w19240
| Title | Songs and Stories of Caílte's Time |
| Contributors |
Derek Ball (composer) Maurice Harmon (translator) |
| Composition date | 2011 2011 |
| Duration (mins) | 60 |
| Category | accompanied vocal |
| Instrumentation | Bar M-s Spk / Hp |
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| Key signature | |
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| First performed | |
| Notes | To Maurice Harmon. An entertainment in response to Maurice Harmon's new translation of Acallam na Senórach |
| Programme Note | In 2009 the poet Maurice Harmon launched a major new English translation of Acallam na Senórach, one of the classics of medieval Irish literature. In prose and verse, the story mainly turns around the Fian warrior Caílte who, with his comrade Oisín, has miraculously survived a couple of hundred years longer than the average lifespan in order to meet a new arrival on the scene, St Patrick. When the little matter of exorcising Caílte's numerous demons has been got out of the way and he has been converted to Christianity without apparent difficulty (and without any apparent instruction in the new religion!) the two men get on with more interesting matters. As they take a marathon trip around Ireland, Caílte recounts old stories of heroism and tragedy associated with the places they pass through. At Maurice Harmon's suggestion, and to celebrate the book's launch, I wrote an Irish harp suite based on ideas from the epic. I liked the result so much that I interpolated readings from the Acallam and made a piece with the title Of Caílte's Time, which was performed on 16th June 2010 as part of Maurice's 80th birthday celebrations. The performers were Anne-Marie O'Farrell, Irish Harp, and speaker Séamus Gabhann. I then turned some of the poems from those readings into songs and added more music between and during the readings, doubling the length of the piece, the result of that process being the present work. The initial choice of Irish harp seemed obvious to me; the harp is almost the only musical instrument mentioned in the text and as we know from the instrument preserved in Trinity College, Dublin it is an extremely ancient part of our culture. I decided not merely to attempt to represent events and objects, such as the battles and weapons, or even the huge stones for which Cailte had a predilection. Rather, I tried to tease out some of the concepts and principles underlying the work. One such concept is the way different cultures can coexist, albeit uneasily: the culture of the Tuatha Dé is overlaid and gradually pushed underground by the Celtic Pagan culture which is later, in its turn, overlaid and pushed down by the Christian...and of course that's not the end of the story! I also like the frequently found idea of enumeration of objects (like favourite drinking vessels) and persons (like queens), and the idea that music could be judged according to its hypnotic power: the better the music the deeper the sleep it induced! Among the sometimes fanciful and obscure movement titles, I use the term contredanse, not in its traditional meaning but to indicate the presence of two or more contrary ideas set against one another. |
This work is associated with the following collection items:
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