the demise of the harp and Elizabeth I

Subject: RE: the demise of the harp and Elizabeth 1
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:25 AM

It didn't decline.

In Joan Rimmer's "The Irish Harp", she describes the years just after 1600 as the period of greatest development of the Irish harp, but significantly, in a non-traditional direction that made it more suitable for playing early Baroque music. That being what the Irish aristocracy now wanted to listen to, they wouldn't have been very interested in continuing to employ performers on an instrument that could only play an outdated repertoire.

As far as repression goes, she simply alludes to harp song being forbidden within the Pale, and from what she says about how the Irish harp continued to be made and developed both within Ireland and beyond it, there can't have been any serious attempt at systematic suppression. (Compare it with what happened in Chile in 1973 - the generals killed Victor Jara and would have killed a lot more leftist singers if they could have got hold of them, but the CIA didn't attempt to ban the guitar).

Subject: RE: the demise of the harp and Elizabeth 1
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 10:24 AM

All part and parcel of the ongoing suppression of a culture; the loss of power of the Gaelic chieftains, with consequent lack of patronage, must also have played a part throughout the seventeenth century. Who was it told of playing music, or singing songs, to empty pockets?

Subject: the demise of the harp and Elizabeth 1
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 10:14 AM

After the Battle of Kinsale she ordered her military to hang the harpers and burn their instrument.
How instrumental was this in the decline of the Irish Harp.