ANCIENT IRISH MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS - 7th to 10th CENTURY

The nine instruments in general use among the ancient Irish including the professional names of the various performers were:

1. Cruitire [harper]; 
2. Timpanach [timpanist]; 
3. Buinnire [flute player]; 
4. Cornaire [horn player]; 
5. Cuisleannach [player on the bag-pipes]; 
6. Fedanach [fife player]; 
7. Graice [horn player]; 
8. Stocaire and Sturganaidhe [trumpeter]; 
9. Pipaire [piper].

The CRUIT is called crwth by the Welsh, and crowde by the English. Originally a small harp or lyre, plucked with the fingers (as in the case of the Roman fidicula), it was subsequently played with a bow, and is mentioned by an Irish poet who flourished about four hundred years before Christ. 

It is justly regarded as the progenitor of the Crotta, the German Rotte, and the Italian Rota. St. Venantius Fortunatus (the great Christian poet, A.D. 530-609) calls the Cruit a CROTTA; and we learn from Gerbert that it was an oblong-shaped instrument, with a neck and finger-board, having six strings, of which four were placed on the fingerboard and two outside it—the two open strings representing treble G, with its lower octave. 

In fact, it was a small harp, and was generally played resting on the knee, or sometimes placed on a table before the performer, after the manner of the zither.

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The CLAIRSEACH was the large harp, "the festive or heroic harp of the chiefs and ladies, as also of the bards," having from 29 to 58 strings, and even 60, but as a rule 30 strings. Its normal compass was from CC (the lowest string on the violoncello) to D, in all 30 notes, that is, about four octaves. 

It was generally tuned in the scale of G, but, by alteration of one string a semitone (effected by means of the ceis or harp fastener), the key might be changed to C or D. "In those keys the diatonic scale was perfect and complete, similar to ours now in use." It may also be added that the ancient Irish played the treble with the left hand, and the bass with the right.

The so-called "Brian Boru's Harp," though not dating from the time when the hero of Clontarf flourished, has a venerable antiquity, and was almost certainly a harp of the O'Briens. 

It really dates from about the year 1220, having been made for the famous Donnchadh Cairbre O'Brien, King of Thomond, whose death is recorded on the 8th March, 1242-43. 

A detailed account of its workmanship is given by Petrie and other writers; and it is here sufficient to mention that it is furnished with 30 metallic strings, having a compass from C below the bass stave to D above the treble stave.

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The timpan was a small stringed instrument, having from three to eight strings, and was played with a bow or plectrum, being also called a benn crot, or peaked harp.

The body was a small flat drum or tympanum (whence the name) with a short neck added; the strings were stretched across the flat face and along the neck, and were tuned and regulated by pins or keys and a bridge, something like the modern guitar, or banjo, but with the neck much shorter. It was played with a bow, or with both a bow and plectrum, or with the finger-nail; and the strings were probably stopped with the fingers of the left hand, like those of a violin.

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The Fiddle was used in Ireland as early as the eighth century, as is quoted by O'Curry from the poem on the Fair of Carman:

"Pipes, fiddles, men of no valour, bone players and pipe players; a crowd hideous, noisy, profane, shriekers and shouters."  

IRISH MUSIC FROM THE 6TH TO THE 9TH CENTURY

By the end of the 9th Century, the ancient Irish were responsible for the spread of music in Europe.

• They were acquainted with the ogham music tablature in pre-Christian ages; 
• They had their battle-marches, dance tunes, folk songs, chants. and hymns in the fifth century
• They were the earliest to adopt the neums or neumatic notation, for the plain chant of the Western Church; 
• They modified, and introduced Irish melodies into, the Gregorian Chant; 
• They had an intimate acquaintance with the diatonic scale long before it was perfected by Guido of Arezzo; 
• They were the first to employ harmony and counterpoint; 
• They had quite an army of bards and poets; 
• They employed blank verse, elegaic rhymes, consonant, assonant, inverse, burthen, dissyllabic, trisyllabic, and quadrisyllabic rhymes, not to say anything of caoines, laments, elegies, metrical romances, etc.; 
• They invented the musical arrangement which developed into the sonata form; 
• They had a world-famed school of harpers; 
• They generously diffused musical knowledge all over Europe.

IRISH MUSIC FROM THE 3rd TO THE 6TH CENTURY

In ancient Ireland the systems of law, medicine, poetry, and music, according to Keating, "were set to music, being poetical compositions." Vallancey tells us that the bards, specially selected from amongst noble youths of conspicuous stature and beauty, "had a distinctive dress of five colours, and wore a white mantle and a blue cap ornamented with a gold crescent." The curriculum for an ollamh (bard) extended to twelve years and more, at the expiration of which he was given the doctor's cap, that is, the barréd, and the title of ollamh.

