robably the two most consistently admired forms of Gaelic traditional culture are its music and its art. Even

       without any analysis there is such a strong perceived congruence between the two that, for example, hardly any collection of Irish dance tunes is ever published which does not feature examples of Irish knotwork design on its pages. I do not claim any priority in drawing attention to the parallels; this study is intended as a contribution to the Gaelic construction method and its underlying unity of thought.

By 'Gaelic' I mean Irish and Scottish. (Until someone comes up with a better word it will have to do; I know of no single word that refers to this particular cultural stream, which includes the Picts.) Although I will analyse and give examples of music primarily from the Irish tradition, the same principles hold good for the Scottish tradition. Modular repetition, particular forms of variation, subtle embellishment and so on are particularly evident in the piping traditions of the Highlands, Lowlands and Borders. There is, however, a greater tendency towards standardisation in Scottish traditional music as compared with the freer use in Ireland of invention within the parameters which I will try to clarify.

My aim in doing this is to give weight to the idea that different artistic forms of expression can be corollaries of each other in actual fact, rather than in any metaphorical sense. If so, this must be because they contain or arise out of principles which are not intrinsic to a created form but exist independently of it, and therefore inform other areas – perhaps even the whole range – of human activity.

Aesthetic principles

Seán Ó Riada describes the philosophy underlying Gaelic art in the introduction to his book Our Musical Heritage:

Traditional Irish art never adopted the Greco-Roman forms spawned by the Renaissance, which have become the basis of European art. Take the European notion of 'development': a development which moves in a crescendo of tension ending in a crisis the resolution of which produces catharsis. In any Beethoven symphony, a movement will start off with two contrasting musical ideas. These are developed, played off against one another, given new significance by being led through a series of different keys. This creates a gradually mounting tension until a climax is reached. At the climax the tension is resolved, producing a feeling of release, or catharsis, and the original musical ideas appear transfigured, as a result of what has happened to them. It is the same in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. At the beginning Oedipus is already doomed without knowing it. As the play proceeds, event after event brings him closer to realisation, and the tension mounts to a climax, with his realisation of his doom. The end follows quickly. This is the graph of a play by Shakespeare, of a Verdi opera, of a Hollywood film. It is the basis of European art. And it is quite foreign to Irish traditional art.

The simplest picture of traditional Irish art is the ancient symbol of the serpent with its tail in its mouth: 'In my end is my beginning'. It is essentially a cyclic form. You might represent it by drawing a curve, beginning at point A, widening out to form a series of almost-circles which overlap each other, and which themselves follow a circular path, so that the end of the last curve returns to the starting point at A.

            This graph or curve seems visually complex but it is fundamentally more realistic than the European graph, since it more truly corresponds with real life. It is, in fact, the graph of real life. Every day the sun rises, every day it sets. Every day possesses the same basic characteristics, follows the same fundamental pattern, while at the same time each day differs from the last in its ornamentation of events. The particular events of each day are, to the basic pattern of days, as the particular ornamentation of each verse of a song. This is the idea that has lain at the root of all Irish traditional art since pre-Christian times. It is represented in the carved stones of the great burial ground at Newgrange, in the curvilinear designs of the Book of Kells, in the old mythological stories, episodic and cyclical in form, in all Gaelic poetry—even in James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake; and in the sean nós singing which still survives as an art form today.

Ó Riada in the above exposition selects a rather limited number of examples of 'European art'. He draws no comparison, for instance, between Irish and European folk melody but only between Irish folk melody and European art music of the last 250 years, citing only composers from Beethoven onwards and leaving out earlier composers whose basis of invention, not yet like that of the visual arts of their period, was predominantly linear. Nevertheless his perception of Irish art is strongly supported by the examples he cites. George Bain's book Celtic Art, which analyses examples from both Scottish and Irish tradition, also confirms his thesis.

The constructional method employed in Gaelic tradition does not include the provision of 'background'. It is wholly concerned with line. The importance of this method is reflected in the fact that it is found not only in Gaelic culture but in all the cultures of the world, particularly that of Islam. It is also evident in the decorative designs of the major Renaissance artists. The employment of repeating linear modules, variations and embellishments in music was a creative preoccupation in Europe as late as the mid-18th century, after which new musical ideas of harmonic progression, dynamics and tonal contrast came to the fore. The pre-classical approach in European art music was, it may be argued, quite close in many respects to the Gaelic (see example 1). But as Ó Riada observes, it has been the accepted purpose of European art music from the 18th century onwards to convey an emotional process. In Irish tradition this purpose is absent. There is no evolution and no conclusion; the effect of the material in repetition and variation is cumulative.

Example 1: Compare the oboe line from J.S. Bach’s Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring with the following two Irish jigs.

