Of Love & Lamentation: Music of the Irish Harpers

Siobhán Armstrong is one of Europe’s foremost harpists playing medieval to 18th-century music on reconstructions of historical harps. She performs and records with prestigious vocal soloists and instrumentalists, period-instrument ensembles, orchestras and baroque opera companies in Ireland, England and further afield, mainly in Europe. Siobhán also works with leading traditional Irish singers and instrumentalists. The debut CD of her ensemble, The Irish Consort – Music, Ireland and the Sixteenth Century – has shed light on a neglected century in Irish music, and was an Irish Times international classical-music recordings top-five pick of 2021. As founding director of The Historical Harp Society of Ireland, Siobhán is spearheading the international rediscovery of Ireland’s iconic, ancient harp, strung in brass wires. This is the kind of instrument, with its delicious, melting sound, that she will be performing on in this concert.

For this afternoon concert at Doneraile Court, Siobhán will be playing a copy of the Downhill harp, the early 18th-century instrument that belonged to the county Derry harper, Dennis O’Hampsay. He was elderly in the 1790s when he met the teenaged Edward Bunting who transcribed music from him directly as the old virtuoso played it. This is how some of the repertory, and playing style, of the noble, 800+ year Irish harp tradition was saved just as it came to an end. Come and hear Siobhán turn these scribbled MS pages back into the exquisite airs, heart-rending laments, variation sets, and sparking dances that Bunting heard nearly 250 years ago, most of which have not been heard since. Hear too medieval Irish plainchant, and the music of the 16th- and 17th-century Tudor invaders who, even as they were decimating Gaelic society and culture, couldn’t resist the glorious sound of this harp, ironically employing Irish harpers here, and back home in Britain, to ravish their ears. Come have your own ears ravished!

This talk is presented by the Office of Public Works as part of the 2023 Cultural Programme at Doneraile Court.