THE FIDDLE IN IRISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC

Transcription

1 THE FIDDLE IN IRISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC IRISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC ARCHIVE TAISCE CHEOL nuchais EIREANN

2 THE FIDDLE IN IRISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC The fiddle nowadays used for playing Irish traditional music is identical with the modern international four-stringed violin of classical and popular music, and its bow is the modern violin bow with its modern rosin. The term 'fiddle' is preferred to 'violin' to indicate the repertory of music which is played on the instrument and the styles in which it is played. The fiddle is called an jhidil and an veidhlin in modern Irish. Fiddles in General Fiddles, classified as bowed stringed instruments, exist in a great many sizes and forms throughout the world. Known from at least the tenth century, in Asia, and descended from earlier plucked lutes with origins in prehistory, they essentially consist of one to four or more strings of gut, metal, hair or other fibres, etc., stretched over a hollow body with a flat or curved front or belly and a round or flat back, and over a neck attached to the body. The neck is usually of wood, and the body of wood or a gourd or shell with skin stretched over it. The strings are secured to the end of the body and to tuning pegs at the end of the neck, and are usually held away from the surface of the body by a small prop or bridge. Fiddle bows also exist in different sizes and forms, and essentially consist of a wooden bow with a swatch of hair or other fibre attached to both ends of the bow and running its length. Sound is produced by the friction of the bow against the strings, and different tones are produced by pressing the strings against the neck with the finger tips. The resulting vibrations are amplified by the body or resonator which may have sound holes cut in its front. Fiddles can be played with the neck or the body uppermost. The stringed side faces away from the player. In Europe, a great variety of bowed stringed instruments has been played since the introduction of the musical bow from the East in the tenth century. By the sixteenth century, the four-stringed 'baroque' fiddle, an early form of the modern violin, had emerged in Italy, and from there spread throughout Europe. It had a short fingerboard, gut strings, and a short arc-shaped bow, and was generally played with the body resting against the player's chest and the neck pointing downwards. Various improvements made to this fiddle - a lengthened fingerboard

3 tilted away from the plane of the belly, the introduction of steel and wire-wound strings, and of chin and shoulder rests, etc. - had produced the modern violin by the early nineteenth century. Allover the world, its flexible and expressive musical nature has enabled it to adapt to the character of indigenous music. The Irish Fiddle The fiddle is possibly the most commonly played instrument in Irish traditional music, and has a high status, and must therefore be considered as particularly suited to the nature of the music. It is comparatively cheap, available, and easy to maintain. Most fiddles in use nowadays have been mass-produced and imported, and their quality varies, and some are custom-made here. Peg---- Fingerboard -- E" (lst) String A' (2nd) String I I+H--D, (3rd) String fl-t-lj1----g (4th) String ~--'c----bridge._---stick ~----Hair.I---Nut After Matt Cranitch, THE IRISH FIDDLE BOOK new ed., Mercier Press, Cork, 1993

4 The body, varnished on the outside, is made of some seventy wooden components of, variously, spruce, maple, sycamore, pine, ebony, etc. glued together. The strings, made of steel (highest string) and of wirewound gut or nylon, are tuned in intervals of a fifth apart. When in concert pitch they are at E" (highest string, second octave above middle C), A', D' and G respectively, and are so named. If not being played with fixed-pitch instruments, they are often at a lower tension although their names remain the same. Recently there has also been a trend to tune a half-tone or more above concert pitch. Fine-tuners are now commonly used on all strings. For the speed of action required by the music, a bridge flatter and lower than that of classical music is sometimes used. Bows are made of Brazil wood strung with horsehair, and are usually kept at a fairly low tension. The fiddle is a relatively quiet indoor instrument, usually played sitting, but sometimes, in stage performance especially, standing. Most players, being right-handed, support the instrument with their left hand under its neck, and hold the bow in their right hand. The end of the body may be held under the chin or rested against the shoulder, and chin-rests and, to a lesser extent, shoulder-rests are increasingly being used. Generally the instrument slopes down towards the ground and left of perpendicular away from the player's body. Being almost entirely in the range G to B", the music only rarely requires players to move their left hand from the first position, and the neck therefore rests in the palm of the hand or on the heel of the thumb with the hand held almost at a right angle back from the wrist. The bow is held in a variety of ways: at the nut or along the shaft, and with the fingers spread or bunched on the top of the shaft and with the thumb straight or bent under it. More of the bow is now used than the small amount used formerly, and the strings are sounded anywhere between the bridge and the bottom of the fingerboard. The bow wrist may be loose or stiff, the pressure on the bow light or heavy. The fiddle is played by amateurs and professionals. of all ages and social classes, and is played equally by both sexes. Although frequently played solo, it is commonly played in combination with other instruments, and is an almost invariable member of any instrumental ensemble. It seems to be regarded as particularly compatible with the flute, the button accordion and the uilleann pipes. Most music performed on the fiddle is dance music, played as much for recreational listening as for dancing. Most fiddle players also have a small repertory of 'slow airs' - song airs played instrumentally - and occasional purely instrumental airs.

