small museum run by the Loughborough Archaeological and Historical Society.


title: Loughborough

text: Loughborough has for more than a century been the home of John Taylor & Co, bell founders. The firm's Bellfoundry Museum on two floors tells the story of bell-making over the centuries. The recording of the tolling bell at the beginning of "Hells Bells", the first track on AC/DC's 1980 album "Back in Black" was made on a quarter-weight near replica of the Denison bell in the Carillon war memorial.


title: Loughborough

text: There is a museum at the former Great Central Railway station, illustrating the history of the railway from its earliest days up to its present state as a double-track preserved heritage railway.


title: Loughborough

text: Although Loughborough has no dedicated art gallery, fine sculpture can be found in the town's environs, including those installed from a local artist in commemoration of the First World War Centenary outside Charnwood Museum, and "The Sockman", a bronze statue marking Loughborough's association with the hosiery industry. This can be found in the Market Place near Loughborough Town Hall, which itself contains a number of art works. It is also the venue for concerts, exhibitions, musicals, comedy shows and a Christmas pantomime. Groups make use of the town hall for their shows.


title: Loughborough

text: Events are also organised by Charnwood Arts, a voluntarily managed and professionally staffed body offering a year-round programme of professional performances across the borough. They include the Picnic In the Park, inaugurated in 1980, which is held in Queens Park in May. Streets Alive, jointly organised by Charnwood Arts and Charnwood Borough Council, takes place at a similar time of year.


title: Loughborough

text: The Loughborough Canal Festival, which ran from 1997 to 2014, was an annual event in May centred on Chain Bridge.


title: Loughborough

text: Great Central Railway is a heritage railway based at Loughborough Central Station, which is south of the town centre. It is operated largely by volunteers. Trains run every weekend of the year and on bank holidays, as well as daily during the summer.


title: Loughborough

text: Every November, a street fair takes over the centre of the town, closing some roads. The fair runs from Wednesday afternoon until Saturday night and offers rides, amusement arcades, food stands and games.


title: Loughborough

text: The town has an Odeon cinema designed by Archibald Hurley Robinson in an Art Deco style. There are six screens. The cinema was built in 1914 as the Empire and was remodelled in 1936 by Hurley Robinson as the New Empire Cinema. Over the years it has been named the Palm Court and Ballroom, Empire, Essoldo, Classic, Curzon and Reel. The site of the former Loughborough General Hospital, demolished in 2012, has been taken by a Cineworld cinema with eight screens, which opened in 2016.


title: Loughborough

text: In 2004, Loughborough University was ranked 9th among British universities by "The Times"' Good University Guide. In 2006 Loughborough was ranked 6th. In 2007 The Guardian rated the university 8th, and 10th of 117 institutions by The Guardian League Tables 2009 (published online 1/6/08 for the 2009–2010 academic year. The university stands fifth in some rankings, behind Oxbridge and the London universities. It has the largest sports scholarship in the UK. More than 250 international athletes study and train there. In 2008 it was named Sunday Times University of the Year.


title: Loughborough

text: Loughborough College is the second biggest education establishment in Loughborough, after the University. It offers further education and vocational courses. It was established in 1909, and has over 12,000 full and part-time students.


title: Loughborough

text: RNIB College, Loughborough, caters for those over 16 with a wide range of disabilities, seeking access to education, employment and independent living.


title: Loughborough

text: Loughborough has a variety of uniformed youth organisations, with several Scout and Girl Guide units, Girls' and Boys' Brigades, units from the cadet forces (Air Training Corps, Army Cadet Force, Sea Cadet Corps, and Combined Cadet Force at Loughborough Grammar School), a St John Ambulance Cadet unit, and a cadet programme run by the local Fire and Rescue Service. Since November 2015, Loughborough has also had a Volunteer Police Cadet unit based at Loughborough College.


title: Loughborough

text: The bellfounder John William Taylor (1827-1906) of John Taylor & Co lived and died here. The chemist Arthur Donald Walsh FRS (8 August 1916 – 23 April 1977) was born in Loughborough and attended Loughborough Grammar School. The engineer, physicist and author Charles Denis Mee was born here in 1927.


title: Loughborough

text: Other Loughborough natives include Albert Francis Cross, the journalist, author, poet and playwright who was born on Moor Lane on 9 May 1863, the two time Laurence Olivier Award nominated stage actress Nicola Hughes and "Coronation Street"'s Roy Cropper actor David Neilson, and the notorious rock star of the mid-1960s, Viv Prince of the Pretty Things. Bobsleigher and Paratrooper Dean Ward, who won a bronze medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics was born in the town.


title: Loughborough

text: Felix Buxton of Basement Jaxx was a pupil at Loughborough Grammar School and son of the one-time vicar of nearby Woodhouse Eaves and Ibstock. The Dundee-born comedian, TV presenter and entertainer Danny Wallace attended Holywell County Primary School. Second World War fighter ace Johnnie Johnson attended Loughborough Grammar school. The high jumper Ben Challenger, son of Showaddywaddy drummer Romeo Challenger, is from Loughborough. The popular Muslim and Bangladeshi presenter Rizwan Hussain was brought up there. The cultural thinker Mark Fisher, writer of "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative" (2009), grew up in the town.


title: Loughborough

text: Notable sporting graduates of Loughborough University include Sir Clive Woodward, Sebastian Coe, Paula Radcliffe, David Moorcroft, Tanni Grey-Thompson, Monty Panesar, Steve Backley, Jack Kirwan and Lawrie Sanchez.


title: Loughborough

text: Professional footballers, Liam Moore and Hamza Choudhury were both born in the town and have gone on to play in the Premier League with nearby Leicester City. Fred Ainsworth was also born here. England Rugby union captain Phil de Glanville was born in the town.


title: Loughborough

text: Other known people: Sue Campbell, Baroness Campbell of Loughborough current Head of FA Women's football, Nicky Morgan, Baroness Morgan of Cotes.


title: Loughborough

text: This list is of the closest cities and towns to the town of Loughborough. It does not include villages.


title: David Rossi

text: David Stephen Rossi is a fictional character in the CBS crime drama "Criminal Minds", portrayed by Joe Mantegna. He is a Supervisory Special Agent in the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, and has appeared from the episode "About Face", which was originally broadcast on October 31, 2007, during the show's third season. He is also portrayed as a younger man by Robert Dunne, in flashbacks as a Marine infantry private in Vietnam in 1969 and in his earlier years with the BAU in 1978.


title: David Rossi

text: Rossi begins the series returning to the FBI after a lengthy period of being semi-retired, with his return due to "unfinished business". He is shown to be emotionally tied to Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), as they both worked together during the early days of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Rossi is also a writer, and is one of the team's senior and most decorated profilers. He replaced Jason Gideon, who was written out following Mandy Patinkin's abrupt departure from the series.


title: David Rossi

text: Mantegna has stated in an interview that the character was named after one of the policemen who had testified at the O. J. Simpson trial. Rossi's middle name, Stephen, is revealed in a flashback near the end of the tenth season episode, "Nelson's Sparrow".


title: David Rossi

text: Rossi was born and raised on Long Island, New York, in the town of Commack. As a child, he was friends with a young Emma Taylor, whom he refers to as the "one who got away". He was also close with Ray Finnegan (William Sadler), who eventually grew up to be a prominent local mobster. Rossi, however, avoided the lure of organized crime, and enlisted in the Marine Corps. He also admits in season 9, while interrogating a suspect, that when he was younger, he stuffed a young black boy who was on his baseball team into a locker and urinated on him at the pressure of the other team members.


title: David Rossi

text: Details of his military service are sketchy as Rossi rarely talks about it. He served in the Vietnam War and rose to the rank of Sergeant Major before retiring from the Corps; based on the backstory timelines, specifically the time in service required to rise to the rank of sergeant major and retire, he presumably served in the Marine Corps Reserve after joining the FBI. In the Season 8 episode "The Fallen", Rossi encounters his old unit commander, Sgt. Harrison Scott (Meshach Taylor), who has since become a homeless alcoholic living on the streets of Santa Monica, California. Through flashbacks, it is shown that Scott had saved Rossi's life in Vietnam when Rossi froze at an oncoming Viet Cong soldier. It is implied that they both served in the 1st Marine Division.


title: David Rossi

text: After being discharged from active duty, he was recruited by the FBI. He subsequently cut most ties with his former life, not even returning to Commack for Emma's funeral in early 2009. Rossi has had an apparently illustrious FBI career and sterling reputation, even outside the BAU confines. He claims to have "written the book" on hostage negotiation, and stepped in as a negotiator in when his fellow agents Reid and Prentiss were held hostage. He takes an annual leave to do cross-country lecture and book-signing tours, which apparently attract a lot of female fans, "if Barry Manilow isn't in town." He had worked with Hotchner prior to his initial retirement from the Bureau. To date Rossi has been married three times, but has said the only people he knows how to make happy are "divorce lawyers". In season seven, it is revealed that he had a son who died soon after his birth with his first wife, Caroline. In season 9, it is revealed that his second wife, Hayden Montgomery (Sheryl Lee Ralph), is African American, and later in season 10 he discovers she was pregnant when they divorced, and so that he has a daughter and a grandson.


