Mick O’Brien, Emer Mayock, Aoife Ní Bhriain – More Tunes from the Goodman Manuscripts
Is Mise Records – Out Now
Every now and then some music turns up that exemplifies everything that is wondrous and uplifting about the kind of music you love, and you have immediately to tell everyone who might appreciate it quite how necessary it is for them to have it in their life. More Tunes from the Goodman Manuscripts is one of those albums, in this case in the world of instrumental Irish traditional music.
Mick O’Brien, Emer Mayock and Aoife Ní Bhriain play with a rare level of deft, loving care and infectious exuberance. They are three musicians with serious pedigrees. Mick (uilleann pipes/flute/ whistle), is primarily known as a piper, has made a much-commended solo album, May Morning Dew (1996), and two indispensable albums with Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh – Kitty Lie Over and The Deadly Buzz (the latter reviewed here). Emer (flute/ whistle/pipes) has two solo albums to her name, Merry Bits of Timber (1996), and Playground (2001), has been a member of Afro Celt Sound System since Further In Time (2001), and plays on Rhiannon Gidden’s and Francesco Turrisi’s forthcoming album They’re Calling Me Home. Aoife (fiddle, viola, concertina) has played in Riverdance and other stage shows, a member of the avant garde string quintet Wooden Elephant, collaborated with Martin Hayes, guested on Julie Fowlis’s alterum (2017) and on Birkin Tree’s Five Seasons album (2019), and had a gorgeous track from her pending debut solo album included on the excellent Raelach Records compilation from last year (reviewed here).
This is the second recording from the trio of music collected by James Goodman (1828-1896) in the southwest of Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century. In his later years, Goodman was a canon of the Church of Ireland and Professor of Irish at Trinity College Dublin. In separate RTÉ podcasts, recorded to coincide with the release of the album, Mick and Emer both make the point that as a music collector Goodman lived in the community where he did most of his collecting and that, as a player himself (was an uilleann piper and may have also played flute), he understood the tunes he set out to capture. It is interesting to note that, although the region Goodman did most of his collecting in perhaps now better known for polkas and slides, it seems (if we judge from the trios selections – for both albums) that the manuscripts include a good number of reels, jigs and airs.
By 1866 Goodman had compiled an exceptional manuscript collection of some 2,300 mainly traditional tunes. After his death the collection was held in the Library of Trinity College Dublin and only published by the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) in two volumes put together by Hugh & Lisa Shields in 1998 and 2013, with both volumes now fully accessible on the ITMA website (omitting those tunes copied from printed sources). The first album of tunes from manuscripts by the trio (same title without the More), which is itself highly recommended, was made in 2012.
The combination of instrumentation that featured significantly on the earlier album, of pipes (Mick), flute (Emer) and fiddle (Aoife), is used here to stirring effect on a number of cheerful sets of reels and jigs, and also on an outstanding air, Ceann Dubh Dileas (My dark-haired darling). The air begins with Emer playing flute the melody over a drone on pipes, and gradually builds throughout, with fiddle and then the pipes picking up the tune; it’s a simple but very effective and haunting arrangement.
The album also though marks a departure from the first album, with a wider range of arrangements, at times adding different instruments in varied combinations or sometimes, conversely, paring things right back. The resulting sound is a rich palette that is compelling and shines a fresh light on these great traditional tunes. On The Cup of Tea / The Kerry Lassie, a set of reels, the first of which bears resemblance to The Copperplate which is a widely played tune (though inevitably there is more than one tune with the same name), I hear Aoife’s viola adding low rhythmic counterpoint to fiddle, flute and maybe also whistle bouncing off it. On Siobhán Mhór, or The Eagle’s Whistle, another tune recorded by others in a different version (as the title track of founding Chieftain’s fiddle player Michael Tubridy’s 1978 solo album, by Boys of the Lough and by Tim Edey, both with Frankie Gavin and Rick Eping, and on his 2019 Being Myself), Aoife takes the floor more or less solo, probing this lovely waltz through a captivating interpretation, which in places has viola providing a drone to the fiddle.
Pádruig, Píobaire (Patrick the Piper), is a delightfully simple slow jig in a set played as a whistle duet, underpinned by a drone on the pipes and maybe also viola. The set picks up pace with the contrasting Quadrille, a decidedly Galician sounding tune (credit to a musician friend for pointing that out), begging the intriguing question as to how that tune made its way to Ireland. We are also treated another duet, this on the pipes, on a set of powerful reels – The Wash-woman / The Aberdeen Reel / The Merry Time of Easter. And to more than amply demonstrate the trio’s versatility, Bonny Anne / I’m Over Young to Marry Yet / The Drummond Lasses is a lively set of reels, with dual flutes, bringing to mind a pair of swallows chasing each other here, carried on a current of foot-tapping fiddle playing.
Mick O’Brien said in the RTE Rolling Wave podcast that Goodman wrote down only the basic melody of the tunes, so musicians reading the tunes are given no directions as to rhythms or variations. For the trio that is a distinct opportunity rather than a constraint. On a set of reels – Raithinneach, a Bhean Bheag’ / Gregg’s Pipes – the first tune, which starts charmingly, if unexpectedly, on concertina, and then flute, joined by a drone from the pipes, has an almost march like quality to it. Reel / Polka is, somewhat confusingly, a set of polkas. Despite its title, it seems that the notation of the first tune suggested a character closer to a polka, and as Emer explained to RTE, ‘we don’t know how the tunes were played in the nineteenth century’.
The importance of the role of collectors in making a written record of traditional music, whilst often contested, is self-evident. What is exceptional about James Goodman, in addition to the point about him not coming in from outside the place where the music was played and being himself a participant, was that he did most of his collecting in the period before the famine in Ireland in the mid-1800s. The manuscripts therefore provide a unique glimpse into traditional music in Ireland before the immense loss of life and displacement that the famine caused, with the attendant substantial impact on the oral transmission of the music. Goodman wrote about his intention in the following terms (of his time, assuming pipers to be men; Emer’s role in these recordings is fittingly of our own time):
The labour of writing has been rendered easy by my desire to preserve the music of my native province, which is fast becoming extinct, and should this work come into the hands of anyone desirous of becoming a proficient on the Irish pipes, he will have without any trouble, a supply of suitable music which it cost me some years to collect and set down in this form. James Goodman, 1861 (quoted on the ITMA website)
The trio it seems took great pleasure in sifting through the 2,000 or so tunes in the manuscripts, firstly identifying tunes that they all liked, and then exploring which tunes might go together to makes up the sets for the album. Emer Mayock talked about them not trying to faithfully replicate how the tunes might have sounded over 150 years ago but rather playing ‘our interpretation of what works for us’. As the listener you get a sense of being taken on that journey of discovery with the trio, and of sharing in the fun they had taking the notes on the page and turning them into these bright, appealing and varied arrangements.
More Tunes from the Goodman Manuscripts has the intimacy and warmth of a pub session (remember those?), as these three intrepid, adroit musicians inhabit the tunes they have excavated with an inspired enthusiasm. The album pulls you in and has you expectant for what melodic delights and mix of instrumentation are coming next. I’m sure James Goodman would have found as much joy in listening to Mick O’Brien, Emer Mayock and Aoife Ní Bhriain’s exceptional offerings from his historic collection as you will.
Order via Bandcamp: https://goodmantunestrio.bandcamp.com/album/more-tunes-from-the-goodman-manuscripts