Céilí! A Celtic Celebration

Now you can work off those dessert calories as we push back the tables for Scottish dancing. Susan and Darrell Acree will fiddle away as our friends from the Atlanta Branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dancing Society teach us new steps from the highlands.

Program Notes

by Michaelene Gorney

Although one can perhaps name a few of the Celtic countries, recognize Celtic interweaving, and cite literary works influenced by Celtic mythology and spirituality - J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Anne McCaffrey's The Dragons of Pern and Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, to name a few - there is so much more to the word "Celtic" than popular culture implies. The six Celtic nations maintain their distinct identities through the conscientious propagation of traditions rooted in ancient custom and mythology, languages still spoken by at least some of its citizens, and the making of music in which melodic ornamentation and variation are highly regarded. These nations are: Scotland (Alba); Brittany (Breizh), a northwestern peninsula of France; Wales (Cymru); Ireland (Eire); Cornwall (Kernow), an Atlantic peninsula between Wales and Brittany; and the Isle of Mann (Mannin), located in the Irish Sea. Their languages are Scottish Gaelic, Breton, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and Manx, respectively. Those interested in pursuing things truly Celtic would do well to investigate the information published by the Celtic League¹ and by IMBAS, an organization which promotes the spiritual path of Senistrognata, "based upon the home, the family, and the community/tribe in honoring the land, the ancestors, and the traditional Celtic gods and goddesses.²

Of the music performed tonight, "Mouth Music, "I Love my Love," and "Suo Gan" are most authentically Celtic in terms of melody and, in the case of "Mouth Music," style of performance. To Irish poetry we pay tribute in two contemporary settings, "Be Though My Vision" and "The Coolin." Add to the mix some instrumental improvisation and Scottish dance and there you have it - the perfect céilí! A gathering for the purpose of singing, dancing, and music-making: what better purpose could there be?

Composer Steven Sametz (b. 1954), who studied music in Madison, Wisconsin, at Yale, and at the Frankfort Hochschule, has had his music performed in the U.S., Canada and Austria, and recorded by the vocal group Chanticleer.³ In "I Have Had Singing," Sametz captures the spirit of Akenfield, England, population 298. Akenfield was featured in a book of the same name by Robert Blythe, who attempted to preserve the past by recording the words of its townfolk.⁴ The words of "I Have Had Singing" are those of Fred Mitchell, a horseman who was 85 in 1961, the year his reminiscences were recorded.

"I Love my Love" is a Cornish folksong collected by Balfour Gardiner and arranged by Gustav Holst (1874-1934) as one of his Six Choral Folksongs of 1916. The song tells of a young man who is sent to sea by his parents. While he is gone, his distraught sweetheart is sent to an asylum, but her faith is rewarded when he returns to rescue her.⁵

The text of "Be Thou My Vision" is from an 8th century Irish poem, "Rob tu mo bhoile, a Comdie Cride," translated by Mary E. Byrne in 1905. The tune of this lullaby is called "Slane," after the Hill of Slane upon which today are the ruins of a Franciscan Monastery built in 1512. From the Hill of Slane, which rises above the Boyne River Valley, can be seen the Hill of Tara, after which the house in Gone with the Wind was named.^{6 7} Composer Bob Chilcott, former boy chorister and choral scholar at King's College, Cambridge, was a member of The King's Singers for 12 years. He is active as a commissioned composer and conducts the Chorus of the Royal College of Music in London. In February, he was one of the first conductors outside the American continent to be invited to conduct an Honor Choir at the National Convention of the American Choral Directors Association in New York City.⁸

"The Coolin" is one of a cycle of three songs by American composer Samuel Barber (1910-1991). The texts of his songs are based on the poems of James Stephens (1882-1950), a leader of the Irish literary Renaissance, which aimed to revive Irish folklore, legends, and traditions in new literary works. Stephens models his own poems "after the Irish of [Antoine] Raftery" (1784-1835), a blind traveling bard whose significant body of work is still being translated from the original Gaelic. Legend has it that Raftery, after freeing the fairies from a spell, was offered one wish. To the fairies' surprise, Raftery chose the gift of poetry over the gift of sight, ensuring him a long arm of influence through the dissemination of his poetry and the number of Irish pubs that respectfully bear his name. The following poem, translated by Douglas Hyde, was written by Raftery in response to the question, "Who are you?"