title: David Rossi

text: Rossi has an affair with agent Erin Strauss (Jayne Atkinson), hinted at throughout the series starting late season 7. The full details of the affair are never disclosed, but he reveals his feelings for her when she is murdered by serial killer John Curtis (Mark Hamill), aka "The Replicator"; upon learning of her death, the usually reserved Rossi becomes deeply emotional.


title: David Rossi

text: Despite growing up on Long Island, Rossi is apparently a Chicago Cubs fan, judging by the Cubs gear in his Quantico office, which may be a reference to Joe Mantegna being a Cubs fan and Chicago native.


title: David Rossi

text: It is hinted that he plays video games as Garcia mentions a report of an abducted child named "Niko Bellic", who Rossi points out to be a character from "Grand Theft Auto IV", stating "What? I know things" as a response to the team's surprise. Also, in a season 8 episode, Rossi shows familiarity with the game "Gods of Combat", a fictionalized PC game which corrupts the minds of several young murder suspects.


title: David Rossi

text: In contrast to Hotchner and Gideon, Rossi is decisively extroverted, abrasive, and much less cerebral, though still highly disciplined and focused. In one episode, Emily Prentiss describes him as a "fussy, anal-retentive neat-freak who never leaves anything out of place", even color-coding his notes (blue pen for evidentiary items, red pen for supposition and theory). Intelligent and quick-witted, he seems to favor less polished, more traditional police methods in profiling and interrogation - for example, he had no idea what a PDA was. Nevertheless, he, Reid, and Gideon are the only characters who are known for being prolific writers. In later episodes, it is implied that he is more technically savvy than he was when first seen - in "Epilogue", he attributes his tiredness to a long session of "Rock Band" and not enough coffee the night before, but claims to have "wiped the floor" with Ringo Starr in the process, apparently on a high difficulty level.


title: David Rossi

text: Rossi is apparently something of a playboy, judging by what Agent Jennifer "JJ" Jareau (A.J. Cook) says to Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness): "From what I hear, Rossi is the reason most of these fraternization rules even exist." On one occasion he has come into a team meeting late and with an undone tie, leading colleague Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore) to ask if he is "working on wife number four".


title: David Rossi

text: It is implied that Rossi is quite wealthy. At times, he has deliberately flaunted his financial security to his superiors - for example, mentioning to Section Chief Erin Strauss during an interrogation session his grievances about how the price of gold is going up, and having to figure out when to sell. His wealth is also indicated by Rossi's favorite type of shoe (Italian suede), and an Italian Renaissance artwork he has in his office. In one episode, he also gives a young Catholic girl a check for $500 when she takes her First Holy Communion. In "Zoe's Reprise", he secretly pays for a young girl's funeral who was a fan of his books and was murdered the night she met Rossi. Also in season seven, Rossi makes his wealth apparent when the team coerces him to host a dinner in his mansion, and to bankroll a sting at a poker game rather than going through FBI channels for funding. In another episode, Rossi believes that a suspect's monogrammed shirt is a clue to his real name; he states that such shirts are expensive, adding "trust me." At the end of season 7, Rossi hosts an elaborate party at his mansion, where he later hosts Jennifer Jarreau (A.J. Cook) and William LaMontagne, Jr.'s (Josh Stewart) wedding.


title: David Rossi

text: Rossi was in early retirement until his voluntary return to the BAU in 2007, replacing Jason Gideon. Rossi had retired in order to write books and go on lecture tours, but returned to "settle some unfinished business". As he had served in an early form of the BAU, it was initially hard for Rossi to acclimate to the current team structure, but he eventually adjusted.


title: David Rossi

text: Rossi revealed to a local sheriff his reason for returning to the BAU, holding out a charm bracelet with the names of three children from one of his first cases. The children had found their parents bludgeoned to death in the family home with an axe. Rossi had promised the children he would find out who killed their parents, but the BAU was unable to solve the case. Each year on Christmas Eve, Rossi called the children to let them know he had not forgotten them and had not given up on solving their parents' murders. He kept with this tradition through his return to the BAU, though none of the children had replied to his most recent calls. After going unsolved for 20 years, the case was finally solved when the BAU found that a mentally disabled carny clown had committed the murders accidentally when he broke into the house to play with the oldest daughter. The father had surprised the man in the parents' bedroom and triggered the resulting attacks. After the murders, Rossi had purchased the family's home to assist the children's grandmother, who was raising them following their parents' death. Rossi returned the house to the children, with the request that they use the proceeds to better their lives. After finally solving the case, Rossi also attempted to return the charm bracelet to the children, but they requested that he keep it. Although he had identified the need to solve this case as his reason for returning to the BAU, Rossi remained with the team after it was solved.


title: David Rossi

text: In "Hanley Waters", as he is being interviewed about Prentiss' "apparent death" by Hotchner instead of Strauss, he reveals that he feels more married to his job than to his three ex-wives. He even proposes a toast with Hotchner, to commemorate Prentiss and Hotchner's deceased wife Haley (Meredith Monroe).


title: David Rossi

text: In the season six finale, he is almost shot in the face by a suspect pretending to be a victim of human trafficking; however, Morgan's quick reaction saves his life. Later he meets Jareau in his office after solving the case. She meets him to let him know that she is returning to the team.


title: David Rossi

text: In season seven, Rossi is just as surprised as the others to learn that Prentiss is alive. However, in "Proof", he mentions to Hotchner that he had an inkling that Prentiss wasn't dead. As he has no children from his previous marriages, Rossi has adopted the BAU team as his own family and invites them to his house for dinner.


title: David Rossi

text: In "From Childhood's Hour", Rossi was having breakfast with his first ex-wife, Caroline Baker (Isabella Hofmann), born June 8, 1955, but before she can tell him something, the BAU calls. Before Rossi leaves, he invites her to dinner at his place when he gets back. During the case, Rossi seems distracted, before he reveals to Prentiss that the reason he invited Caroline to dinner to see if "the old spark is still there". At the end of the episode, Caroline is at Rossi's house for dinner. After, Caroline reminds Rossi that the promise that they made to each other after their divorce, saying that they would be there for one another. She also tells him that she has had ALS for about a year and its getting worse (she has 18 months to live) then requests Rossi to end her life when the symptoms become too physically incapacitating.


title: David Rossi

text: After some personal deliberation, Rossi comes to the conclusion that he cannot assist Caroline in ending her life, for life is worth living, but she refuses for not having anything to fight for. He goes to her to tell her this, and she reveals that she always knew that he would refuse, saying she is just glad that he could be with her. Rossi then asks, horrified, "what have you done?" and looks to the bedside table to see an empty bottle of pills. Caroline begs him not to call 911 and to let her die as she lived, not in a hospital. Tearfully, Rossi holds her as she slips away. Just before falling asleep, Caroline asks "do you think he'll be there?" to which Rossi crying replies, "I'm sure he will." She died on October 26, 2011.


title: David Rossi

text: Later, he is seen sipping a glass of wine at her grave, and next to her grave is shown a gravestone reading "James David Rossi", "beloved son", with the same birth and death date, 26 April 1979, implying David and Caroline had a son who was either stillborn or had died during or shortly after birth.


title: David Rossi

text: In "Profiling 101", convicted serial killer Tommy Yates (Adam Nelson) boasts to Rossi about killing and mutilating a total of 101 women and gives him a list of 40 victims' names. Yates makes a deal with Rossi and the FBI to avoid the death penalty in exchange for revealing one additional name per year on a "special day", which proves to be Rossi's birthday.


title: David Rossi

text: In "Annihilator" he is forced into retirement when assistant director of National Security Linda Barnes (Kim Rhodes) reassigns the BAU. However, he is reinstated by the end of the next episode.


title: David Rossi

text: Rossi carries a Springfield Professional Model 1911-A1 .45 ACP pistol as his duty sidearm. Only active or former members of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team and Regional SWAT teams are authorized to carry that pistol. Although never mentioned this would seem to indicate that Rossi served on one or both of these elite FBI tactical units at one time during his FBI career.


title: David Rossi

text: In "Anonymous", Rossi's military awards and decorations can be clearly seen in a shadowbox hanging on his office wall. The following are the medals and service awards fictionally worn by Sgt. Maj. Rossi.


title: Shooting

text: Shooting is the act or process of discharging a projectile from a ranged weapon (such as a gun, bow, crossbow, slingshot, or blowpipe). Even the acts of launching flame, artillery, darts, harpoons, grenades, rockets, and guided missiles can be considered acts of shooting. When using a firearm, the act of shooting is often called firing as it involves initiating a combustion (deflagration) of chemical propellants.


title: Shooting

text: Shooting can take place in a shooting range or in the field, in shooting sports, hunting, or in combat. The person involved in the shooting activity is called a shooter. A skilled, accurate shooter is a "marksman" or "sharpshooter", and a person's level of shooting proficiency is referred to as their "marksmanship".


