Bio of Turlough Carolan, the Irish harpist

[larryjhs]

Hello,

This  came through on my daily email from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - it is free to get a daily 'life'.

Some of us know a few of his tunes (I know them basically via Gary Coover's great books.Carolan, Turlough [Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin]

(1670–1738)

• Breandán Ó Madagáin

• https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/20484
• 

Turlough Carolan (1670–1738)

by Francis Bindon

by courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland

 

Carolan, Turlough [Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin] (1670–1738), harper and composer, was born near Nobber, co. Meath, where his father (identified variously as John and Brian) was probably a small farmer and perhaps also an ironworker. When the young Carolan was in his early teens the family moved to Carrick-on-Shannon, co. Leitrim, and then to nearby Ballyfarnon, co. Roscommon, where his father's employers were the MacDermott Roe family who were to play a crucial role in the life and career of the young Carolan. Struck by the boy's intelligence Mrs MacDermott Roe arranged for his education. When an attack of smallpox left him blind, she had him trained as a harper by a namesake of hers, MacDermott Roe. After three years' training she launched him—now twenty-one years old—on his career as an itinerant harper, providing him with the necessities of his profession, including a horse and a guide. The MacDermott Roes remained his special patrons all his life—for half a century. Their substantial house still stands at Alderford, beside Ballyfarnon.

 

In Gaelic Ireland the professional harper had enjoyed a high social status, accorded an honour price by the Brehon (native) law—legal acknowledgement (although below that of the bardic poet) of his position as the doyen of musicians in a society that took its music very seriously (with echoes of ancient belief in its supernatural dimensions). Not only was instrumental performance (solo or group) of the greatest importance in its own right, but the harp was also closely associated with the court performance of the learned bardic poetry, sung by the reacaire accompanied by the harper. Carolan arrived on the scene about the time of the watershed treaty of Limerick (1691), which symbolized the final completion of the English conquest, with the elimination or dispossession of the native Irish-speaking Catholic aristocracy—together with the institutions that flourished under their patronage—and their replacement by protestant English and Scottish planters. Music-making native style was among the cultural features that survived for a time, including the playing of the harp, which continued to be 'an aristocratic pastime or accomplishment rather than a popular one' (MacLysaght, 35). Carolan moved about the country from one ‘big house’ to another, welcomed as an honoured guest. In a rural society where music was an integral part of life—literally from the cradle to the grave—with a passion for song and for dancing, where even the educated read little in the evenings because of poor lighting, and where the live musician was the only source of the art, his visit would have been a major cultural contribution.

Carolan's forte was as a composer both of instrumental harp pieces (frequently dance music) and of songs in which he added simple verses to his own new tune. Although he enjoyed a fellowship and camaraderie with some of the Irish poets of the time, Carolan would not have been considered a poet by the cognoscenti. Nevertheless his songs—complete with amateurish verses—were greatly relished not only by his flattered hosts but also by a wider public for whom song (often extempore) was a normal means of giving heightened expression to emotions of all kinds. Hence many of his songs passed into the oral folk repertoire where they were still alive more than a century later. Carolan was an exuberant personality of cheerful temperament with a ready wit—satirical when called for—and a puckish sense of humour which delighted in tales of the ludicrous. Storytelling may well have been part of his professional repertory, following what seems to have been the medieval tradition of the harpers (Murphy, 191). Charles O'Conor of Belanagare—one of his greatest patrons, a protégé of his on the harp, as well as being a noted scholar and man of affairs—had a high regard for his innate intelligence: 'Very few I have ever known who had a more vigorous mind, but a mind undisciplined through the defect or rather absence of cultivation' (O'Sullivan, Carolan, 160). These characteristics, and the ethos of the time, are well presented in the musical drama (in Irish) Carolan, by Eoghan Ó Tuairisc, premièred in Dublin in 1979.

 

Professionally Carolan would have been in great demand at special occasions such as weddings and christenings, and some of the personalized epithalamia he composed have survived. At the other end of the emotional spectrum, the medieval Gaelic harper was a central figure in the obsequies following the death of the chieftain, both playing his specially composed instrumental lament (Irish cumha) and accompanying the singing (by the reacaire) of the learned elegy (marbhna or tuireamh) composed by the bardic poet for the commemorative ceremony. In the few surviving laments that can confidently be ascribed to him (O'Sullivan, Carolan, nos. 206 ff.), Carolan combined these various functions, apparently singing his own elegy to his instrumental lament.

 

Carolan acquired patrons all over Ireland. Remarkably these were drawn equally from both sides of the political and religious divide, including many of the new protestant planter families—Crofton, Drew and Jones—as well as the remnants of the old native Catholic aristocracy, for example the MacDermott Roe, O'Conor, and Maguire families. Carolan took the political situation as he found it and eschewed politics in his songs (in contrast with the Irish poets of his time). Nevertheless, as a devout Catholic, from a Gaelic background, it is clear that he was not without some partiality. Irish was still the vernacular language of most of rural Ireland, and Carolan did not learn English until he was 'advanced in years', and 'delivered himself but indifferently in that language' (O'Sullivan, Carolan, 1.157). With only one known exception all his songs were in Irish, even those for his English-speaking patrons who evidently understood them.