• Cormac Mac Art, Ard Righ [Head King] of Ireland (A.D. 254-277), had a chief bard and musicians
• The Bards were poets, not musicians
• They were a literary people long before the coming of St. Patrick
• The invented the earliest form of musical tabulature (Oghams)
• The Greek Harp was introduced to Ireland by the Melisians, 
• They played 9 musical instruments (sic)
• They sang songs worshipping Apollo, played on the harp
• They demonstrated the first certain examples of rhyme
• They had the Diatonic scale

Irish psalmody and hymnody were distinctly Celtic in the first half of the seventh century, and were mainly "adaptations" of the old Irish pre-Christian melodies.

The very word ogham suggests at once a musical signification, and, therefore, it is of the very highest importance to claim for Ireland the earliest form of musical tablature.

Ancient Irish Music: Prior to 1100, there were no unified forms of musical tablature

The main reason there is no written record of Irish music prior to 1100 has to do with the systems in which the music was taught and performed:

The pre-Christian Irish had their ogham music-tablature, and the Irish of the seventh-eleventh century had the neumal accents, after which the Guidonian system was adopted The Guidonian hand was known in Ireland at the close of the eleventh century

Ogham = An ancient British and Irish alphabet, consisting of twenty characters formed by parallel strokes on either side of or across a continuous line.  The very word ogham suggests at once a musical signification, and, therefore, it is of the very highest importance to claim for Ireland the earliest form of musical tablature.
http://www.claddaghdesign.com/blog/history/a-guide-to-the-ogham-alphabet/

A neume (/ˈnjuːm/; spelled neum in, for instance, the Solesmes publications in English)[1][2][3] is the basic element of Western and Eastern systems of musical notation prior to the invention of five-line staff notation. The word is a Middle English corruption of the Greek word for breath (πνεῦμα pneuma).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neume

The Guidonian hand was known in Ireland at the close of the eleventh century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guidonian_hand

The Ancient Irish were largely responsible for the Gregorian Chants

In regard to the so-called Gregorian Sacramentarium which Pope Adrian sent to the Emperor Charlemagne by John, Abbot of Ravenna, between the years 788 and 790, Dr. Haberl, one of the greatest living authorities on Church Music, says that "it was altered in the copying, and Gallican elements were introduced." Moreover, it contained only the Roman Station-festivals, with additions made by Popes that came after Gregory," so that Duchesne justly observes that "it should rather be called the Sacramentarium Hadrianum." The Pope also sent two famous Roman singers, Peter and Romanus (author of the Romanian notation) to the Irish monastery at St. Gall's, who brought with them a faithful copy of the Gregorian Antiphonarium, but Duchesne considers that this great musical work was also altered by the monks of St. Gall.

The Celtic monks, from the time of Sedulius, unquestionably introduced and composed many original melodies for the early plain-chant books, and these musical arrangements were afterwards retained in the service of the Church. As a matter of fact, the name Cantus Gregorianus, or Gregorian Chant, is first mentioned in the first half of the eleventh century, by William of Hirschau, who died July 5th, 1091.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelasian_Sacramentary

"Ar Éirinn 'ní neórainn cé hí."

"For Ireland I would not tell her name"—"Ar Éirinn 'ní neórainn cé hí." a boat-song by Cormac MacCullenan, Prince-Bishop of Cashel, who died in 908

Ancient Irish Music: St. Notker Balbulus, the author of this valuable book of hymns, about the year 870, is the inventor of Sequences

St. Notker Balbulus, the author of this valuable book of hymns, about the year 870, is the inventor of Sequences.

Sequences were also called Tropes, just as Tropes, properly so-called, were denominated Proses. Although the original meaning of Sequence was a prolongation of the last syllable of Alleluia by a series of neumes, jubili, or wordless chant, yet the name was more generally given to a melody following the Epistle, before the Gospel.

Quoted in the Book of Lismore for an explanation of the term Sequence: "Notker, Abbot of St. Gall's, made [invented] sequences, and Alleluia after them in the form in which they are."

In process of time a special Sequence was introduced for every Sunday and feast-day, but Pope Pius V. eliminated all but five.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notker_the_Stammerer

The words "In the midst of life we are in death," quoted as Scriptural, but the text is only one of the many contributions to the Sacred Liturgy due to Irish writers and composers.

Not only was it superstitiously supposed to be a preservative against death, but the singing of it was believed by many to cause death; and hence, the Council of Cologne, in the twelfth century, forbade the chanting of "Media Vita" without the express permission of the Ordinary of the diocese.