From: jmf@endor.harvard.edu ( ghost )
Newsgroups: rec.music.folk
Subject: Re: Undisputed Masters
Keywords: Celtic Harp, Church Bells
Date: 5 Jan 93 21:54:05 GMT
Article-I.D.: das.1993Jan5.215405.733
Organization: DAS Purchasing, Harvard University

In article <C0E8I0.92@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Iskandar Taib) writes:
>What about harpers? 
>
>Hmmmm... styles differ so much:
>
>Patrick Ball	Wire Strung Harp, modern interpretation (rolled 
>		chords, glissandi)
>
>Kim Robertson	Gut strung harp, modern interpretation
>
>Alain Stivell	Ancient wire/gut strung harp technique
>Alison Kinnaird
>
>Cheryl Fulton	Medieval double and triple harps
>
>Robin Huw Bowen	Welsh triple harp


A recommend of
	       (Gigantic)
Anne Heymann:  Wire Strung Harp, reconstructed/ reinvented ancient technique 
				 (requiring very long, hard fingernails)
				 & carefully researched ancient repertoire

She interrupts her own performance too often to say
"I wish I *really* knew how to play this; someone else after me will
*really* master the technique" to get called a master, I guess...
but I liked her technique fine (she seems to think the real ancients
played the thing faster & more nimbly than she can manage; or perhaps
she just protests too much)

Boston College's annual Irish music weekend last spring was set up to celebrate
the anniversary of the last competition of ancient harpers in Belfast
in something like 1692 (I have the literature at home somewhere)
featured Heyman, Derek Bell & a pile of other Irish-style harpers
ranging from the suprisingly inept to the absolutely brilliant.
BC puts out a record each year gleaned from the mini-festival;
look out for this one.

And now for (another) extreme digression:

Dorothy Sayers, the British mystery author, in her book 'The Nine Tailors'
(or something much like that; I read it 20 years ago (yikes!))
has a character say of the patterns (changes) rung on ancient church bells,
which patterns are preserved to this day:
(paraphrasal)
"there isn't any musical sense to them, but tradition requires 
that the bells be rung in these particular patterns"

Well, I've heard the patterns (whenever North American churches are not
playing instead a tape of twinkle-twinkle-little-star, and on Christmastime
broadcasts of carol choirs from ancient British cathedrals) & now I've heard
music transcribed from this meet of the last of the pre-O'Carolan harpers,
& above & beyond the expected occurance of those old-devil-scales,
I hear a similarity.

Admittedly, these church bell patterns are very short, comparatively,
but they sound like of sections of larger melody. 

If you haven't heard these other pieces, you've probably heard O'Carolan's
Farewell to Music, probably the only thing he wrote (the only thing I've
heard, anyway) in the ancient style. 

Sayers was more than a bit of a music snob (her lead character is
one of those creatures who get transported by 'classical' music into some
realm whereof their loved ones can only report "I just don't have a
refined enough nature to follow him") so maybe she would write a whole
book emphasizing noise where there really is music?
(She at least seemed enthralled by the noise,
without ever admitting it was music.)

Anyway, that's what Heymann's harps sound like in person,
it doesn't quite come over with due justice on the records:
Huge Bells.
Organization: Sophomore, H&SS general, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA