At 12:01 AM 2/2/99 -0800, John Burke wrote:
>When you listen to the OCarolan concerti, there are many cases of what I
>think of as fiddle tune parts peeking in and out of the larger piece.
>Sometimes it drive you a little nuts trying to figure out whether Carolan
>used modified traditional dance music or whether dance musicians used bits
>and pieces of his stuff and just worked up the normal dance stuff around it.
>Lots of fiddlers still play his concerti. I even learned one he named for a
>patron that had our family name.
 
 
The term "concerti"  is not approapriate to refer to Carolan's compositions.
None of them have anything to do with concerto form. Most of the Irish
harper's pieces were basically "praise songs" (some of the lyrics are
preserved) praising his various patrons.
 
Only one of them was ever dubbed "Carolan's Concerto." The story goes that
Carolan would have composed it to demonstrate his ability to write music in
the Italian Baroque style, which had spread throughout Western
Europe--Geminiani lived in Ireland at the time, and one version of the story
makes Carolan's piece the result of a musical contest of sorts between the
two musicians.
 
However, as Donal O'Sullivan points out, The earliest source for the tune
has it simply as "Mrs. Poer [Power]," and it is known that Mrs. Power was in
fact Elizabeth, nee Keating, wife of David Power of Coorheen, Loughrea, Co.
Galway. Carolan stayed at the Powers' estate, and wrote pieces as well for
David Power and his daughter Fanny (Frances). There are lyrics extant for
"Fanny Power."
 
Philippe Varlet
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