Similarities between Gaelic design and music

Close parallels in the use of line should not be taken to mean that Gaelic music is in some sense a literal representation of Gaelic design or vice versa. Visual art cannot be a literal representation of music; the only graphic form of music is a score. Music is expressible only in time; melody cannot go backwards, whereas linear art, its visual counterpart, has the possibility of movement back and forth, curves, spirals and even the illusion of three dimensions by interlacing.

According to Ó Riada, Gaelic music and design share an underlying conceptual framework, in which a perceived reality is expressed by means of repetitious elaboration. Although he does not go into any detail on points of structural similarity it can be shown that the music, particularly the dance music, does bear close comparison to the visual art. For example, Gaelic knotwork panels and borders are not done freehand, but according to a strict mathematical grid (see Bain, Celtic Art); the dance tunes also conform to a strict metre, or rhythmic 'grid'. The equal spatial balance in the designs corresponds to the succession of notes of equal rhythmic value in the dance tunes. Within such parameters techniques of decoration and variation are applied, ways of extending and combining modules, that correspond fairly exactly in the knotwork panels to those used in musical performance.

Difficulties in appreciating Gaelic tradition

The main difficulty for the uninitiated in appreciating the genius of ancient Gaelic art and its counterpart in Irish traditional music is that the western eye and ear have not been trained for it. This may seem too obvious a statement, but as George Bain points out, 'publications that have been the chief sources of information available to students and others in the libraries of the universities and art colleges of the civilized world contain examples which are gross travesties (of Gaelic art)'. The examples he cites are two ‘inaccurate, even slovenly’ representations of an arm of the Aberlemno Cross, the first reproduced in Sculptured Stones of Scotland (Spalding Club), the second in Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones (example 2). In mitigation it must be said that the subtleties of elaboration contained in Gaelic key and knotwork patterns are hard to detect initially. As an illustration of this, I once showed an audience a knotwork panel containing four variations of a simple module. No one could see any difference in the modules until I pointed them out (example 3).

Example 2: The Aberlemno Cross, correctly and incorrectly represented (George Bain, Celtic Art)

Example 3: A Gaelic border pattern containing four module variations. No-one in the audience to whom I showed this design could spot the differences initially, though they could hardly be more obvious to the accustomed eye.

The same problem is to be encountered in the appreciation of Irish music. Pat Mitchell (secretary of Na Píobairí Uilleann) and Terry Moylan (Na Píobairí Uilleann archivist) have for many years been making the comparisons that are the subject of this study. Pat Mitchell writes: 'I know only too well that (Irish music) can be quite meaningless to the person who is not used to listening to (the) finer detail – when I first heard Irish music it took about a year for me to be able to distinguish between tunes and many more years of repeated listening to the same material before I could hear and appreciate everything that was being done in it.' (From The Dance Music of Willie Clancy, Mercier Press.)

Once the principles of construction are understood, the art form can be appreciated at least in terms of its design and craftsmanship, even if the repetitions may at first seem wearisome. Islamic geometrical design is based on similar principles to those of Gaelic art, consisting also of cleverly linked and mathematically precise repeating modules, often featuring interlacing lines or ribbons. A Spanish guidebook to the Alhambra states that 'the repetitious Moorish patterns are irritating to the western eye.' Indeed so, as I can vouch, for when I visited the Alhambra I saw crowds of tourists displaying far more interest in some weather-worn stone lions from the time of the reconquest of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella than in the astonishingly rich architecture and ornamentation of the building. I can only assume that the tourists found a welcome familiarity in these rather crude sculptures which they could not find in the extraordinary, delicate, and miraculously preserved Moorish workmanship.

Like Moorish design, Gaelic art and music are hard to appreciate at first. They are, as Pat Mitchell puts it, 'highly compressed'.

Example 4: A Moorish zillij (tile pattern) from the Alhambra

The cyclic element in construction

Seán Ó Riada observes that the cyclic 'away and back' movement is a fundamental feature of nature. It is the principle of balance. Day and night, summer and winter, high tide and low tide, life and death, good fortune and bad fortune; the natural way of things is to move from one to the other and back again, and the way to live is to harmonise with this movement. It is this principle which forms the basis of traditional Gaelic art.

In Irish music the cyclic element is very strong. It appears at the following four levels of a melody:

    1. The repetition of the melody with subtle changes and elaborations taking place with each repetition

    2. The structure of the melody in the form of two or more sections or 'strains' which take the music from    

    a lower register to a higher and back

    3. The structure of the strain where two contrasting modules take the music away from a tonic position

    and back

    4. The melodic line where 'back-to-back' figuration or opposite movement gives a sense of ‘writhing’          

    or turning corners.

