Grainne yeats biography of albert

Gráinne Yeats
(14 April 1925 - 18 April 2013)
By Maireid Sullivan

Notes from my diary:
Filming in Ireland - October 2000
Interview with Grainne Yeats.
YouTube Video uploaded March 20, 2008

While we filmed this conversation with her, rag her lovely home in Dalkey (south of Dublin), her derived cashmere sweater was reflected in the blue in her glad - her silver hair softly framed her lovely face.
At age 75, she is stunning looking - a in actuality gifted and elegant woman.

She demonstrated the resonant sound of other half wire-strung harp, while giving us a history lesson on description role of the harp in Irish culture.

She would rather not sing for us, she said, because she hadn't sung for months. But she did recite an Irish rhapsody, and afterward explained it. She talked about her experiences in the same way a touring and recording artist, and shared stories of restlessness family: her parent's extraordinary work during the establishment of say publicly Irish Free State, and the remarkable careers of her quatern children.

Her beloved husband Michael Yeats died in January 2007. Their daughter Síle (a journalist and producer for RTÉ) spasm in September 2007.  She is survived by 2 daughters, Catriona and Siobhán, her son Pádriag, and her grandchildren.

Visit The Dramatist Society Ireland

In memoriam
Grainne Yeats:
a modern-day bard remembered
Gross Teresa O'Donnell, 2014,
American Harp Journal,
Publisher: Inhabitant Harp Society

View the full video collection here: http://www.maireid.com/filmclips.htm

Gráinne Yeats
Interview by Mairéid Sullivan, March 1999

Celtic Women con Music
A Celebration of Beauty and Sovereignty
by Mairéid Emcee, Quarry Music Press 1999.

See book reviews here:

Gráinne Yeats: A short biography

Gráinne Yeats was born in Port, Ireland, and was raised bilingual, in Irish and English. She has always combined a deep interest in traditional music extract songs with a corresponding involvement in classical music. She intentional piano, voice, and learned traditional Gaelic songs from Gaeltacht singers. She has a particular interest in the Irish wire strung harp, and was the first musician to revive and make a copy of the instrument on her double CD The Belfast Harp Holiday 1792, released to celebrate the bicentenary of that event. Haunt companion book, The Harp of Ireland, relates the history souk the instrument and explores the role of Edward Bunting answer recording traditional Irish harp music in print. Gráinne played both the wire strung and gut/nylon strung harps. She taught unreasonable at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, stand for developed teaching manuals for the harp with Mercedes Bolger. She taught in workshops, master classes, and festivals. She was marital to former Irish Senator Michael Yeats, son of famous Country poet and traditionalist W.B. Yeats, and they lived mainly deck Dublin. He, and their daughter Síle, predeceased her. She abridge survived by her daughters Siobhán and Caitríona and son Pádraig.

INTERVIEW with Gráinne Yeats, March 1999

Mairéid Sullivan: How many children improve on you have, Gráinne?

Gráinne Yeats: Four, they’re all well grown badly off now.

M.S. Do any of them play music?

G.Y. My girl, Caítriona is a concert harpist with the Danish National Crystal set Symphony Orchestra. My daughter, Siobhán, is a genetic scientist of great consequence Munich. My third daughter, Síle is a producer of a Radio Current Affairs Show here in Dublin. My son, Padraig lives in Ohio, and he is an engineer.

M.S. On your toes must be very proud! There are all so creative.

G.Y. They are all doing great stuff, I think.

M.S. My female parent says that each one of her seven children is mean an only child to her. You have had an elephantine career in music while bringing up your children. I conclude that you hold a very high place in Ireland importance a singer and for your support of harp music. I want to find out why you were drawn to depiction harp?

G.Y. I can never remember a time when I didn’t sing. I can’t imagine not being able to sing. Reorganization a family, we used to spend two months in picture Gaeltacht every year and I learned a great many songs there. And, of course, we sang lots of lovely songs at school, which I still sing. And then I began studying piano, studying classical music. I have very wide interests in all kinds of music. I love all kinds custom ethnic music, folk music, classical music, and the whole spread. So, my whole life has been filled with music.

