Mabel Dolmestch harp recordings

The work done in the 1930s by Arnold and Mabel Dolmetsch on the medieval Welsh music, and the harps that Arnold made, both gut-strung and wire-strung, have always been known about, but I had never suspected or seen a reference to them doing any work on the Irish harp music.

Mabel clearly loved the sound of the harps Arnold had made and fitted with wire strings, following the historical Irish and Scottish Gaelic tradition:

I 2013 I discovered some unreleased one-off recordings from 1937, the same year as the Welsh gramophone records were published, of Mabel playing Irish harp music from Bunting’s 1809 collection. I think these recordings must be the first ever recordings of early Irish harp music.

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Tests
AD on outer ring
11.iv.37

This, the first side of the 10 inch disc, has 5 short tracks.

Track 1:
“The Lord of Salisbury, His Pavan and Galliard, by William Byrd”
Performed on clavichord, and announced, by Arnold Dolmetsch: “Hopeless!”

(mp3, 1.7MB, 1:14)

Track 2:
An Seann Triucha (The Old Trugh)
Performed on early Irish harp (clarsach) by Mabel Dolmetsch

(mp3, 624k, 0:26)

Track 3:
Bille Buadhach (The Victorious Tree)
Performed on early Irish harp (clarsach) by Mabel Dolmetsch

(mp3, 1.2MB, 0:53)

Track 4 is completely blank, I would say silent but there is the same ferocious surface noise! I assume that for this “test” the microphone was switched off or some similar technical error.

Track 5:
An Seann Triucha (The Old Trugh)
Performed on early Irish harp (clarsach) by Mabel Dolmetsch

(mp3, 744k, 0:31)

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Victorious Tree
Lullaby
Take 3
N.D.G

This is the second side of the 10 inch disc. I do not know the significance of N.D.G.
A very quiet recording with a lot of surface noise.

Bille Buadhach (The Victorious Tree)
Is Im Bo & Eiriu (Irish Lullaby)
Performed on early Irish harp (clarsach) by Mabel Dolmetsch

(mp3, 4.6MB, 3:21)

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D II Take 1.
Irish Harp Music
Mrs. Dolmetsch.
The Victorious Tree.
Lullaby

This is the 12 inch disc, it only has one side.

Track 1:
talking & tuning

(mp3, 1.2MB, 0:53)

Track 2 is completely blank

Track 3:
Bille Buadhach (The Victorious Tree)
Is Im Bo & Eiriu (Irish Lullaby)
Performed on early Irish harp (clarsach) by Mabel Dolmetsch

(mp3, 5.4MB, 3:56)

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An Seann Triucha (The Old Trugh) is from Edward Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland, 1809, p.67.

Bille Buadhach (The Victorious Tree) appears in Edward Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland, 1809, p.71, but Mabel is playing a very free and improvised version!

Is Im Bo & Eiriu (Irish Lullaby) is from Edward Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland, 1809, p.24, and also Bunting’s Ancient Irish Music, 1796, p.28.

It’s fasciating to listen to Mabel’s performance. Her choice of repertory is interesting - all three tunes are from Bunting’s 1809 volume, and all are smaller, simpler, sweeter tunes. She plays An Seann Triucha fairly straight, and very nicely, but her handling of Bille Buadhach is extraordinary - when I first heard it I honestly thought it must be something from the Robert ap Huw manuscript, it was interpreted so freely and with such ornamentation.

I also did not expect to get Is Im Bo & Eiriu - I know this tune well since it was played by Mary Rowland on the original Trinity College harp after its restoration in 1961. Is it a coincidence or did Mary discuss the ancient Irish harp music with Mabel?

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I got these discs from a person in the South-West of England who was disposing of a number of Dolmetsch lacquer discs, reel-to-reel tapes, and paperwork. Some of the other discs are dated between April and June 1937, and some say that Leslie Ward was the recording engineer.

I have two discs, one double-sided ten-inch record, and one single-sided twelve-inch record. I chose these discs because their labels indicated that they were recordings of Mabel Dolmetsch playing early Irish harp music, and as such I thought that they were most likely the oldest recordings of early Irish harp music in existence.

These are laquer discs, or transcription discs, also known as acetates. They are aluminium discs coated with a thin layer of black lacquer. The sound track has been mechanically cut into the lacquer by the recording machine. This means that the discs are unique one-offs - there are almost certainly no duplicate copies of these recordings. And they are extremely fragile; the lacquer is very unstable, so that it degrades in storage, and it is very soft, so that it wears away with every play of the record.

I am playing each record once and recording it onto digital files. I'm using a modern Technics turntable for this, fitted with a special stylus suitable for 78rpm records, and running at 33rpm. I have speeded the recording up in the computer to get back to approximately the original speed.

I have de-clicked and de-noised the recordings in Audacity. If you would like to have the original uncompressed uncleaned files please let me know and I can send you them.

I suspect a lot of the surface noise may be from dirt but also from the white powder (palmitic acid) that grows on the lacquer surface. I may try cleaning the records very cautiously and carefully, both to arrest the acid growth and to possibly get a second cleaner playback. Watch this space!