Course 3 of Fundamentals of playing the early Irish harp

The harp-music collector, Edward Bunting, wrote that he notated this evocative air from the 18th-century harper, Donal Black, who sang it to him in 1792 to his own harp accompaniment. A different setting, Róisín Dubh, is still one of the most famous of all Irish-language songs. We will explore Bunting field transcriptions of two different settings of the tune, and compare them with his 1840 printed piano arrangements. We will then focus on learning to play one of the settings, decorating it with melodic ornaments notated from harpers, and using historical Irish harp fingerings.

We will recap. the work we did in the first session. Now, we may also work on fleshing out the melody by adding a simple, historically plausible 'lower hand’

Planxty Irwin is a lively, but completely approachable, jig-time song air composed by Turlough Carolan (1670–1738), the most famous early Irish harper. Planxtys are usually tunes that Carolan composed in honor of a particular patron; in this case Colonel John Irwin in county Sligo. We will compare Bunting’s field transcription with his later MS piano arrangement to arrive at a plausible setting for our harps, adding melodic ornaments, and using historical Irish harp fingerings, and string-damping suggestions helpful for all harps, which give a crystal clear texture.

We will recap. the work we did in the first session. Now, we may also work on fleshing out the melody by adding a simple, historically plausible 'lower hand’.

In a 1790s MS, Bunting wrote that he collected this setting of a love song composed by the Sligo harper, Thomas Connellon (c. 1639–before 1700), from the playing of the harper, Charles Byrne, and also from the singing of Donal Black. We will examine Bunting’s MS piano setting (no field transcription taken directly from a harper survives) building a harp setting, with a historically plausible bass hand, melodic ornaments, helped by known historical Irish harp fingering and string damping techniques.

We will recap. the work we did in the first session. Now, we may also work on fleshing out the melody by adding a simple, historically plausible 'lower hand’.