Traditional Singing

The Rev. E. O'Callaghan, of St. Paul's, Arran Quay, lectured on "Irish Traditional Singing" in the Father Mathew Hall on Monday night. Very few will be found to agree with all that he said, but the majority of those interested in Irish music and in traditional singing must feel thankful to him for his defence of the "old strain" singing, and for his clear statement of the differences between the traditional and the modern styles.

"Song," said the lecturer, " is a union of music with language, of melody with speech. It is, however, a sort of speech rather than a kind of music. This is its true nature, and from it the law for rendering it must be deduced, and I venture to suggest that it is here at the very root of the matter that the divergence of the tyro methods begin, and that the modern method starts with a false definition, with a misconception of the very nature of songs.

This union is very natural since speech is impossible without some degree of music. Music is only agreeable, rhythmic sound, and therefore it enters into the constitution of speech."

To subordinate sense to, sound is evidently unreasonable, and, therefore, inartistic. But if the words are to retain their own emphasis while being sung, it follows that we must impose their emphasis on the music.

The music most be put to the words, and not the words to the music. In good singing the melody should not merely accompany the words, it should actually dissolve with them. Just as a good accompanist not merely plays along with the singer, but follows him, and identifies his accompaniment with the singer's rendering of the song.

For song is really speech accompanied by melody; the speaker accompanies his own words with the air. We shall see directly how scientifically and how completely the traditional singer achieves this supreme and most essential result, and how impossible it is to votaries of the modern style; and when you have made the comparison I trust that you will draw the conclusion which I have drawn, viz., that traditional singing is true, and, therefore, good singing, while modern singing is false singing, and, therefore, had singing.

Please observe that I do not say that modern singing is bad music. It may result in splendid music, and at the same time be very bad singing." The Irish tradition of singing is a threefold tradition: (a) A tradition of intonation, (b) A tradition of rhythm; (c) A tradition of taste.

The question of the scale of old Irish music is one of equal importance from the standpoint of art and of the history of music, Its solution is in-dispensable to a true Its of the character of our national music. Free rhythm is built on feet, fixed rhythm is built on bars. The difference in rhythm between the traditional and the modem singer is simply this : the latter always sings in bars, the former sings in feet.

I daresay it will be news to any modern singers present to hear that a song can be sung in any other way except in bars. Nevertheless, song is as old as humanity, while bars were not used in vocal music even as late as Palestrina. It is proverbial that great artistes never sing a song as it is written. They feel obliged to emancipate themselves, at least in part, from the tyranny of the bar.

Surely this fact, ought to convince one that there is something radically false in the modern way of writing and of singing of song. That something is the employment of bars, for we shall see bar metre is fitted for instrumental music only.

"We have already seen that if a song be properly sung the singer must be speaking. All his voice moves up and down the succession of intervals that constitute the music. This is what strikes one at once in traditional singing. This is what makes it possible to listen to the same music repeated twenty times over in the course of a sung ballad without any sense of monotony.

Beauty of meaning is incomparably higher than beauty of sound; just as beauty of form is nobler than beauty of colour. The beauty of a song arises from the blending together of three charms, all very great, it is true, still very different in quality and very unequal in worth. These are (1) the charm of the words, (2) the charm of the melody, and (3) the charm of the singer's voice. Artistic feeling and taste are shown in the tray in which these three are combined.

Good taste demands that the voice should be subordinated to the melody; and both the melody and the voice should be entirely subordinated to the utterance of the words. This is the true order of these elements of song among themselves, and the beauty of the whole depends on how it is preserved."

A way must be found for writing songs according to the traditional rendering. Many are afraid that this is impossible. The fact is that it is quite easy. Melody has been written without bars for centuries, and I have been endeavouring to show in this lecture that it is the only way in which it can be correctly written.

This is the way Gregorian Chant is written, and we have only to substitute the round-headed modern note for the Gregorian square one, adopt the system of grouping of the Gregorian notation, i.e. gather the notes into bunches of unequal numbers but of equal duration and the work is done. Last August I took down a song in this way from a traditional singer.

I wrote it on a blackboard, and had it sung by a number of persons who had only this notation to guide them, and they perfectly reproduced the traditional rhythm and phrasing. Lastly, if traditional singing is to hold its own it cannot afford to dispense with the manifest advantage of accompaniment."