Gaelic tunes, like knotwork designs, are constructed from simple modules treated in the following ways:

    1. Repetition of a module with modifications for purposes of linking

    2. Linking together of contrasting modules

    3. Transposition and adaptation of modules

    4. Variation of the figuration within a module

    5. Simple passing variations

The effect of employing simple musical modules in this way is that of a structural complexity similar to the effect produced by knotwork panels.

Example 5: A simple Irish reel, Colonel McBain, shows in elementary form how the above modular principles are put into practice.

Example 6: Linking of modules in Gaelic knotwork (see above example 4: Colonel McBain for a close musical analogy). A change in direction of the line is all that is necessary to link modules and produce an illusion of greater complexity out of simple repetition.

Analysis of two reels

The Drunken Landlady is a 16-bar reel in two 8-bar strains. It is based on a common Irish pentatonic mode with a flattened seventh and which omits the third and sixth degrees of the scale. The first strain begins with a module in two segments, the first being a drop from the fifth to the tonic note which is then cranned or rolled; the second a stepwise down-and-up figure starting on the fifth. The module is played twice in succession. It is followed by module 2 which moves the melody away from the tonic. Module 2 is related to module 1 but delays the 'roll', shifting it to the second beat. There is then a repetition of the first bar with a variation of the second half of the bar. Module 3 is an 'away-and back' figure which appears again at the equivalent position at the end of the second strain. The second strain begins with an inversion of the first half of module 1 at the octave, followed by a 'back-to-back' inversion of the first-strain variation of module 1. This descends to a repetition of module 2. The first bar of the second strain is then repeated and the strain ends with the same figure as the first. So it can be seen that the whole tune, which seems quite complex, is actually constructed out of a few related modules.

Paddy Reynolds' Reel is the same length as The Drunken Landlady and begins with the same short module. This time the module occurs only once before undergoing a change of final note which alters the direction the tune must take. To complete the strain, module 1 might have been repeated at a position a tone down within the pentatonic mode, or a sequence based on the second half of it could have been used. Such options might be considered satisfactory though not very inspired (see Colonel Bain above). In fact module 2 of this tune takes a new, more imaginative route before leading us to a repetition of module 1 and a final figure in a 'back-to-back' relationship with it. Rather than landing on the tonic, a single change of final note again alters the direction of flow so as to tie in satisfactorily to the repetition. The second strain starts with a transposition of module 2 followed by an imitation of module 1, then a variation of the transposed module 2 followed by an adaptation of the final figure of the first strain. A new figure appears, module 3, which is followed by the ending of the second strain in the same way as the first. Again, a whole complex tune is seen to have been created out of only a few modules.

Note: in these examples no gracings other than rolls are shown. Traditional players, particularly pipers and flautists, will insert single gracings at many points.

Example 7: The Drunken Landlady and Paddy Reynolds' Reel

It should be mentioned that there are almost as many versions of any Irish tune as there are players of it. It is inevitable that the quality of different versions will vary in terms of the aesthetic principles of Gaelic art. Better or poorer versions of the above tunes may be found, depending on the sensitivity of the performer to the intrinsic principles of the music. Compare the version of My Love is in America transcribed from a performance by Willie Clancy to the one published in the Roche collection (appendix 1).

Predominance of line

The use of line in Gaelic art and music is specific and conforms to certain patterns. Line is paramount: it is the most important element, in many cases the only element. Traditional Irish music is monodic, consisting, like knotwork, only of single lines; it does not in the long run benefit from arrangements involving chordal harmonization or ensemble playing (for example Bill Whelan's Riverdance music) because thickness of texture obscures clarity of line. The resulting de-emphasis of line literally degrades the music, because the skills of linear elaboration are essential to Irish musical tradition, and where a skill is not appreciated or required it falls out of use. One might compare chordal harmony, dynamic variation and orchestration to the artistic effects of perspective, colour blending and chiaroscuro in this respect. These effects are enjoyable in themselves, but take attention away from pure line and confer it on form. This is not to say that natural forms such as plants, animals and humans are never depicted in Gaelic art. They frequently are, but they are are almost always subordinate to line and are never given perspective or background (example 8).

Example 8: Illustrations from the Book of Kells showing the subordination of form to line. Perhaps more fascinating than the unnaturalistic manner of representation is the tiny size of the actual illustrations: the first is 47mm across, the second 10mm. At this size the fine detail is invisible to the ordinary eye. The corollary in Gaelic music is the high speed at which gracings are performed. These are not audible as actual notes.