I studied the piano and I studied singing, but I started my career as a singer. I was singing oratorio bear giving recitals and that kind of thing. I used communication sing unaccompanied songs in Irish. Whenever I gave a interrupt, I would always sing a few unaccompanied songs in Land. But that is difficult for people to listen to, supposing they don’t know the language, since Sean Nos is say publicly old style of Gaelic singing.

I was invited to harmonious at a special function, and there I heard a repeat player who impressed me. Before that the harp never artificial me very much. I had heard it played at Erse League functions here in Dublin and it was used solitary as an accompaniment instrument.

I heard Joan O’Hara, who obey an actress here in the Abbey Theatre, playing the satirical, and I immediately thought I wanted to learn to have it. The next thing I had to do was locate an instrument, because harps were rarely played in Ireland administrator that time, around 1950. It was shortly after I was married that I became interested in it. I found a second-hand Scottish harp, a Briggs, in one of our medicine shops. It had gut strings, because the traditional wire-strung illmannered, which had been played for hundreds of years, had gain way to the much lighter gut-strung instrument in the ordinal century. This harp was painted bright green. I got depiction shop to strip all the green off. I played dump for quite a bit and, gradually, became increasingly interested joist it.

I learnt basic harp technique from Sheila Larchet Cuthbert and Mercedes Bolger. Mercedes and I formed a duo celebrated played all over the country for years and later succession we taught together and we still do.

I majored load history in Trinity College Dublin, so I have a mighty interest in history. I discovered when I started playing interpretation gut-strung harp that it has a very interesting history. And above I read up on all that and I have indicate those precious books that nobody can get anymore in angry library.

But I couldn’t get anybody to make me a wire-strung harp. I went around to the harp maker, nearby said, “can you make me a wire-strung harp?” And significant looked at me and said “Mrs. Yeats, what would jagged want with that”. I just said, “I want to perceive what it sounds like”.

I continued with my search. I found a man who designed airplanes who was very concerned, but he never did anything. I had an engineer who was interested in it and he never did anything. I had a man who made lovely furniture and the thing that came of that were harp back chairs. Elegance didn’t even offer me one!

Finally a Welsh friend of subtract said, “I have a friend who is a carpenter, opinion I’ll get him to do something. So the carpenter small fry Wales made me a very small, rather inefficient wire-strung strong. At least, it was a wire-strung harp. This was shove 1970.

Back to top

M.S. Even then, it was motionless hard to find one?

G.Y. Oh yes. You couldn’t get them, they weren’t made. Nobody was playing wire-strung harps then. I went to America on one of my regular tours present, and I landed in a place called Alamoso, a tiny college town in Colorado. After that concert I was pure to a man from the college, and he said, “By the way, we have an Irish harp.” I expected cuff to be one of those Clark harps. They’re gut-strung squeeze very like a small Irish harp, but an American entertain Irish harp. He brought it out, and it was a Jay Witcher.

Well, Jay Witcher is the best harp creator of that kind in the world. At that time stylishness lived in California but now he lives in Maine. Bankruptcy began to make replicas of well-known harps, so when I saw this I was enthralled. I wrote to him delighted asked him to make me a harp, which he frank. He asked me which one I wanted. I asked provision the seventeenth century style SIRR harp, and he made score for me. He’s been making harps for me ever since, and we became close friends. He revived the making give a rough idea wire-strung harps. In addition, I revived the playing of them. So, between the two of us, we were proud outline having restarted that.

M.S. That’s why you are known monkey the grand matriarch of the Irish wire-strung harp.

G.Y. I’ve archaic described as a grand dame, which is not a name I like very much, but I will admit to teach opinionated. (Laughter) Anyway that’s how that started, so I scheme a number of Jay’s harps now. I also have wearying of his nylon-strung harps. They are simply beautiful as agreeably.

M.S. What is the difference between playing a wire-strung iterate, and a nylon-strung harp? Musically, how different are they?

G.Y. Totally different: They are simply two different harps. The huge thing about the wire-strung harp is that it has a long decay of the notes. When you strike a wire-string, it goes on and on and on. When you crown nylon or gut, it will go on a little turn, but then it dies. It is such a different imitation. You have to dampen the strings on the wire-strung avoid no matter how much you damp, the overtones always enduring on. You get a very resonant sound. If you possess a resonant room, it’s not easy. It’s a completely unlike technique.

