For more details: http://microsites.lincolnshire.gov.uk/eventDetails.asp?eventcode=53422

It’s important that the recorded sound is congruent with the circumstances of Carolan’s work. While he may have played in large halls on his travels through Ireland in the late 1600s and early 1700s, his music was given as a gift to people in return for their hospitality. He is almost certain to have talked about the music and how it related to the people named in the titles of the pieces. While these conversations might be perfectly possible in large spaces, the sound of a large, empty building doesn’t seem right for this music, which (according to tradition) was played last thing at night to the household. So I’ve decided to abandon those recordings and start again.

Drawing by Christine Hiller

I was playing in a small historic house this lunchtime, and someone asked me if she could draw a picture of me as I played. She was there for a couple of hours - and I was hoping to be able to at least see a finished drawing. As it turned out we had a long conversation about the parallels - and differences - between the visual and musical arts. We spoke of the idea of spaces, and of the quality of the room we were playing in - a beautiful old stone property and a place where people felt at ease. Rather than just let me see her picture, she gave me her original drawing as a thank you for the music I played. For me this is an honour and felt more than just a transaction - not just something given in return for something else, but a genuine gift in thanks for the sharing of another gift. I’ll treasure this picture. It seems such an intimate gesture and left me feeling a warmth and connection which I imagine Carolan might have felt too, all those years ago, playing for his guests and enjoying their company, and out of our conversation, and her gesture, it seems right to have decided to abandon my earlier recording and go for a more intimate sound.

So this is my first, new, recording of Carolan’s “Farewell to Music”. I didn’t know this piece a year ago - and it was suggested to me by a YouTube viewer who loved the piece and thought I’d really like it. He was right - it’s become one of my favourites, and I’m very grateful to him for suggesting this piece. Enjoy!

Over the following days, I looked again at the game designer’s images and I thought about the idea of using my music in this “space” and what it might be like to make more connections with that - and I decided on a further experiment: to actually play the harp in the virtual world, by incorporating my live playing into the digital space created by this particular graphic designer. Although requiring special techniques - using lighting and bluescreen, and (if I’m being really experimental) using specialist 3D modelling software which tracks the camera movements and then controls the 3D virtual space around it, it should be possible to make it appear as if I’m really there, and make the scenery move around me in a natural way. Visually that’s quite unusual, but I reason that we do similar things in sound, all the time, whenever we add artificial reverb to a recording. I haven’t tried this in visual terms, with an artificial space, and I think it should be an intriguing experience.

What’s the point, though? Why go to all this trouble? At least part of the answer is the challenge, and the unknown things that might come out of that, but mostly the reason is to explore by comparison the qualities that real spaces influence and are influenced by, our presence. We can artificially place ourselves in a space, and perform in it, but real spaces have a subtle, multi-faceted influence on us. Performing (or speaking, or thinking) in a real space, we are aware of so much - the size of the acoustic influences the speed of our communication (hugely!), the presence of other people, and their relationship to us as colleagues or more formally as audience, other sensory inputs such as background noises, the play of the light, the sense of others who inhabit / have inhabited this room. All of these are difficult to simulate and by doing a “surgical”, technical experiment I can come to appreciate the way in which our presence and our surroundings are interwoven.

I think it’s amazing that it all came from an initial experiment to put out a piece of music on YouTube - to put out something I considered “imperfect” (ironically, something which was recorded in a “real” space!).