Description
The aim of this course is to develop your understanding of the traditional playing techniques for the wire-strung Irish harp. In the past, players of the Irish harp were taught specific named playing techniques, which were the foundation of their method of playing. When the living tradition had come to an end, this inherited knowledge and its practical application were lost. The information we have about the traditional method of playing comes from a chapter in Edward Bunting's 1840 publication, as well as some hand-written information in his manuscripts. Bunting's published tables appear to be very detailed but, by his own admission, there are errors or misunderstandings. If they worked, we would have been using these as our method of playing, but they cannot be taken at face value.
Over recent years, Sylvia Crawford has been working on making sense of the techniques described in Bunting's tables, and on their practical application. Since the publication of her first book, An Introduction to Old Irish Harp Playing Techniques, (2021), Sylvia has been working behind the scenes to further develop and refine this reconstructed method of playing, and create resources for players and teachers.
Sylvia will present the first three sessions of this course, introducing the 24 named playing techniques as the foundation to the method of playing. You will also be introduced to tune settings where the playing techniques are encoded in the fingering markings. These settings are examples to guide the player through a tune and illustrate the method of playing.
Alessia Bianchi will then be working through three tune settings. This will give you experience of the practical application of using pre-learned named playing techniques to play a tune.
This course is aimed particularly at those who already play wire-strung Irish harp, but who are curious about Sylvia Crawford's recent work, and want to learn more.