title: Shooting

text: Shooting has inspired competition, and in several countries rifle clubs started to form in the 19th century. Soon international shooting events evolved, including shooting at the Summer and Winter Olympics (from 1896) and World Championships (from 1897). The International Shooting Sport Federation still administers Olympic and non-Olympic rifle, pistol, shotgun, and running target shooting competitions, although there is also a large number of national and international shooting sports controlled by unrelated organizations.


title: Shooting

text: Shooting technique differs depending on factors like the type of firearm used (from a handgun to a precision rifle); the distance to and nature of the target; the required precision; and the available time. Breathing and position play an important role when handling a handgun or a rifle. Some shooting sports, such as IPSC shooting and biathlon also include movement. The prone position, kneeling position, and standing position offer different amounts of support for the shooter.


title: Shooting

text: In the United Kingdom shooting often refers to the activity of hunting game birds such as grouse or pheasants, or small game such as rabbits, with guns. A shooter is sometimes referred to as a "gun". Shooting may also refer to the culling of vermin with guns. Clay pigeon shooting is meant to simulate shooting live pigeons released from traps, after doing so was banned in the United Kingdom in 1921.


title: Shooting

text: Shooting most often refers to the use of a gun (firearm or air gun), although it can also be used to describe discharging of any ranged weapons like a bow, crossbow, slingshot, or even blowpipe. The term "weapon" does not necessarily mean it is used as a combat tool, but as a piece of equipment to help the user best achieve the goal of their activities.


title: Shooting

text: Shooting is also used in warfare, self-defense, crime, and law enforcement. Duels were sometimes held using guns. Shooting without a target has applications such as celebratory gunfire, 21-gun salute, or firing starting pistols, incapable of releasing bullets.


title: Shooting

text: In many countries, there are restrictions on what kind of firearm can be bought and by whom, leading to debate about how effective such measures are and the extent to which they should be applied. For example, attitudes towards guns and shooting in the United States are very different from those in the United Kingdom and Australia.


title: Shooting

text: Canting is an alignment issue that occurs in shooting. Because scopes need to be mounted to a rifle in perfect parallel to the barrel and to ensure the cross hairs sit exactly where a bullet will go (POI), a small variation of even ¼ of one degree can cause great problems at longer ranges. A locking bar holds the mount in a perfect 90 degree to the rail system whereas a non-locking bar system can cant to the left or right. This canting (sometimes called jamming of surfaces) is caused by not matching the clamping surface perfectly to the rail. When tightened down, stress exerted on the base can cause the scope to be off from the POI by as much as several feet at 100–200 yards and gets progressively worse as range increases. Lower grade materials used in manufacturing of scope bases, inconsistent design tolerances from one manufacturer to another and other factors can cause twisting stress and cause the mount to move out of parallel with the rifle barrel. The locking bar system allows for even stress to be distributed and prevent canting of the scope mount. Another form of scope canting is caused by the rings themselves. Some mounts either have two or four screws on top of the scope ring that hold the scope in place. With the two-screw style, the ring usually aligns well but does not have the strength of the four screw system. When tightening the screws of the four screw type, the scope can twist in place, causing misalignment.


title: Shooting

text: The National Rifle Association of America defines four basic "competition" or "field" shooting positions. In order of steadiness/stability (the closer you get to the ground, the steadier you are), they are prone, sitting, kneeling, and standing (also called "offhand").


title: Shooting

text: Hythe positions (Hythe School of Musketry was formed in 1853 to teach the army how to use the rifle in kneeling and standing positions), American and French positions were known variations of the kneeling and standing positions utilised by their respective armies.


title: Shooting

text: Another common, but aided, shooting position is the bench shooting position. There are also numerous shooting aids from monopods to tripods to sandbags and complete gun cradles.


title: Shooting

text: The rice paddy squat (or rice paddy prone) position is a moderate-stability position that supports both elbows, making it more stable than kneeling yet keeping a high level of mobility. Its higher center of gravity will still be less stable than sitting or prone. It was a traditionally taught marksmanship position but lost popularity after the Korean conflict.


title: Shooting

text: It was sometimes referred to as the Creedmoor position. There are a number of variations of the position. It was known in the latter half of the 18th century, and later revived by a small number of shooters in the 1860s with the introduction of competitive long range shooting at the NRA rifle meetings and continued in use into the 20th century amongst match riflemen. The position was really developed during the 1870s as a consequence of great interest in long range shooting associated with the international matches. Back position provided the most stable platform for the rifle in those competitions where no artificial support, including slings, was permitted. It was even superior to shooting prone unsupported.


title: Shooting

text: Lying on one's side is not a normally chosen position, but may be a position fallen into when reacting to a threat. In this scenario, it may be used behind a barricade to present a very small target since normally only the gun hand and a piece of one's face is exposed, with the rest covered by the barricade.


title: Shooting

text: When a shooter is leaning on something like a wall, a tree or post. The rifle barrel should not be rested against it because it is steadier to lean the body. It's usually combined with standing and kneeling positions.


title: Shooting

text: The sling is used to create isometric pressure to increase steadiness. While the use of a sling is of questionable value when shooting from the standing position, it is very much worth using from kneeling, sitting or prone. It was also used in back position in which case the sling is looped around the foot and it is this that takes the recoil. Proper use of the sling locks the rifle into the body and enhances that solid foundation so critical to delivering an accurate shot.


title: Shooting

text: A type of shooting sling. All positions are strengthened through the use of a "hasty sling". The formal "tight sling" is detached from the rear sling swivel and tightened above the bicep of the supporting arm. Almost any carrying strap can be used in the "hasty sling" mode. There is often a compromise between the most comfortable "carry" length for shooter's sling and the ideal tension for a "hasty sling". The steadiness achieved is almost as good as a "tight competition sling" and it is a lot faster.


title: Shooting

text: In ISSF shooting events, 3 out of 7 shooting positions are used. Positions not used are supine, sitting, rice paddy squat and side position.


title: Shooting

text: There are some competitions, such as felthurtigskyting, in which shooting position is freestyle. That means that the shooter decides which one of the four positions he'll use.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The Holy Crown of Hungary (, ), also known as the Crown of Saint Stephen, named in honour of Saint Stephen I of Hungary, was the coronation crown used by the Kingdom of Hungary for most of its existence; kings have been crowned with it since the twelfth century. The Crown symbolized the King's authority over the Lands of the Hungarian Crown (the Carpathian Basin), and it was a key mark of legitimacy. Through the history of Hungary, more than fifty kings were crowned with it, until 1916 and the last king Charles IV. The only kings not so crowned were Wladyslaw I, John Sigismund Zápolya and Joseph II.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The enamels on the crown are mainly or entirely Byzantine work, presumed to have been made in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul, Turkey) in the 1070s. The crown was presented by the Byzantine Emperor Michael VII Doukas to the King Géza I of Hungary; both are depicted and named in the Greek language on enamel plaques in the lower crown. However, in popular tradition the Holy Crown was thought to be older, dating to the time of the first King Stephen I of Hungary crowned 1000/1001. It is one of two known Byzantine crowns to survive, the other being the slightly earlier Monomachus Crown in the Hungarian National Museum, which may have had another function. The Holy Crown has probably been remodelled using elements of different origins. The date assigned to the present configuration of the Holy Crown is most commonly put around the late 12th century. The Hungarian coronation regalia consists of the Holy Crown, the sceptre, the orb, and the mantle. The orb has the coat-of-arms of Charles I of Hungary (1310–1342).


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The name "Holy Crown" was first used in 1256. By the 14th century it became the unique symbol of royal power. As written by Crown Guard Péter Révay, when Hungary needed a new monarch it did not seek a crown to inaugurate a king, but a king worthy of the Crown. He also said "the Holy Crown is for the Hungarians what the Lost Ark is for the Jewish people".


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: Since 2000, the Holy Crown has been on display in the central Domed Hall of the Hungarian Parliament Building.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: As with all European Christian crowns, the Holy Crown symbolizes a halo signifying the wearer's Divine Right to rule. According to popular tradition, St Stephen I held up the crown before his death (in the year 1038) to consecrate it and his kingdom to the Virgin Mary. After this, Mary was depicted not only as "patrona" (patron saint) of the Kingdom of Hungary, but also as "regina" (queen). This consecration was supposed to empower the crown with divine force to help the future kings of Hungary under the "Doctrine of the Holy Crown" ().


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: Péter Révay, a Crown Guard, expounded this doctrine in his works "Commentarius De Sacra Regni Hungariae Corona" ("Explanation of the Holy Crown of the Kingdom of Hungary", Augsburg 1613) and "De monarchia et Sacra Corona Regni Hungariae" ("On the Monarchy and Holy Crown of Hungary", Frankfurt 1659).


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: Under this doctrine, the crown itself is a legal person identical to the state of Hungary. It is superior to the ruling monarch, who rules "in the name of the crown".