5 Style Modern Irish fiddle style seems to preserve older European elements. Apart from matters of posture and holding technique, there is a tendency towards a small mellow sound and light rhythmical effects rather than a large strong constant tone. A certain fluctuation in intonation is allowed among musicians, and clean sound production is not considered essential, partly a consequence of the ringing open strings of the first position which are preferred to closed-string versions of notes. There is much single bowing and bow strokes are generally short. Vibrato has not been ;l usual feature of style, and there is a general avoidance of many of the other potentialities of the modern violin, such as playing outside the first position. To an extent these traits are now being replaced by those of modern classical music and, among some younger players, by techniques borrowed from bluegrass or other American fiddle styles. The normal melodic ornaments of Irish traditional music - grace notes, rolls and triplets, etc. - are used on the fiddle, and in addition special fiddle embellishments such as droning (sounding an open string while playing melody on an adjacent string), a form of double stopping (playing the same note simultaneously on an open string and a stopped string below it), and bowed rhythmic effects. Occasionally two players will play the melody an octave apart - 'high' and 'low'. Although some older regional styles survive to a degree in the more westerly counties, most players now develop their own personal styles in an eclectic fashion or imitate the styles of virtuoso players. The Northern style, as now chiefly exemplified in that of Donegal, is hurried in pace, has a plain melodic line with little ornamentation except for some characteristic droning, double-stopping and bowed triplets, and features much single bowing which results in staccato notes and short phrases. In contrast, the styles of Sligo, Galway, Clare, Kerry and Cork are, to different degrees, more relaxed in pace, feature longer bowing, and have more embellished melodic lines, with frequent slurring and long phrasing common.

6 History While bowed stringed instruments such as those known as fidli and tiompain and doubtless rebecs were played in Ireland in the medieval period, they do not seem to have been direct ancestors of the modern fiddle played here. This owes its origins to the baroque fiddle, described above, which may have been introduced from England in the second half of the seventeenth century, although the earliest evidence for such importation is not found until the early 1720s. Fiddles were being made in Dublin later in the same decade and used for the playing of Irish music. Later in the century it is found being played with the harp, pipes, flutes, and other instruments, arid being especially used to provide music for dancing. The great popularity of the fiddle in Scotland in the late eighteenth century, and a burst of reel composition associated with it, had a particular influence in the North of Ireland, and the fiddle has been especially strong there. The various changes made to the fiddle abroad were gradually introduced to Ireland with consequent changes in technique, and the instrument grew in popularity for all types of music. It seems to have been the most popular instrument for the playing of Irish traditional music in the nineteenth century, and it possibly has been in the twentieth. Most fiddles were mass-produced and imported in the past, but home-made instruments were also produced in remote areas, carved from wood or made of tin or from wooden boxes. Some traces have survived of tunings other than the standard tuning in fifths. Printed collections and surviving manuscripts indicate that musical literacy was more widespread among fiddle players than other traditional instrumentalists, evidence of the instrument's international connections. Since the 1920s the fiddle has had a particular influence on the entire instrumental music tradition through the commercial recordings especially of three virtuoso fiddle players from Sligo: Michael Coleman, James Morrison, and Paddy Killoran, who made their local repertory and style nationally popular. For further details, see listening and reading lists on the Irish fiddle available from the Archive for a SAE or International Reply Coupon. Irish Traditional Music Archive / Taisce Cheol Duchais Eireann, No 6 of a series of information leaflets. Available from the Archive at 63 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 (tel , fax ). Grant-aided by An Chomhairle Ealaion / The Arts Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.