Opposite motion figuration

An important source of lively tension in Gaelic art is opposite motion. The line curves forwards and backwards against itself, producing a 'writhing' effect. This principle is expressed musically in Irish tunes by a 'back-to-back' or opposite motion figuration (example 9). Very often a sequence of imitative movement will create the context for an unexpected turn of phrase; a melody or line which consisted of nothing but opposite motion would be as tedious as one which consisted of nothing but imitative movement (example 10).

Example 9: European imitative motion as contrasted with Gaelic opposite motion.

Example 10: My Love is in America, final melodic module. A imititative European-style motion of the first eight notes and straight downward motion of the second eight (from the Roche collection); B opposite-motion figuration gives the line a typical Irish tension and vitality (from a performance by Willie Clancy).

Variation  technique

Variation techniques in Irish dance tunes are analagous to those of Gaelic knotwork design. Part of the beauty of these structures is that in them the way is always open to invention within the overall composition. Variations can be produced which enrich the structure without fundamentally altering it. This is in contrast to European art music variation which takes a subject and offers versions of it in different moods. Simple Gaelic variation merely alters the figuration of a line without deflecting its course (example 11). A popular variation is the replacement of a group of smaller-value notes by a longer note (example 12). Variation of the course of the line may be achieved by changing its direction intially so that it must take another route in order to join the previous course at the same point (example 13). This technique is employed both in constructing a composition and in elaborating it. Some tunes exist which have by convention been extended to include variations of whole strains, e.g. The Gold Ring, The Frieze Breeches, An Phis Fhliuch, The Bucks of Oranmore, Johnny Cope etc.

Example 11: simple variation alters the figuration of a line without deflecting its course

Example 12: replacement of a group of smaller notes by a longer note

Example 13 a and b: deflection of the course of a line

Minute detail

Perhaps the most astonishing feature of the Book of Kells, the Lindisfarne Gospels and other works of Gaelic art that have come down to us is their minute detail (see example 8). As George Bain points out, much of the detail in the Book of Kells can only be studied with the aid of a magnifying glass. The same type of skill is present in the performance of traditional Gaelic dance music. The usual speed of a jig or reel is around 120 bpm. This itself cannot be considered breathtakingly fast if one plays only the 'straight notes' of the melody, but no Irish traditional musician does that; he or she must include frequent gracings and decorations which pass unregistered by the inexperienced ear (example 14). A western orchestral musician is normally incapable of executing gracings at the speed of a traditional Gaelic instrumentalist, because western technique, no matter how advanced, ignores any note that is played so fast as not to be registered as a pitch. Gaelic technique, on the other hand, uses such notes all the time. A Gaelic performance will have to be slowed down (magnified) in order to render its detail perceptible. This aspect of traditional Gaelic music is at its most sophisticated in the Scottish Highland bagpipe repertoire, where there may be as many as five notes per individual gracing even in a 120 bpm reel (example 15).

Example 14: some variants of the Irish roll. The grace notes are not audible as notes, more as interruptions to the heard note.

Example 15: the Scottish Highland pipe birl. This ornament, produced by crossing the little finger rapidly back and forth over the A fingerhole, articulates the A three times so fast that it sounds like a rolled 'r'.

Conclusion

Gaelic dance tunes and knotwork designs are structured according to rules that arise out of an holistic perception of all things as continuous and cyclic. The style is linear, geometric and balanced and for this reason largely uninteresting to the contemporary art and music world. It contains details that are imperceptible to the unfamiliarised eye or ear. Knotwork designs and melodies are constructed out of short modules which link together and are varied to form complex but consistent extended patterns. Seán Ó Riada's image of a circular graph composed of loops applies to both music and graphic art as an 'away-and-back' movement appearing at many levels within the design or melody. This modular form of construction contains a very large number of possible configurations. The basic parameters are limited but within them the possibilities for elaboration are almost infinite.

Note on the musical examples

There are no definitive versions of Irish tunes, only versions considered better or worse by different players. Gracings are not usually shown in Irish transcriptions, because in Irish music they are not fixed, any more than the exact sequence of notes is fixed; the skill of the performer determines how many gracings are used and of what type. It is normal, however, to subdivide notes with longer values into shorter values by means of rolls and crans, and this decoration is usually indicated. (Staccato repeated notes in triplets, or other decorations, may be used instead of a roll.) To indicate a roll I use the symbol standardised by Na Píobairí Uilleann: a semicircle above the rolled or cranned note.

Note on the art illustrations

All art examples have been taken from George Bain's book Celtic Art, with the permission of the publisher. Although there are many correspondences between Irish music and, for example, the illustrations in the Book of Kells, the closest for the purposes of this article are those between Irish dance music and the decorative panels in the Lindisfarne Gospels and on Pictish stone monuments (what Bain calls 'the Pictish School').

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1999, updated November 2006