 

Among Carolan's important patrons there was at least one protestant clergyman, Charles Massey, afterwards dean of Limerick from 1740 to 1766, whose grandfather, typically, 'came into this kingdom with a principal command in the army sent to suppress the rebellion in the year 1641' (J. Lodge, Peerage of Ireland, 1754). It is to Massey that we are indebted for the commissioning, in the 1720s, of the portrait of Carolan now in the National Gallery of Ireland (reproduced in O'Sullivan, Carolan, 1, frontispiece, artist's name unknown).

In 1720 Dean Swift translated the words of a song by Carolan, 'Pléaráca na Ruarcach' ('O'Rourke's feast', published in 1735; the words were, exceptionally, not Carolan's), most likely assisted by his close friend, fellow clergyman, and remarkable Irish scholar Anthony Raymond, vicar of Trim. Swift may well have known Carolan—as claimed by folklore—but this cannot be proven.

 

Carolan married Mary Maguire (d. 1733) of co. Fermanagh. They had a loving marriage, living at Mohill, co. Leitrim, where a public sculpture in bronze by Oisín Kelly was erected in memory of the harper. They had six daughters and a son. The latter became a harper (of little distinction), and later went to London bringing his father's harp with him. An Irish harp on exhibition at the O'Conor-Nash house at Clonalis, co. Roscommon (formerly home of the O'Conor Don) is claimed to be that of Carolan. His wife predeceased him by five years in 1733, and poignant verses of his, lamenting her, have survived. The relevant harp music (which no doubt he composed) is not known.

Carolan died on 25 March 1738 at Alderford House, Ballyfarnon, the home of his lifelong patron Mrs MacDermott Roe. The vast and distinguished attendance at his funeral indicated the extent to which he had become a national figure. A modern monument, inscribed in Irish and in English, was erected to mark his grave in the medieval churchyard of Kilronan, co. Roscommon.

 

Some 200 of Carolan's tunes were edited by Donal O'Sullivan (1958)—the total that he succeeded in recovering from printed and manuscript sources. The Irish harping tradition had been handed on orally and aurally, unwritten. It was a new departure when in 1724 (during Carolan's lifetime) music publishers from outside that tradition John and William Neal printed A Collection of the most Celebrated Irish Tunes Proper for the Violin German Flute or Hautboy, including some of Carolan's tunes, their first printing. Other printings followed. Manuscript notation of his music was also commenced by collectors from outside the tradition, the earliest being Bunting, as late as 1792. Only the melody line of the tunes was recorded (O'Sullivan plausibly suggesting that 'it is probable that he would largely have recreated the accompaniment on every occasion that he played a particular tune' (Carolan, 1.150)). Carolan's own Irish verses for many of these tunes have survived separately in manuscript (never underlaid to the notation) and been edited (Ó Máille, O'Sullivan, Bunting collection), but the relationship of these to the tunes is often problematical.

 

In Carolan's compositions the native style was frequently influenced by the continental music (including that of Vivaldi, Corelli, and Geminiani) popular in Ireland at the time and admired by Carolan himself. His music enjoyed a popular revival in Ireland in the late twentieth century (thanks especially to O'Sullivan's edition), but the most significant assessment of it must remain that of his own contemporaries who were in a position to evaluate it fully in context.

 

Larry

[wschruba]

Thanks Larry, nice read.

 

I'm familiar with Carolan through the Bunting collections (only the "first" book is easily obtainable through Dover, masters of the cheap manuscript, second only to Schirmer), but admit that I found the arrangements...lackluster.  Few of them translate well to the timbre of the modern piano/other keyboard instruments.  I would like to believe as a musician, that Bunting did a faithful job notating the music as played, but you never really know, do you? 

 

At any rate, the preservation of the folk music in any form is certainly a good thing.

[Peter Laban]

7 hours ago, wschruba said:

 

 I would like to believe as a musician, that Bunting did a faithful job notating the music as played, but you never really know, do you? 

 

 

Collections of Carolan's work are available both online and in book form. Catriona Rowsome's collection brought tunes and words together again, for example.

 

 

A lot has been written and debated about the faithfullness of Bunting's arrangements. Anyone interested can look that up.

 

 

[Robin Harrison]

Indeed a fascinating read. I am fortunate to be able to meet with a friend (Bill N. on this site) on a weekly routine to play our anglos together and we meld in our love of playing Carolan tunes.

     They just really sit well on the Anglo.

        

On 1/4/2025 at 2:41 AM, larryjhs said:

In Carolan's compositions the native style was frequently influenced by the continental music (including that of Vivaldi, Corelli, and Geminiani) popular in Ireland at the time and admired by Carolan himself.

          I’d love to hear examples of this…..

Thanks for posting, Larry……but was he a harpist or a harper ?      

[Richard Mellish]

I hesitate to take this thread further away from concertinas, but there is a great tale involving O'Carolan in Paddy Tunney's book The Stone Fiddle. It's too long and complicated for me to summarise here, so I can only suggest that anyone interested get hold of the book from a library: ISBN: 0 86233 028 9. The tale is in the chapter "The Giants – the mighty men of yore". To whet your appetite, I'll just mention that the tale involves O'Carolan's skull and his ghost.