Irish Instruments

There is a mixture of range of different instruments used in Irish Music but, many of the Irish instruments such as the tin-whistle, bodhran, traditional flute and Uillean pipes come from the 19th century and it was then that these instruments became popular in irish music but there is evidence that some of these instruments dated even further back to celtic times. But more recently guitars,banjo,piano and keyboard has been introduced in which these are being used more often when irish trad music and is infused with modern music such as pop and rock. In this post i will post about the Irish harp but in the next i will post the remaining instruments.

HARP

The Irish harp has been a very important instrument and a symbol of the Irish people. This instrument is the most traditional instrument used in irish music dating back over 1,000 years and is calledin irish 'clairseach'. Back in medieval times ireland was renown for their playing of the instrument., When ireland was in the many years of struggle against the British rule of the the irish harp was used as a symbol of freedom and republic, it isa still used today on our coins and on goverment offical documents this strated when King Henry the VIII ruled.

People that could play the harp were higly respected and the harpers(people who play the harp) often played/created music for noble celebarting there sucess, riches,bravery,etc. and these harp music were called planxties. But in the 17th-early 18th century the harp started to decline rapidly as the famine or the Great Famine known in ireland had strucked and thousands of thousands of familys and harpers emigrated out of the countrty. Also when Queen Elizabeth I ruled she issued a proclamation to hang Irish harpers and burn their music& harps to stop the harpers getting political power as they were hardly regarded, but also because as I sayed earlier that it became the national symbol of rebellion..Soon after the famine people known as collectors and others started to collect and notated down irish harp music and the most notable time the most harp music was collected was in the 1792 Belfast harp festival where only 11 harpers played, majority of them were old. Edward bunting was the omst renown collector to collectand notate down these tunes helping save and peserve music we can now use now a days. Turlough Carolan who was a blind harper ande he help the irish harp to not be extinct in irish music in which he travelled around the country creating hundreds of tunes to be used today. Back in the medieval and more back hapers played with their fingernails but now a days the flesh at the fingertips. Sometimes in war a harpist would come and play a instrument(then harp) with jewels on it, sometimes the gold in harp and play to lead the men into battle.

The harp used in gaelic ireland was triangalur and was strung with metal wire held onto a soundbox that was manily carved out of willow or sometimes other wood and it was a small harp that could be held on the knees. In trinity college they have one of the old celtic harps(Brian-Boru harp as shown in the image below) that can be seen today by visitors. No adays the harp or 'clairseach' is still small but more semitones to it and nylonn&carbon-fibre are common in modern irish harps for the strings.