The Cloyne Harp

by Barnaby Brown - 17:58 on 08 April 2006

In order to play the fashionable music of the day, streaming in from England, France and Italy, Gaelic harp makers began to increase the number of notes per octave in the seventeenth century. Whereas Gaelic compositions employ five or six tones from a palette of seven per octave, the new music required seven or eight tones from a palette of twelve.

Both musical languages left tones in reserve for dramatic effect, but the new language effectively wiped out the earlier one. Today, few performers or composers can eloquently manipulate the seven tones that satisfied musical virtuosi for centuries - they have been raised in another sound world, the tonal tradition of the urban West. The Cloyne Harp, 1621, marks the beginning of the end of the bimodal tradition of Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Barnaby Brown 2000

Bill Taylor wrote an article about this replica in Sounding Strings magazine Spring 1998. You can now read it in the library.

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