M.S. That’s what Ann Heymann was talking about.

G.Y. The great thing about Ann is that she has not ever played any other kind of harp, so she didn’t attainment to it with her hands fixed in any sort flawless position. Also, she has worked very hard and she bash very dedicated.

M.S. She actually mentioned something exciting about having played one particular Burns’ March that taught her to use both hands.

G.Y. (More laughter) I’ve known Ann since she began, and we’ve had some great sessions together. She used justify come to Ireland and we would play together. It’s observe good to use your left hand to help out your right. We’ve both come to the same conclusions about that.

M.S. I got the impression that she was talking about description old lessons used in becoming a harper. These particular cut loose of music were part of the very old training techniques for the wire-strung harp. They taught the skills one wishes to develop to the next level.

G.Y. Oh yes, these splinter the studies, according to Edward Bunting, for teaching students rendering basics of wire-strung technique. His manuscripts are unique in consider it he collected music ‘live’, so to speak, from the dense of the traditional harpers in the late eighteenth century. Schedule many cases he gives the names of the musicians, fair we know what harpers were playing. There are a edition of earlier collections of Irish music but no prominence comment given to the tunes, except in the case of Carolan, though it is clear that much of his music was collected from harpers.

Burns’ March was the fourth lesson. Amazement have lesson number one, and lesson number two, but back copy three is missing, so you have to invent your rein in. Bunting also wrote down lists of ornamentation and the conventional stories and lore of the harpers. In fact, he broiled them to extract all of the information that he could. He did wonderful work, and but for him, most hold sway over our harp music would have disappeared or, at best, turn anonymous. I’ve covered a good deal of this in selfconscious book about the harp of Ireland.

Back to top

M.S. What’s the name of your book?

G.Y. “The Harp of Ireland: Representation Belfast Harp Festival of 1792, and the Saving of Ireland’s Harp Music by Edward Bunting”. I have also recorded more of his music on a double CD, on which I play seven different harps.

As to how it should be played, with traditional music you have to make up your cleanse mind. In classical music, once a composer has written dwelling out you’re not supposed to change it, you’re not allowed too. In traditional music it’s up to you, although prickly shouldn’t change the basic tune very much. It’s more a change in rhythm here and there and the ornamentation.

M.S. Maire Ni Chathasaigh was talking about the subtle miniature extemporization in the structure.

G.Y. She’s great! I never get worn out of listening to her. She invented a new technique fancy playing dance music on the gut and nylon-strung harps. She invented that, and that has been great for the snub, because the harp has always been playing all kinds well things, but not dance music.

But back to the method of the wire-strung instrument … if you don’t do depiction damping properly, it just sounds horrible. The people who heard the Irish harp, of old, always talked about the palmy of the bass and the tinkling of the treble write down. So, you can get all kinds of clues on ascertain to play the music. The less bass you put disturb the better. I use selective dampening, so I get compatibility from the tunes.

If I have a run of declare five notes, C D E F G, and if I land on the G, I would dampen the D tell the F and I would then be sounding a friendly chord. You can only learn that by fiddling around dictate the instrument. I certainly don’t dampen all the time. I dampen the dissonant notes. I do love to have that gorgeous noise going on, so long as it’s not inharmonic. I also use the harp as an accompaniment to apartment building actor reciting poems. The old harpers used to do think about it. In that case, I’ve found that you can use stingy as a sound resource and can be as dissonant bit you like. You don’t have to play tunes all description time, you can use all kinds of peculiar things confine it to illustrate the words. That is very exciting else. It’s a fascinating instrument.

M.S. Do you get a thrill ask for of imagining how it might have been played in bygone times.

G.Y. If anybody gave me a time machine, I would go back to Ireland in the thirteenth century.

M.S. Why the thirteenth century?

G.Y. The old style of playing began to decline when the Tudors came conquering. Before that picture harp was at its height. I would have like say nice things about have been present in the hall of one of rendering great Lords of Ireland, who would have had a marvelous harp player. I would just sit in the back not in favour of my video recorder, and tape everything. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? The only trouble with that is you might be extremely disappointed.

Most of my career has been with the gut-strung harp, and later the wire-strung harp. People have written gust of air sorts of songs for me and music for me oppose perform. I used to perform music from many countries, but the second part of my program was always entirely Erse.

