Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key

20 Mar 97 - 02:35 PM (#3300)
Subject: RE: music request: 2 songs on T&S
From: Barry

Can you give us a little more to go on. There's a tune by O'Carolan called Farewell To Music but I'm not familar with a song of that title, good luck.

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20 Mar 97 - 11:14 PM (#3318)
Subject: RE: music request: 2 songs on T&S
From: Audrey

I checked, and the one is Lament for a Lost Harp Key, by Rory Del Morrison (i'm going by what I think I heard), and the other is Farewell to Music, by O'Carolan. I just want a transcription of the turnes, and I don't know where to start looking.

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21 Mar 97 - 12:10 PM (#3340)
Subject: RE: music request: 2 songs on T&S
From: Bill White

There's a book called "O'Niel's Music of Ireland" which would be a good place to start if you are just looking for the tunes. There are several versions of the same book (many of the just out takes of the original) but if can find the real deal, there are thousands of tunes. It is really a great resource.

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19 Mar 08 - 11:22 PM (#2293256)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
From: Jim Dixon

Charles Guard's album "Avenging & Bright" (Shanachie, 1991) has a tune called CRAOBH NAN TEUD (LAMENT FOR THE LOST HARP-KEY).

Alison Kinnaird's album "The Harp Key" (Temple Music, 1978, reissued 1996) has a tune called CUMHA CRANN NAN TEUD (THE LAMENT FOR THE HARP KEY).

Authorship is credited to Rory Dall O'Cahan, "Blind Rory", an Irish harpist of the 17th century.

I can't explain the difference in the titles, since I don't know a word of Gaelic, either Irish or Scots.

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20 Mar 08 - 06:35 AM (#2293390)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
From: Jack Campin

I think it may be in one of Alison Kinnaird's collections. It's known only from Scottish sources, and I've never heard anybody seriously suggest it was Irish (at the other extreme, one author says it is the *only* known early Scottish harp tune). You certainly don't find stuff like that in O'Neill's 1001. Rory Dall's identity is mysterious; there may have been two of him, one Irish and one Scottish, 100 years apart.

It's also known as "Lament for the Harp Tree" - probably a mistake, but people have come up wth the idea that the harp was a "tree of strings" to explain it, hence the title of Kinnaird's major book.

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20 Mar 08 - 12:54 PM (#2293697)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
From: GUEST

This discussion will come up whenever anybody googles for information about the tune, so it helps to get the best possible information into it.

What the original poster was after is almost never an issue in deciding whether and what to reply to an electronic forum.

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20 Mar 08 - 02:05 PM (#2293792)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
From: GUEST, Sminky

This website is pretty darn good for O'Carolan tunes.

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20 Mar 08 - 02:21 PM (#2293809)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
From: Jack Campin

(Me again, I was the nameless GUEST, from a cookieless computer).

This one isn't an O'Carolan tune, nobody ever suggested it was, and it's accordingly not listed on that site.

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21 Mar 08 - 11:10 AM (#2294461)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
From: GUEST,leeneia

Jack, be calm. We're looking for two tunes, one of which is Carolan's 'Farewell to Music.' I've found two different versions of that already.

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21 Mar 08 - 05:30 PM (#2294767)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
From: GUEST,crazy little woman

It would be nice if there were an ancient lament for a lost harp key, but I've decided that the idea is just too charming to be real.

If there had been such a song, harpers everywhere would know about it by now.

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21 Mar 08 - 06:15 PM (#2294794)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
From: Jack Campin

The story about it is in Kinnaird's book. It wasn't just any harp key, but a fancy jewelled one that had been a gift to the harper from a wealthy lord.

Or that was the harper's story. He probably pawned it.

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21 Mar 08 - 08:23 PM (#2294882)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
From: Bonnie Shaljean

"If there had been such a song, harpers everywhere would know about it by now."

???????????????????????

Erm, yes, there is and they do. Didn't you read the posts above about Alison Kinnaird? As well as recording this piece she's also published it, as an air & variations in her book of old harp tunes, titled The Harp Key, issued by herself and her husband Robin Morton under the imprint Kinmor Music, ISBN 0 9511204 0 9

Incidentally, Donal O'Sullivan's Carolan: The Life Times & Music of an Irish Harper is the definitive source for his tunes and historical info, and is where the websites etc have got their material from, so I think it's only fair to give his book (now re-published and again available) a mention here.

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21 Mar 08 - 08:25 PM (#2294883)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
From: Jack Campin

There is a bagpipe version of The Lament for the Harp Tree at

http://pybertra.club.fr/ceol/celtic.htm

32 minutes long!!!!!

It's published by the Piobaireachd Society.

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21 Mar 08 - 08:44 PM (#2294897)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
From: Bonnie Shaljean

Since I have it to hand:

Tree Of Strings: A History Of The Harp In Scotland, Keith Sanger and Alison Kinnaird, Kinmor Music, 1992

More here: http://www.templerecords.co.uk/newwebsite/about.php

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