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: According to the most accepted theory, in the publications of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Hungarian Catholic Episcopal Conference, the Holy Crown consists of three parts: the lower "abroncs" (rim, hoop), the "corona graeca"; the upper "keresztpántok" (cross straps), the "corona latina"; and the uppermost cross, tilted at an angle. It was created under Byzantine influence during the reign of the Hungarian King Béla III, who was brought up in the Byzantine court and was briefly heir to the Byzantine throne.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: This was several decades after the crowning of Stephen I marked the beginning of Hungarian statehood, variously given as Christmas 1000 or 1 January 1001.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: Another version of the origin of the crown was written by bishop Hartvik around 1100–1110 at the request of King Könyves Kálmán, in which the "Pope" sent King Stephen I "his blessings and a crown". According to "Hartvik’s legend", St. Stephen sent Archbishop Astrik of Esztergom to Rome to acquire a crown from the "Pope", who is not named. Despite Astrik's haste, the envoy of the future Polish king Mieszko I arrived at Rome first. In a dream, the Pope saw an angel who told him: "There will be another envoy from an unknown folk, who will ask for a crown also. Give them the crown, as they deserve it." The next day Astrik arrived, and the Pope gave the crown to him.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: Hartvik’s legend appeared in liturgical books and breviaries in Hungary around 1200, naming the then-existing Pope Sylvester II. Subsequently, the story of the crown sent by Sylvester II spread throughout the Christian world, and was published in 1613 by the crown guard Péter Révay.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: However, the legend is not supported by historical evidence. Mieszko I did not live at the same time as St. Stephen I or Pope Sylvester II. Also, the "Greater Legend" of St Stephen, written around 1083, makes no mention of the Crown's Roman provenance: "in the fifth year after the death of his father...they brought a Papal letter of blessing...and the Lord’s favoured one, Stephen, was chosen to be king, and was anointed with oil and auspiciously crowned with the diadem of royal honour". Moreover, Vatican archives have found no record of the granting of the crown, despite the prestige that would accrue from such a discovery. Another document giving doubtful evidence is by Thietmar von Merseburg (died 1018): he wrote that Holy Roman Emperor Otto III consented to Stephen's coronation, and that the Pope sent his blessings, but there is no mention a crown.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The question to what extent the upper part of the Holy Crown belonged to the crown of King Stephen I remained open until 1978, when the coronation insignia was returned to Hungary and a thorough examination was carried out.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The differing styles and techniques used in making the enamel pictures and the fact that the inscriptions on the diadem are in Greek and on the bands in Latin suggest that the two parts were probably made in two different periods. However, there are no known representations in which the crown is separated: the Holy Crown is always shown as one.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The Crown is a coronation crown, which should be worn only on the occasion of a coronation, and for the rest of the time two crown guards (koronaőr) guard it. Apart from this, there are only two other people who can touch it, the "nádorispán" (the highest secular title), who puts it onto a pillow during the coronation, and the Archbishop of Esztergom (primate of Hungary, the highest ecclesiastical title), who places it on the head of the king.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The Holy Crown was made of gold and decorated with nineteen enamel "pantokrator" pictures (Greek meaning "master of all") as well as semi-precious stones, genuine pearls, and almandine. It has three parts: "abroncs" (rim, hoop) ("corona graeca"), "keresztpántok" (cross straps) ("corona latina"), and the cross on the top tilted at an angle.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: There are four hanging pendants (pendilia) dangling from chains on each side of the diadem and one in the back. There is no monde.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The two aquamarine stones with cut surfaces on the back of the diadem were added as replacements by King Matthias II (1608–1619). The enamel picture on the front depicts Christ Pantokrator. On the rim to the right and left of Jesus are pictures of the archangels Michael and Gabriel, followed by half-length images of the Saints George and Demetrius, and Cosmas and Damian.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: In the arched frame on the back of the diadem Emperor Michael VII Doukas (1071–1078) is depicted. Below it to the left is the half-length picture of "Kon. Porphyrogennetos", this probably being either Emperor Michael's brother and co-emperor Konstantios Doukas or of his son and heir Constantine Doukas, both having been born in the purple. To the right there is a picture of the Hungarian King Géza I (1074–1077), with the Greek inscription: (, meaning "Géza I, faithful kralj of the land of the Turks").


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The contemporary Byzantine name for the Hungarians was "Turks", while the Hungarian branch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, under Constantinople's jurisdiction, was named the "Metropolitanate of Tourkia" (Hungary), and the head of this church was the "Metropolitan of Tourkia" (Hungary). As was customary in the hierarchy of the Byzantine state, clear differentiation is made between style of the emperors and that of the Hungarian king by using a hellenized form of the common South Slavic word for "king" (Kralj) for Géza. The saints and the Greek rulers have halos while Géza does not. The inscriptions of the emperors’ names are in red, while the Hungarian king's is in dark blue or black.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The enamel plaques on the circular band, the panel depicting Christ Pantokrator, and the picture of Emperor Michael were all affixed to the crown using different techniques. The picture of the emperor could not be attached to the rim in the same way as the Pantokrator picture on the front. The frame was folded upwards and the picture of the emperor was nailed to the edge. We can thus conclude that the picture of Michael VII was not originally designed for this crown, but was probably used first somewhere else.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The with its pointed and arched plaques is identical to the form of the crowns of the Byzantine empresses – in other words it was a woman's crown. It was given by Emperor Michael Dukas VII to King Géza's wife, known only as Synadene, around 1075. The gift was not a new crown, but rather an old crown designed for a woman that had to be selected from the Emperor's treasury and remodelled. The enamel pictures that become outdated were removed, since either represented earlier historical figures or were not appropriate for the Hungarian queen according to court protocol. It was in this form that the crown was sent to Hungary.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: There is another view that the Géza depicted on the is not King Géza I but St Stephen's father. This view is confirmed by the fact that Grand Prince Géza is depicted on the without a crown, although carrying a royal sceptre.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The (cross straps) ("Latin Crown") is made of four 5.2-cm-wide gold strips welded to the edge of a square central panel (7.2 × 7.2 cm); the strips are usually assumed to have been originally made for some other object, and adapted for the crown. It is not an independent object, as it has no function alone. It was designed to be attached to the top rim of the and provides a dome-shaped top.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The inscription on the pictures of the saints and the style of their lettering suggest the date when they were made. Amidst the antique-style capital letters, the T in Thomas and the second U in Paulus are formed in the style characteristic of the Latin letters used on Byzantine coins, a practice abandoned in the middle of the eleventh century. They may have decorated a reliquary box or a portable altar given to István I by the pope, or possibly the treasure binding of a book. It is also possible, although it cannot be verified, that István I received a crown as a gift from one of the popes, reciprocating hishistorically documentedgifts. The picture of the apostles, however, based on their style, cannot be dated to around 1000.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The intersecting bands are edged with beaded gold wire that close off the lower end of the bands and finish off the system of decoration. There are twelve pearls on the central panel and a total of seventy-two altogether on the , symbolising the number of Christ's disciples (Acts 10.1).


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The central panel is decorated with a square cloisonné enamel picture depicting Christ Pantokrator. Each band has two (altogether eight) pictures of standing apostles identical to the first eight listed in Acts 1.13.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: Éva Kovács and Zsuzsa Lovag suggest that the was originally a large Byzantine liturgical asterisk from a Greek monastery in Hungary. In order to get it to fit into its new role the apostles at the bottom of each of the four arms of this asterisk were cut off before it was very crudely attached to the inside of the to transform this Byzantine open crown into a closed crown (i.e., the type of crown proper to the autocrat, the senior emperor or monarch in Byzantine imperial protocol) and to provide a base for the reliquary cross at its summit (see ).


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The cross is attached to the crown in a rough manner, rising from the midriff of Christ in the central enamel plaque at the top of the crown. This addition might have been made during the 16th century. The cross was knocked crooked during the 17th century when the crown was damaged, possibly by the top of the iron chest housing the insignia being hastily closed without the crown having been placed in it properly. The cross has since been left in this slanted position, and is now typically depicted as such.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: Éva Kovács suggests that the present plain cross on the top of the crown is a replacement of an original double-barred reliquary cross containing three pieces of the True Cross and that it was the presence of the True Cross in the Holy Crown which made it holy. She states that “Szabolcs Vajay called to my attention a strange incident in the crown’s history which had completely escaped everybody’s attention. Before Queen Isabella handed over the regalia to Ferdinand in 1551, she broke the cross off the crown’s peak for her son, John Sigismund. According to a contemporary Polish chronicler, John Sigismund wore this cross on his chest till the end of his life, "... because he who possesses this cross will again come into possession of the missing parts which, subjected to the power of the cross, had belonged to it".


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: Later, the cross became the property of Sigismund Bathory who, persuaded by his confessor, bestowed it on Emperor Rudolf II. This was reported by an Italian envoy in Prague who also told the Isabella-John Sigismund story.” She also notes that “Several small fragments of the True Cross were in possession of the Arpad dynasty. As a point of interest, it is precisely the smallest ones, those set into the cross on the chest, that are attributed to St. Stephen. About a tiny fragment of the True Cross, a Russian chronicler recording King Geza II’s campaigns wrote that it had been the holy king’s property and, despite its small size, it was a relic of great force. We are, perhaps, not off the track when surmising that the Hungarian crown was holy because it had once been reinforced with a fragment of the victory-bringing relic. . . . we know quite few reliquary crowns. To mention but the most obvious example, let us cite Charles IV’s crown provided with a cross containing a thorn relic.”