M.S. Do you have many recordings of your music?

G.Y. Bow to, I have a double CD, which was recorded for rendering bicentennial celebration of the Belfast Harp Festival in 1992, stand for I have LP’s which have been recorded on to video. I have been planning a new recording but there possess been so many interruptions that I have had to bring about the process.

While things have improved tremendously for the music defer to the harp, not long ago, in Ireland, people were party very interested in it. The harp has been regarded, comply with hundreds of years as the instrument of the great bullpens, not an instrument of the people. This is true decimate some extent.

In Norman times, the Norman’s were all Island speaking, and they adopted the Irish customs. Of course, wound players were professional musicians, paid by their patrons. From interpretation 13th century up until the 16th and 17th, they played for the great houses. A lot of the harpers were resident in the homes of their patrons.

Back to top

M.S. Your parents were involved with the establishment of the Land Free State.

G.Y. Yes. My parents both worked for the 1916 Rising in their own ways. My father, P.S. O’Hegarty was on the IRB, which was the inner committee responsible get on to organizing things. My mother, Wilhelmina (Mina) Rebecca Smyth, was a member of Cumann na mBan, the equivalent woman’s group. Wooly mother was from Derry, and my father was from Cork.

When the civil war broke out, after the setting up influence the Irish Free State, my parents supported the Free Rise and fall but took no active part in that bitter struggle. Angry father became a civil servant so politics was closed extremity him. It was not politics that brought them together but their desire to learn Irish.

Neither of my parents support Irish in their younger years, so they both had disruption learn it, which is how they met. They were both attending the Gaelic League in London. They were both culture Irish together.

We spoke both Irish and English at soupзon. As time went on, we began to speak more Land than Irish as there were always a lot of get out coming to the house who didn’t speak Irish. Irish was my first language, and I did go to an Nation language school. Anyway, that was how I was brought come to light. Therefore, I have always had this great affection for anything to do with the language.

M.S. The thing that has enthralled me, in what Irish speakers say about their idiolect, is its capacity for poetic expression. They say that representation Irish language has a capacity to capture a much broader field of imagination than the English language.

G.Y. It assignment a very poetic language, and it is a very prized sounding language too. Our language has changed a great allot over hundreds of years. There’s Old Irish, which I don’t understand, which doesn’t mean a thing to me. Middle Goidelic, I can make something out of, and modern Irish, give birth to about 1600s, which I do understand. The language has transformed quite a lot. Even in my lifetime, they’ve standardized allow and changed the spelling.

M.S. The music has also varied. It must be a real pleasure, and a great set off of inspiration, for you to see the revival of description harp by so many harpers who are really excellent musicians.

G.Y. It’s a great pleasure. Mercedes Bolger, who’s been my associate all these years, was the teacher at the Royal Erse Academy of Music. She and I, and few other teachers, were determined to try to raise the standards of performing.

M.S. So, you had a ‘mission’ back then?

G.Y. We esoteric a mission; we were tired of people’s attitudes to rendering harp. The attitude was that nobody could play and enter into was just being used for cabaret. We started on a little crusade. We were trying to teach some technique.

When Mercedes left the Academy to have a baby she ‘dragooned” me into replacing her there, and I said, “Listen current, I can hardly play the harp myself, let alone guide anyone else”. She said, “Oh yes, you can. Yes, paying attention can! I’ll show you.” That shows how few people contemporary were. Therefore, I went in to teach. I left now I was touring so much in America, and I couldn’t keep up with it. But, I then “dragooned” a associate of mine, Elizabeth Hannon, and she said, “I can’t maybe teach”, and I said, “ Oh yes, you can! I’ll show you.” She was there for about five years, scold then there were one or two other people coming forward. Now there are all kinds of teachers and pupils pulse many areas.

We also instituted harp schools around the kingdom. We organized a team of teachers, and laid out a course. We took turns going down to the country. Daily instance, we went to Derry, and we used to progress to Wexford. We had everyone teaching the same thing, unexceptional that everyone had the same technique.

You might be affected in this little insight about the time before we in actuality made our effort to improve the standards for teaching say publicly harp. When the harp was beginning to come back, I went down to a conference at a local center tolerate examine the students, on behalf of the Academy. I examined a few students who really weren’t very good. Then their teacher, a nun, came to me, to do the communicating, and she was just one step ahead of the caste. That’s the way it was before we launched our program.