I am Raftery the poet,
Full of hope and love,
With eyes that have no light,
With gentleness that has no misery.

Going west upon my pilgrimage
By the light of my heart,
Feeble and tired
To the end of my road.

Behold me now,
And my face to a wall,
A-playing my music
Unto empty pockets.⁹

"The Coolin" is Gaelic for "the maiden with fair, flowing locks." Though often attributed to Raftery, it is based on an Irish tale of unknown origin and exists in many versions. "Come with me, under my coat…"

"A Welsh Lullaby," or "Suo Gan," is often used as a carol at Christmastime and will be sung tonight in Welsh. This version is an arrangement by K. Lee Scott, "teacher, musician and composer of sacred music, choral music and hymns," who holds degrees in choral music from the University of Alabama and who travels extensively as a conductor and clinician in the United States, Canada, and Africa.¹⁰ The melody of "Suo Gan" was used by Steven Spielberg in the motion picture Empire of the Sun.

"O Whistle and I'll Come to Ye," with words by Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) of "Auld Lang Syne" fame, is sung tonight by the Chamber Singers of the DeKalb Choral Guild. As arranged by Mack Wilberg (b. 1955), Associate Director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the secondary vocal parts playfully counter the traditional melody and rhythm, an apt reflection of the flirtatious text. Wilberg also uses this opportunity to add several iterations of the "Scotch snap," a rhythm typical of Scotch folk tunes in which a short note value is followed by a longer one. With due respect to the purists among us, the language spoken by Rabbie Burns and immortalized in his poems was not a Celtic language. Nonetheless, we feel justified in paying tribute to him for almost single-handedly reviving the Scottish vernacular through his poetry and rescuing hundreds of Scottish folksongs from extinction.¹¹

"Mouth Music" is not just the title of this particular tune from the Hebrides, a chain of islands off the west coast of Scotland, but a generic term for vocal music intended to accompany dancing in the absence of instruments such as bagpipes and fiddles. In this style, a Celtic and Gaelic tradition also referred to as lilting, diddling, or port-a-beul ("tunes from the mouth"), vocalists imitate the instruments with the precision required for dancing. As Kenna Campbell puts it, "You can't just break off and have a pint at the end of a phrase - if you do, someone's left with a leg up in the air!" Heard tonight is a transcription by Joseph Byrd of a version sung by Irish musicians Dolores Keane and John Faulkner.¹² The bodhran (pronounced "bŏw'-rŭn") accompanying this performance is an Irish one-sided drum traditionally made of goatskin. According to Maureen Patrick, it is linked to St. Stephen's Day, when wren hunters pound on their drums in a ritual dating back to pre-Christian days.¹³ The bodhran, a word which mean "deaf" or "haunting" in Irish, may have originally been used as a tray for collecting turf or for winnowing grain. As a drum, it is played with a tipper and varied in tone by pressing the back of the skin.¹⁴

Sources consulted in preparing the program notes:

¹ www.celticleague.org

² www.imbas.org

³ With a Poet's Eye: New American Choral Music, Chanticleer Records, 1991, liner notes by Arizeder Urreizteita

⁴ www.penguin.co.uk

⁵ GaelForce 2001, www.muldoonspicnic.tripod.com/prognotes.htm

⁶ "Larry Marretta's Music Notes from Sunday Morning Services at FCCB," November 17, 2002.

⁷ www.soluna.com/slane

⁸ www.bobchilcott.com

⁹ Rivendell's History Page, www.watson.org/rivendell/historyceltanthology.html

¹⁰ www.kleescott.com/BIOPage.html

¹¹ www.heartoscotland.com/Categories/RobertBurns.htm

¹² "Mouth Music" by Dolores Keane and John Faulkner, earthsongs, 1997, published by Round Tower Records

¹³ www.geocities.com/yasminamahal/bod_def.htm

¹⁴ www.irishop.com/badhrans.html