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: Later, it was the Crown itself, rather than the St. Stephen's cross reliquary that came to be regarded as holy through its traditional association with St. Stephen. Éva Kovács further notes in this regard the early use of the patriarchal or double-barred cross and crown in the ancient Hungarian royal coat of arms. Since reliquary crosses frequently take such a double-barred form, the use of a patriarchal cross in the royal arms would be a direct reference to and representation of this royal relic. This association between the crown and this royal relic would also help to substantiate the theory that the Holy Crown was always intended to serve its historical role of legitimatizing the position of its wearer as the true divinely appointed king of Hungary.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The form of the Holy Crown is identical to that of the kamelaukion-type crowns with closed tops, as introduced in the Byzantine Empire. The presence of multiple pictures is also typical of Byzantine crowns. When the intersecting bands were added to the "corona graeca" during the rule of Béla III, who had been brought up in Constantinople, the bands were decorated just as the "corona graeca" was, perhaps with the intention of imitating the Byzantine pattern.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: Beside the using of the intersecting bands of the "corona latina", which probably came from the treasury of St. István, at the time of the creation of the crown there existed further expectation that the coronation insignia would eventually include additional gold works that could be linked to the first, beatified Hungarian king, István.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The inscription embroidered onto the coronation mantle indicates with all certainty that István I and Queen Gizella had it made in 1031.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The coronation sceptre with the orb at the end can also be dated to the time of St István. On the seals of Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, and Rudolph III of Burgundy, the rulers are holding identically shaped sceptres. Such short-staffed sceptres ending in orbs were not in use as insignia earlier or later.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: After the fall of Communism, the crown was reincorporated into the national coat of arms in 1990, the National Assembly choosing the pre-war coat of arms in preference to the crown-less Kossuth arms of 1849.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The Holy Crown has had a varied history; having been stolen, hidden, lost, recovered, and taken abroad several times. During the Árpád dynasty (1000–1301), the coronation insignia was kept in the coronation city of Székesfehérvár. Later, the crown was housed in one of three locations: Visegrád (in Pest county); Pozsony (present-day Bratislava, Slovakia); or Buda. In 1805–1806 the Crown was kept for about three months in the Palanok Castle at Munkács (now Mukachevo, Ukraine). Lajos Kossuth took the crown and the coronation jewels with him after the collapse of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and buried them in a wooden box in a willow forest, near Orsova in Transylvania (today Orşova, Romania). They were subsequently dug up and returned to the royal castle in Buda in 1853.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: At the end of the Second World War the crown jewels were recovered in Mattsee, Austria, on 4 May 1945 by the U.S. 86th Infantry Division. The crown jewels were transported to Western Europe and eventually given to the United States Army by the Hungarian Crown Guard for safekeeping from the Soviet Union. For much of the Cold War the crown was held at the United States Bullion Depository (Fort Knox, Kentucky) alongside the bulk of the United States' gold reserves and other priceless historical items. After undergoing extensive historical research to verify the crown as genuine, it was returned to Hungary by order of U.S. President Jimmy Carter on 6 January 1978.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: Most current academic knowledge about Hungarian royal garments originates from this modern research. Following substantial U.S. political debate, the agreement to return the jewels contained many conditions to ensure the people of Hungary, rather than its Communist government, took possession of the jewels. The majority of the Hungarian-American population opposed the decision to return the crown. On January 6, 1978, US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance returned the Crown to Hungary in Budapest.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: Uniquely in Europe, most of the medieval ensemble of coronation regalia has survived. On 1 January 2000, the Holy Crown of Hungary was moved to the Hungarian Parliament Building from the Hungarian National Museum. The sceptre, orb and the coronation sword were also moved to the Parliament.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The very large coronation mantle remains in a glass inert gas vault at the National Museum due to its delicate, faint condition. Unlike the crown and accompanying insignia, the originally red coloured mantle is considered to date back to Stephen I, and was made circa 1030. Old records describe the robe as handiwork of the queen and her sisters and the mantle's middle back bears the king's only known portrait (which shows his crown was not the currently existing one). A circular inscription sewn in Latin identifies the coat as a bishop's chasuble.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The sceptre is considered the artistically most valuable piece of the Hungarian royal inventory. It contains a solid rock crystal ball decorated with engraved lions, a rare product of the 10th-century Fatimid caliphate. Its handle contains a wooden rod surrounded by very fine wrought silver ornaments.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: The ceremonial straight sword kept in the Holy Crown collection is a 14th-century Italian product. However, what is said to be an original coronation sword of Stephen I has been in Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral since 1368.


title: Holy Crown of Hungary

text: A lance claimed to have belonged to King Stephen I, and seen in the Mantle portrait, was reportedly obtained by the Holy Roman Emperor circa 1100.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Irish traditional music (also known as Irish trad, Irish folk music, and other variants) is a genre of folk music that developed in Ireland.


title: Irish traditional music

text: In "A History of Irish Music" (1905), W. H. Grattan Flood wrote that, in Gaelic Ireland, there were at least ten instruments in general use. These were the "cruit" (a small harp) and "clairseach" (a bigger harp with typically 30 strings), the "timpan" (a small string instrument played with a bow or plectrum), the "feadan" (a fife), the "buinne" (an oboe or flute), the "guthbuinne" (a bassoon-type horn), the "bennbuabhal" and "corn" (hornpipes), the "cuislenna" (bagpipes – see Great Irish warpipes), the "stoc" and "sturgan" (clarions or trumpets), and the "cnamha" (bones). There is also evidence of the fiddle being used in the 8th century.


title: Irish traditional music

text: There are several collections of Irish folk music from the 18th century, but it was not until the 19th century that ballad printers became established in Dublin. Important collectors include Colm Ó Lochlainn, George Petrie, Edward Bunting, Francis O'Neill, James Goodman and many others. Though solo performance is preferred in the folk tradition, bands or at least small ensembles have probably been a part of Irish music since at least the mid-19th century, although this is a point of much contention among ethnomusicologists.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Irish traditional music has endured more strongly against the forces of cinema, radio and the mass media than the indigenous folk music of most European countries. From the end of the Second World War until the late fifties folk music was held in low regard. Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (an Irish traditional music association) and the popularity of the Fleadh Cheoil (music festival) helped lead the revival of the music. The English Folk music scene also encouraged Irish musicians . Following the success of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem in the US in 1959, Irish folk music became fashionable again. The lush sentimental style of singers such as Delia Murphy was replaced by guitar-driven male groups such as The Dubliners. Irish showbands presented a mixture of pop music and folk dance tunes, though these died out during the seventies. The international success of The Chieftains and subsequent musicians and groups has made Irish folk music a global brand.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Historically much old-time music of the USA grew out of the music of Ireland, England and Scotland, as a result of cultural diffusion. By the 1970s Irish traditional music was again influencing music in the US and further afield in Australia and Europe. It has occasionally been fused with rock and roll, punk rock and other genres.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Irish dance music is isometric and is built around patterns of bar-long melodic phrases akin to call and response. A common pattern is A Phrase, B Phrase, A Phrase, Partial Resolution, A Phrase, B Phrase, A Phrase, Final Resolution, though this is not universal; mazurkas, for example, tend to feature a C Phrase instead of a repeated A Phrase before the Partial and Final Resolutions, for example. Many tunes have pickup notes which lead in to the beginning of the A or B parts. Mazurkas and hornpipes have a swing feel, while other tunes have straight feels.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Tunes are typically binary in form, divided into two (or sometimes more) parts, each with four to eight bars. The parts are referred to as the A-part, B-part, and so on. Each part is played twice, and the entire tune is played three times; AABB, AABB, AABB. Many tunes have similar ending phrases for both A and B parts; it is common for hornpipes to have the second half of each part be identical. Additionally, hornpipes often have three quavers or quarternotes at the end of each part, followed by pickup notes to lead back to the beginning of the A part of onto the B part. Many airs have an AABA form.


title: Irish traditional music

text: While airs are usually played singly, dance tunes are usually played in medleys of 2-4 tunes called "sets".


title: Irish traditional music

text: Irish music generally is modal, using Ionian, Aeolian, Dorian, and Mixolydian modes, as well as hexatonic and pentatonic versions of those scales. Some tunes do feature accidentals.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Singers and instrumentalists often embellish melodies through ornamentation, using grace notes, rolls, cuts, crans, or slides.