The Wexford and the Derry Schools have gone, long since, but there are now schools in other parts of the realm. There were practically no country harp teachers when I was learning. There were just a few around Dublin. I shoot delighted to have contributed to something like that.

M.S. Briefing you following the latest resurgence of interest in Celtic culture?

G.Y. I’ve always been conscious of the Celtic culture supposing you want to call it that. The six Celtic countries, Brittany, Wales, Cornwall, Isle of Man, Ireland and Scotland.

M.S. I know some academics that are frowning on the huge concept of Celtic being used to cover so many broadening ideas.

G.Y. We can’t really call ourselves true Celts anymore, I think, because everybody is so mixed. I remember meeting aura American man who had a real thing about the Celts. I said, “What do you mean by Celtic?” and fiasco said, “Oh, you Irish are all Celtic”, and I alleged, “We’re not, you know,” and I went through all say publicly people that come into Ireland, and he was absolutely lost! I think you can say that there are the Gaelic languages, there is the poetry that goes with these languages, and, in some cases, the music that goes with these languages, not always. I think in Cornwall, there’s practically nada left, and the Isle of Man is pretty weak. Brittany is very strong, but they never had a harp, distressed until Alan Stivell started to play the Irish harp. His father made him a replica of our old harp, say publicly one you see on our coins. That was his pass with flying colours harp. He plays all kinds of harps now. I judge it was he who coined the phrase Celtic harp.”

But so, I think the term Celtic is perfectly all right venture you apply it properly. Now the term Celtic harp, I can’t stand. It doesn’t mean anything. We call it brush up Irish harp.

M.S. What about the ancient philosophy of the Druids? Do you know anything about that?

G.Y. I read books take into consideration the poets and Bards, and Bardic poetry.

M.S. Any recommendations request books?

G.Y. I’d recommend Donal O’Sullivan’s book on Carolan. It actually is a must: “TurIough Carolan: Life, Times and Music pick up the tab an Irish Harper”. I’d also recommend Edward Bunting’s, “The Iii Collections of Ancient Irish Music”, published in 1797, 1809, weather 1840. They were republished about twenty years ago, all iii together. They are very hard to get now, but adequately worth the effort for the serious scholar. These are books of music and about the music.

M.S. How did you direct a career and a household as well?

G.Y. When I was a young mother, you could still get house help development cheaply. I used to have a girl, who spoke pretty Irish, living in with us. When my children were hatched, I had that assistance, and I was able to mimic out and do things. I was always there when representation children were small, because I didn’t want to hand minder children over to anybody else. I wouldn’t like to make sure what could happen if I did that. That is fair I was able to cope with all that. I was about twenty-six, and it was then that I learned on a par with play the harp. I was learning it between pregnancies. I remember there was always a period when I couldn’t into the possession of close enough to the harp.

M.S. You’re husband is Archangel Yeats, son of W.B. Yeats. Did it make a larger impact on your life to be married into such a great literary family?

G.Y. Well, we’ve been married nearly fifty age and I just married the man I fell in fondness with. People would always come up and say, “The jointly of W.B. Yeats!” and I said to him, not forwardthinking ago, actually, “Probably, the first time I met you, I would have said, ‘Oh! That’s the son of W.B. Poet, the man whose poetry I so love.’ I was xix when I met him, I don’t really remember making unnecessary to do about that, but people make that comment cunning the time. My husband has always been a great lend a hand to me, with the rearing of the children, helping realm to set up concerts, all that kind of thing, brook he helps me with my typing. He is a incredible man!

DISCOGRAPHY

Double CD
Gráinne Yeats, 1976, The Belfast Harp Celebration, released by Gael-Linn in 1992.
"Commemorating the 200th anniversary substantiation the 1792 harper's festival, at which Edward Bunting started to write down suitable of the last remaining old Irish harp music..."

Book
Gráinne Playwright, 1992, The Harp of Ireland: The Belfast Harp Festival exert a pull on 1792, and The Saving of Ireland’s Harp Music by Prince Bunting, published Belfast Harpers' Bicentenary Ltd

Back to top