Turlough O ‘ Carolan –arranged for guitar by Alan Grundy
Bergmann Edition: 12 pages
Turlough O ‘ Carolan, was of course the Irish blind harpist from the 17th Century whose music is still extremely well known and loved in spite of the fact that it has come down to us as melodies only. As a result of that all the arrangers of his music have added usually very appropriate harmonies to his wonderful tunes and made the pieces really something special. Moreover as his music is extremely folk/Irish in style, the harmonies often come to the arranger without any difficulty as it is immediately obvious how the piece was supposed to sound originally.
There are three short pieces here, but each one an absolute gem. Carolan’s Welcome is a 3 / 4 A minor piece with a lovely dancing feel to it and as I said before some beautifully memorable harmonies (provided by Alan Grundy of course) .It is , as are the other two, moderate only in difficulty and so a decent player can really get something out of this.
Carolan’s Dream is also in Am but is a slowish 4/4 with another wonderful set of harmonies and a very memorable melody, and a lovely piece to play and hear.
The final work is The Princess Royal and is another Am piece but this time in Alla Breve time. A very catchy melody and again lovely harmonies makes this a fitting close to this wonderful trio of pieces that really do catch your attention. I loved these ( as indeed I do a great deal of O’Carolan’s work that other players have arranged for guitar- there are quite a large number of books available ). Certainly they are not very long and so any player could put these into a spare 10 minute slot in his concert and make the audience very happy. Lovely!
Chris Dumigan
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