title: Irish traditional music

text: While uilleann pipes may use their drones and chanters to provide harmonic backup, and fiddlers often use double stops in their playing, due to the importance placed on the melody in Irish music, harmony is typically kept simple or absent. Usually, instruments are played in strict unison, always following the leading player. True counterpoint is mostly unknown to traditional music, although a form of improvised "countermelody" is often used in the accompaniments of bouzouki and guitar players. In contrast to many kinds of western folk music, there are no set chord progressions to tunes; many accompanists use power chords to let the melody define the tonality or use partial chords in combination with ringing drone strings to emphasize the tonal center. Many guitarists use DADGAD tuning because it offers flexibility in using these approaches, as does the GDAD tuning for bouzouki.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Like all traditional music, Irish folk music has changed slowly. Most folk songs are less than 200 years old. One measure of its age is the language used. Modern Irish songs are written in English and Irish. Most of the oldest songs and tunes are rural in origin and come from the older Irish language tradition. Modern songs and tunes often come from cities and towns, Irish songs went from the Irish language to the English language. In the late 1900s Frank Harte composed more ribald songs for the urban pub scene; the genre moved effortlessly from the countryside to the town.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Unaccompanied vocals are called "sean nós" ("in the old style") and are considered the ultimate expression of traditional singing. This is usually performed solo (very occasionally as a duet). "Sean-nós" singing is highly ornamented and the voice is placed towards the top of the range. A true "sean-nós" singer, such as Tom Lenihan, will vary the melody of every verse, but not to the point of interfering with the words, which are considered to have as much importance as the melody.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Sean-nós can include non-lexical vocables, called lilting, also referred to by the sounds, such as "diddly die-dely".


title: Irish traditional music

text: Non-"sean-nós" traditional singing, even when accompaniment is used, uses patterns of ornamentation and melodic freedom derived from "sean-nós singing", and, generally, a similar voice placement.


title: Irish traditional music

text: "Caoineadh" /kˠi:nʲɪ/ is Irish for a lament, a song which is typified by lyrics which stress sorrow and pain. The word is Anglicised as "keening". Traditionally, the "Caoineadh" song contained lyrics in which the singer lamented for Ireland after having been forced to emigrate due to political or financial reasons. The song may also lament the death of a family member or the lack of news from loved ones. In Irish music, the Caoineadh tradition was once widespread, but began to decline from the 18th century onwards and becoming almost completely extinct by the middle of the 20th century. Examples of "Caoineadh" songs include: "Far Away in Australia", "The Town I Loved So Well", "Going Back to Donegal" and "Four Green Fields". Caoineadh singers were originally paid to lament for the departed at funerals, according to a number of Irish sources.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Irish traditional music and dance has seen a variety of settings, from house parties, country dances, ceili dances, stage performances and competitions, weddings, saint's days or other observances. The most common setting for Irish dance music is the "seisiún", which very often features no dancing at all.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Traditional dance music includes reels ( or ), hornpipes ( with swung eighth notes), and jigs (double and single jigs are in time). Jigs come in various other forms for dancing – the slip jig and hop jig are commonly written in time.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Later additions to the repertoire include the waltz ( with a heavy accent on the down beat) and, in Donegal, mazurkas in the same time signature, though with an accent on the 2nd beat. Donegal is also notable for its "highland," a sort of Irish version of the Scottish strathspey, but with a feel closer to a reel with the occasional scots snap.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Polkas are a type of tune mostly found in the Sliabh Luachra area, at the border of Cork and Kerry, in the south of Ireland. Another distinctive Munster rhythm is the Slide in time.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The concept of "style" is of large importance to Irish traditional musicians. At the start of the last century (1900), distinct variation in regional styles of performance existed. With the release of American recordings of Irish traditional musicians (e.g. Michael Coleman 1927) and increased communications and travel opportunities, regional styles have become more standardised. Regional playing styles remain nonetheless, as evidenced by the very different playing styles of musicians from Donegal (e.g. Tommy Peoples), Clare (e.g. brothers John & James Kelly) and Sliabh Luachra (e.g. Jacky Daly). Donegal fiddle playing is characterised by fast, energetic bowing, with the bow generating the majority of the ornamentation; Clare fiddle playing is characterised by slower bowing, with the fingering generating most of the ornamentation. While bowed triplets (three individual notes with the bow reversed between each) are more common in Donegal, fingered triplets and fingered rolls (five individual notes fingered with a single bow stroke) are very common in Clare.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Stage performers from the 1970s and 1980s (groups such as The Bothy Band, or soloists such as Kevin Burke) have used the repertoire of traditional music to create their own groups of tunes, without regard to the conventional 'sets' or the constraint of playing for dancers. Burke's playing is an example of an individual, unique, distinctive style, a hybrid of his classical training, the traditional Sligo fiddle style and various other influences.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The most common instruments used in Irish traditional dance music, whose history goes back several hundred years, are the fiddle, tin whistle, flute and Uilleann pipes. Instruments such as button accordion and concertina made their appearances in Irish traditional music late in the 19th century. The 4-string tenor banjo, first used by Irish musicians in the US in the 1920s, is now fully accepted. The guitar was used as far back as the 1930s first appearing on some of the recordings of Michael Coleman and his contemporaries. The bouzouki only entered the traditional Irish music world in the late 1960s.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The word bodhrán, indicating a drum, is first mentioned in a translated English document in the 17th century. The saxophone featured in recordings from the early 20th century most notably in Paddy Killoran's Pride of Erin Orchestra. Cèilidh bands of the 1940s often included a drum set and stand-up bass as well as saxophones. Traditional harp-playing died out in the late 18th century, and was revived by the McPeake Family of Belfast, Derek Bell, Mary O'Hara and others in the mid-20th century. Although often encountered, it plays a fringe role in Irish Traditional dance music.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The piano is commonly used for accompaniment. In the early 20th century piano accompaniment was prevalent on the 78rpm records featuring Michael Coleman, James Morrison, John McKenna, PJ Conlon and many more. On many of these recordings the piano accompaniment was woeful because the backers were unfamiliar with Irish music. However, Morrison avoided using the studio piano players and hand-picked his own. The vamping style used by these piano backers has largely remained. There has been a few recent innovators such as Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, Brian McGrath, Liam Bradley, Josephine Keegan, Ryan Molloy and others.


title: Irish traditional music

text: One of the most important instruments in the traditional repertoire, the fiddle (or violin – there is no physical difference) is played differently in widely varying regional styles.


title: Irish traditional music

text: It uses the standard GDAE tuning. The best-known regional fiddling traditions are from Donegal, Sligo, Sliabh Luachra and Clare.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The fiddle has ancient roots in Ireland, The earliest reference to the fiddle in Ireland was during the 7th century by O'curry. In 1674 Richard Head wrote in reference to Ireland ‘In every field a fiddle, and the lasses footing till they all of a foam.’ The first Irish fiddles were mass manufactured by John Neal along with his brother William in Dublin during 1720s. An instrument was excavated during the 18th century in Dublin that was dated from the 11th century, it was made of dogwood with an animal carved on its tip, it was believed to have been the oldest bow in the world. There may also be a reference to the Irish fiddle in the book of Leinster (ca. 1160).


title: Irish traditional music

text: The fiddling tradition of Sligo is perhaps most recognisable to outsiders, due to the popularity of American-based performers like Michael Coleman, James Morrison and Paddy Killoran. These fiddlers did much to popularise Irish music in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. Other Sligo fiddlers included Martin Wynne and Fred Finn.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Notable fiddlers from Clare include Mary Custy, Paddy Canny, Patrick Kelly, Peadar O'Loughlin, and Martin Hayes.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Sliabh Luachra, a small area between Kerry and Cork, is known for Julia Clifford, her brother Denis Murphy, Sean McGuire, Paddy Cronin and Padraig O'Keeffe. Contemporary fiddlers from Sliabh Luachra include Matt Cranitch and Connie O'Connell.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Modern performers include Kevin Burke, Máire Breatnach, Matt Cranitch, Paddy Cronin, Frankie Gavin, Paddy Glackin, Cathal Hayden, Martin Hayes, Peter Horan, Sean Keane, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Máiréad Nesbitt, Gerry O'Connor, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, and Paul O'Shaughnessy.


