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Sources for early Gaelic harp musicNone of the old harpers wrote any of their music down. We have to search for the old Gaelic harp repertory in secondary sources. The sources listed here preserve Gaelic harp tunes. The music of the harpers passed into other instrument traditions, where it did get written down, such as in fiddle and lute manuscript tunebooks. Some of the old harp tunes were arranged and published in music collections for fiddle, flute or harpsichord. From near the end of the tradition, we have field notations live from the playing of old harpers, written down in the 1790s by Edward Bunting. You can have great fun chasing a tune from one source to another to see how different sources handle it differently. One of the most exciting challenges is to compare different versions of a tune to try and reconstruct the lost underlying original harp version. I am sure there is a lot missing from this list. I know of other manuscripts and printed books that contain the odd harp tune here and there. There may well be other tunes in other books that we don’t realise were originally harp tunes. We know that a big part of the harp tradition was playing to accompany the performance of Gaelic song or poetry, and so there must be songs extant which were originally part of the harp tradition too. This online catalogue builds on Keith Sanger & Alison Kinnaird, Tree of strings - crann nan teud, Kinmor Music, Temple, 1992, Appendix D, p.216-219. Thanks to Keith and all the other scholars who have suggested useful leads and possible harp tunes in various manuscripts. Simon Chadwick |
c.1600-1650
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© Simon Chadwick
Originally published at clarsach.net, September 2004, first published here 26th November 2004, last changed July 2015