title: Irish traditional music

text: There have been many notable fiddlers from United States in recent years such as Winifred Horan, Brian Conway, Liz Carroll, and Eileen Ivers.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The flute has been an integral part of Irish traditional music since roughly the middle of the 19th century, when art musicians largely abandoned the wooden simple-system flute (having a conical bore, and fewer keys) for the metal Boehm system flutes of present-day classical music. Factory-made whistles started to be manufactured in Manchester in 1840, and the Feadóg Irish tin whistle was the most popular mass-produced model in Ireland.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Although the choice of the Albert-system, wooden flute over the metal was initially driven by the fact that, being "outdated" castoffs, the old flutes were available cheaply second-hand, the wooden instrument has a distinct sound and continues to be commonly preferred by traditional musicians to this day. A number of excellent players—Joanie Madden being perhaps the best known—use the Western concert flute, but many others find that the simple system flute best suits traditional fluting. Original flutes from the pre-Boehm era continue in use, but since the 1960s a number of craftsmen have revived the art of wooden flute making. Some flutes are even made of PVC; these are especially popular with new learners and as travelling instruments, being both less expensive than wooden instruments and far more resistant to changes in humidity.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The tin whistle or metal whistle, which with its nearly identical fingering might be called a cousin of the simple-system flute, is also popular. It was mass-produced in 19th century Manchester England, as an inexpensive instrument. Clarke whistles almost identical to the first ones made by that company are still available, although the original version, pitched in C, has mostly been replaced for traditional music by that pitched in D, the "basic key" of traditional music. The other common design consists of a barrel made of seamless tubing fitted into a plastic or wooden mouthpiece.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Skilled craftsmen make fine custom whistles from a range of materials including not only aluminium, brass, and steel tubing but synthetic materials and tropical hardwoods; despite this, more than a few longtime professionals stick with ordinary factory made whistles.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Irish schoolchildren are generally taught the rudiments of playing on the tin whistle, just as school children in many other countries are taught the soprano recorder. At one time the whistle was thought of by many traditional musicians as merely a sort of "beginner's flute", but that attitude has disappeared in the face of talented whistlers such as Mary Bergin, whose classic early seventies recording "Feadóga Stáin" (with bouzouki accompaniment by Alec Finn) is often credited with revolutionising the whistle's place in the tradition.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The low whistle, a derivative of the common tin whistle, is also popular, although some musicians find it less agile for session playing than the flute or the ordinary D whistle.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Notable present-day flute-players (sometimes called 'flautists' or 'fluters') include Matt Molloy, Kevin Crawford, Peter Horan, Michael McGoldrick, Desi Wilkinson, Conal O'Grada, James Carty, Emer Mayock, Joanie Madden, Michael Tubridy and Catherine McEvoy, while whistlers include Paddy Moloney, Carmel Gunning, Paddy Keenan, Seán Ryan, Andrea Corr, Mary Bergin, Packie Byrne and Cormac Breatnach.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Uilleann pipes (pronounced "ill-in" or "ill-yun") are a complex instrument. Tradition holds that seven years learning, seven years practising and seven years playing is required before a piper could be said to have mastered his instrument. The uilleann pipes developed around the beginning of the 18th century, the history of which is depicted in carvings and pictures from contemporary sources in both Britain and Ireland as pastoral and union pipes. Its modern form had arrived by the end of the 18th century, and was played by "gentlemen pipers" such as the mid-18th century piper Jackson from Limerick and the Tandragee pipemaker William Kennedy, the Anglican clergyman Canon James Goodman (1828–1896) and his friend John Hingston from Skibbereen. These were followed in the 20th century by the likes of Séamus Ennis, Leo Rowsome and Willie Clancy, playing refined and ornate pieces, as well as showy, ornamented forms played by travelling pipers like John Cash and Johnny Doran. The uilleann piping tradition had nearly died before being re-popularized by the likes of Paddy Moloney (of the Chieftains), and the formation of Na Píobairí Uilleann, an organisation open to pipers that included such players as Rowsome and Ennis, as well as researcher and collector Breandán Breathnach. Liam O'Flynn is one of the most popular of modern performers along with Paddy Keenan, Davy Spillane, Jerry O'Sullivan, and Mick O'Brien. Many Pavee (Traveller) families, such as the Fureys and Dorans and Keenans, are famous for the pipers among them.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Uilleann pipes are among the most complex forms of bagpipes; they possess a chanter with a double reed and a two-octave range, three single-reed drones, and, in the complete version known as a full set, a trio of ("regulators") all with double reeds and keys worked by the piper's forearm, capable of providing harmonic support for the melody. (Virtually all uilleann pipers begin playing with a half set, lacking the regulators and consisting of only bellows, bag, chanter, and drones. Some choose never to play the full set, and many make little use of the regulators.) The bag is filled with air by a bellows held between the piper's elbow and side, rather than by the performer's lungs as in the highland pipes and almost all other forms of bagpipe, aside from the Scottish smallpipes, Pastoral pipes (which also plays with regulators), the Northumbrian pipes of northern England, and the Border pipes found in both parts of the Anglo-Scottish Border country.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The uilleann pipes play a prominent part in a form of instrumental music called Fonn Mall, closely related to unaccompanied singing "an sean nós" ("in the old style"). Willie Clancy, Leo Rowsome, and Garret Barry were among the many pipers famous in their day; Paddy Keenan and Davy Spillane play these traditional airs today, among many others.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The harp is among the chief symbols of Ireland. The Celtic harp, seen on Irish coinage and used in Guinness advertising, was played as long ago as the 10th century. In ancient times, the harpers were greatly respected and, along with poets and scribes, assigned a high place amongst the most significant retainers of the old Gaelic order of lords and chieftains. Perhaps the best known representative of this tradition of harping today is Turlough Ó Carolan, a blind 18th century harper who is often considered the unofficial national composer of Ireland. Thomas Connellan, a slightly earlier Sligo harper, composed such well known airs as ""The Dawning of the Day""/""Raglan Road"" and ""Carolan's Dream"".


title: Irish traditional music

text: The native Irish harping tradition was an aristocratic art music with its own canon and rules for arrangement and compositional structure, only tangentially associated with the folkloric music of the common people which is the ancestor of present-day Irish traditional music. Some of the late exponents of the harping tradition, such as O'Carolan, were influenced by the Italian Baroque art music of such composers as Vivaldi, which could be heard in the theatres and concert halls of Dublin. The harping tradition did not long outlast the native Gaelic aristocracy which supported it. By the early 19th century, the Irish harp and its music were, for all intents and purposes, dead. Tunes from the harping tradition survived only as unharmonised melodies which had been picked up by the folkloric tradition or were preserved as notated in collections such as Edward Bunting's (he attended the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792) in which the tunes were most often modified to make them fit for the drawing room pianofortes of the Anglicised middle and upper classes.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The first generations of 20th century revivalists, mostly playing the gut-strung (frequently replaced with nylon after the Second World War) neo-Celtic harp with the pads of their fingers rather than the old brass-strung harp plucked with long fingernails, tended to take the dance tunes and song airs of Irish traditional music, along with such old harp tunes as they could find, and applied to them techniques derived from the orchestral (pedal) harp and an approach to rhythm, arrangement, and tempo that often had more in common with mainstream classical music than with either the old harping tradition or the living tradition of Irish music. A separate Belfast tradition of harp-accompanied folk-singing was preserved by the McPeake Family. In present day, a revival of the early Irish harp has been growing, with replicas of the medieval instruments being played, using strings of brass, silver, and even gold. This revival grew through the work of a number of musicians including Arnold Dolmetsch in 1930s England, Alan Stivell in 1960s Brittany, and Ann Heymann in the US from the 1970s to the present.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Notable players of the modern harp include Derek Bell (of The Chieftains), Laoise Kelly (of The Bumblebees), Gráinne Hambly, Máire Ní Chathasaigh, Mary O'Hara, Antoinette McKenna, Áine Minogue, and Patrick Ball.


title: Irish traditional music

text: However, the harp continues to occupy a niche in Irish traditional music, mainly for solo instrumental performance, or as the only accompaniment for an individual singer. Its melodic foreground role and background accompaniment role as a plucked or strummed string instrument has been subsumed by guitar, mandolin, and Irish bouzouki, etc., in ensemble performance.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The accordion plays a major part in modern Irish music. The accordion spread to Ireland late in the 19th century. In its ten-key form (melodeon), it is claimed that it was popular across the island. It was recorded in the US by John Kimmel, The Flanagan Brothers, Eddie Herborn and Peter Conlon. While uncommon, the melodeon is still played in some parts of Ireland, in particular in Connemara by Johnny Connolly.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Modern Irish accordion players generally prefer the 2 row button accordion. Unlike similar accordions used in other European and American music traditions, the rows are tuned a semi-tone apart. This allows the instrument to be played chromatically in melody. Currently accordions tuned to the keys of B/C and C#/D are by far the most popular systems.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The B/C accordion lends itself to a flowing style; it was popularised by Paddy O'Brien of Tipperary in the late 1940s and 1950s, Joe Burke and Sonny Brogan in the 1950s and 60s. Dublin native James Keane brought the instrument to New York where he maintained an influential recording and performing career from the 1970s to the present. Other famous B/C players include Paddy O'Brien of County Offaly, Bobby Gardiner, Finbarr Dwyer, John Nolan, James Keane, and Billy McComiskey.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The C#/D accordion lends itself to a punchier style and is particularly popular in the slides and polkas of Kerry Music. Notable players include Tony MacMahon, Máirtín O'Connor, Sharon Shannon, Charlie Piggott, Jackie Daly, Joe Cooley and Johnny O'Leary.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The piano accordion became highly popular during the 1950s and has flourished to the present day in céilí bands and for old time Irish dance music. Their greater range, ease of changing key, more fluent action, along with their strong musette tuning blended seamlessly with the other instruments and were highly valued during this period. They are a mainstay of the top Irish and Scottish ceilidh bands. Dermot O'Brien, Malachy Doris, Sean Quinn and Mick Foster are well known Irish solo masters of this instrument and were well recorded. The latest revival of traditional music from the late 1970s also revived the interest in this versatile instrument. Like the button key accordion, a new playing style has emerged with a dry tuning, lighter style of playing and a more rhythmically varied bass. Notable players of this modern style include Karen Tweed (England) and Alan Kelly (Roscommon).


title: Irish traditional music

text: Concertinas are manufactured in several types, the most common in Irish traditional music being the Anglo system with a few musicians now playing the English system. Each differs from the other in construction and playing technique. The most distinctive characteristic of the Anglo system is that each button sounds a different note, depending on whether the bellows are compressed or expanded. Anglo concertinas typically have either two or three rows of buttons that sound notes, plus an "air button" located near the right thumb that allows the player to fill or empty the bellows without sounding a note.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Two-row Anglo concertinas usually have 20 buttons that sound notes. Each row of 10 buttons comprises notes within a common key. The two primary rows thus contain the notes of two musical keys, such as C and G. Each row is divided in two with five buttons playing lower-pitched notes of the given key on the left-hand end of the instrument and five buttons playing the higher pitched notes on the right-hand end. The row of buttons in the higher key is closer to the wrist of each hand. 20 key concertinas have a limited use for Irish traditional music due to the limited range of accidentals available.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Three-row concertinas add a third row of accidentals (i.e., sharps and flats not included in the keys represented by the two main rows) and redundant notes (i.e., notes that duplicate those in the main keys but are located in the third, outermost row) that enable the instrument to be played in virtually any key. A series of sequential notes can be played in the home-key rows by depressing a button, compressing the bellows, depressing the same button and extending the bellows, moving to the next button and repeating the process, and so on. A consequence of this arrangement is that the player often encounters occasions requiring a change in bellows direction, which produces a clear separation between the sounds of the two adjacent notes. This tends to give the music a more punctuated, bouncy sound that can be especially well suited to hornpipes or jigs.


title: Irish traditional music

text: English concertinas, by contrast, sound the same note for any given button, irrespective of the direction of bellows travel. Thus, any note can be played while the bellows is either expanded or compressed. As a consequence, sequential notes can be played without altering the bellows direction. This allows sequences of notes to be played in a smooth, continuous stream without the interruption of changing bellows direction.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Despite the inherent bounciness of the Anglo and the inherent smoothness of the English concertina systems, skilled players of Irish traditional music can achieve either effect on each type of instrument by adapting the playing style. On the Anglo, for example, the notes on various rows partially overlap and the third row contains additional redundant notes, so that the same note can be sounded with more than one button. Often, whereas one button will sound a given note on bellows compression, an alternative button in a different row will sound the same note on bellows expansion. Thus, by playing across the rows, the player can avoid changes in bellows direction from note to note where the musical objective is a smoother sound. Likewise, the English system accommodates playing styles that counteract its inherent smoothness and continuity between notes. Specifically, when the music calls for it, the player can choose to reverse bellows direction, causing sequential notes to be more distinctly articulated.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Popular concertina players include Niall Vallely, Kitty Hayes, Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, Noel Hill and Padraig Rynne. Liam Clancy (of The Clancy Brothers and Makem and Clancy) also played the concertina until his death in 2009.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The four-string tenor banjo is played as a melody instrument by Irish traditional players, and is commonly tuned GDAE, an octave below the fiddle. It was brought to Ireland by returned emigrants from the United States, where it had been developed by African slaves. It is seldom strummed in Irish music (although older recordings will sometimes feature the banjo used as a backing instrument), instead being played as a melody instrument using either a plectrum or a "thimble".


title: Irish traditional music

text: Barney McKenna of The Dubliners is often credited with paving the way for the banjo's current popularity, and was still actively playing until his death in 2012, aged 72. Notable players include Kieran Hanrahan, Charlie Piggott, John Carty, Angelina Carberry, Gerry O'Connor, Enda Scahill, Kevin Griffin and All Ireland Fleadh champion, Brian Scannell.


title: Irish traditional music

text: With a few exceptions, for example Tom Hanway, the five-string banjo has had little role in Irish traditional music as a melody instrument. It has been used for accompaniment by the singers Margaret Barry, Pecker Dunne, Luke Kelly, Al O'Donnell, Bobby Clancy and Tommy Makem.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The mandolin has become a common instrument amongst Irish traditional musicians. Fiddle tunes are readily accessible to the mandolin player because of the equivalent range of the two instruments and the practically identical (allowing for the lack of frets on the fiddle) left hand fingerings.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Although almost any variety of acoustic mandolin might be adequate for Irish traditional music, virtually all Irish players prefer flat-backed instruments with oval sound holes to the Italian-style bowl-back mandolins or the carved-top mandolins with f-holes favoured by bluegrass mandolinists. The former are often too soft-toned to hold their own in a session (as well as having a tendency to not stay in place on the player's lap), whilst the latter tend to sound harsh and overbearing to the traditional ear. Greatly preferred for formal performance and recording are flat-topped "Irish-style" mandolins (reminiscent of the WWI-era Martin Army-Navy mandolin) and carved (arch) top mandolins with oval soundholes, such as the Gibson A-style of the 1920s. Resonator mandolins such as the RM-1 from National Resophonic are beginning to show up in Irish sessions in the US because they are loud enough to easily be heard.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Noteworthy Irish mandolinists include Andy Irvine (who, like Johnny Moynihan, almost always tunes the E down to D), Mick Moloney, Paul Kelly, Declan Corey and Claudine Langille. John Sheahan and Barney McKenna, fiddle player and tenor banjo player respectively, with The Dubliners are also accomplished mandolin players.


title: Irish traditional music

text: The guitar is not traditional in Irish music but has become widely accepted in modern sessions. These are usually strummed with a plectrum (pick) to provide backing for the melody players or, sometimes, a singer. Irish backing tends to use chord voicings up and down the neck, rather than basic first or second position "cowboy chords"; unlike those used in jazz, these chord voicings seldom involve barre fingerings and often employ one or more open strings in combination with strings stopped at the fifth or higher frets. Modal (root and fifth without the third, neither major nor minor) chords are used extensively alongside the usual major and minor chords, as are suspended and sometimes more exotic augmented chords; however, the major and minor seventh chords are less employed than in many other styles of music.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Ideally, the guitarist follows the leading melody player or singer precisely rather than trying to control the rhythm and tempo. Most guitar parts take inspiration and direction from the melody, rather than driving the melody as in other acoustic genres.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Many of the earliest notable guitarists working in traditional music, such as Dáithí Sproule and The Bothy Band's Mícheál Ó Domhnaill, tuned their instruments in "DADGAD" tuning, although many players use the "standard" (EADGBE) and "drop D" (DADGBE) tunings: among others, Steve Cooney, Arty McGlynn and John Doyle. A host of other alternative tunings are also used by some players. The distinctive feature of these tunings is that one or more open strings played along with fingered chord shapings provide a drone note part of the chord.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Guitarists and bouzouki players may play single note melody instead of harmonizing accompaniment, but in live acoustic sessions with more than two or three players but it is difficult to produce sufficient volume to be heard over drumming and the piercing sound of fiddles and penny whistles.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Although not traditional, the Irish bouzouki has found a home in the modern Irish traditional music scene. The Greek bouzouki was introduced to Irish traditional music in the late 1960s by Johnny Moynihan and then popularised by Dónal Lunny, Andy Irvine, and Alec Finn.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Today's Irish bouzouki (usually) has four courses of two strings (usually) tuned G2−D3−A3−D4. The bass courses are most often tuned in unisons, one feature that distinguishes the Irish bouzouki from its Greek antecedent, although octaves in the bass are favoured by some players. Instead of the staved round back of the Greek bouzouki, Irish bouzoukis usually have a flat or lightly arched back. Peter Abnett, the first instrument maker to build an Irish bouzouki (for Dónal Lunny in 1970) makes a three piece staved back. The top is either flat or carved like that of an arch-top guitar or mandolin, although some builders carve both the back and the top.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Alec Finn and Mick Conneely are the only notable players still using a Greek bouzouki, one of the older style "trixordo" three course (six string) instruments tuned D3−A3−D4.


title: Irish traditional music

text: A frame drum, usually of bent wood and goatskin, the bodhrán is considered a relatively modern addition to traditional dance music. Some musicologists suggest its use was originally confined to the wrenboys on St. Stephen's Day and other quasi-ritual processions. It was introduced/popularised in the 1960s by Seán Ó Riada (although there are mentions of "tambourines" without zils being played as early as the mid 19th century), and quickly became popular. Notable players include Liam Ó Maonlaí (of The Hothouse Flowers), Johnny 'Ringo' McDonagh, Tommy Hayes, Eamon Murray of Beoga, Colm Murphy, John Joe Kelly of Flook and Caroline Corr of The Corrs.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Mention should also be made here of the Bones – two slender, curved pieces of bone or wood – and "spoons". Pairs of either are held together in one hand and struck-together rhythmically to make a percussive, clacking sound.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Occasionally, at pub sessions, there are some non-traditional hand drums used, such as the West African Djembe drum – which can produce a low booming bass note, as well as a high pitched tone – and the Caribbean Bongo drum. These drums are used as a variation to, or combined with, the bodhrán during sessions.


title: Irish traditional music

text: Although not as well-documented within the tradition as other free-reed instruments, the Irish harmonica tradition is represented by Rick Epping, Mick Kinsella, Paul Moran, the Murphy family from County Wexford, Eddie Clarke and Brendan Power (the latter being of New Zealand). Paddy Clancy became the first world-famous Irish folk harmonicist in the early 1960s as part of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.