Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Willpower, guts and
By Tim Ryan
the music of the harp
Star-BulletinIreland is a country where the probable never happens and the impossible always does.
Take the case of 17th- and 18th- century Celtic harper and composer Turlough O'Carolan, considered the Emerald Isle's most beloved and celebrated musician.
The "last of the Irish bards," O'Carolan was born in County Meath, Ireland, in 1670, the son of a poor farmer. In 1688 he was stricken with smallpox and left totally blind. Through the intercession of a wealthy Irish Catholic family he was given three years of instruction on the harp and subsequently began his life as an itinerant musician.
"I am always thinking about the willpower and guts he must have had to craft music during the very difficult time in which he lived," said Celtic harpist Patrick Ball, who on Saturday performs "O'Carolan's Farewell to Music" at the Orvis Auditorium.
O'Carolan is so appreciated by his countrymen that the government put his portrait on the 50-pound note -- and later, his name on a creme liqueur.
For three years, the Irish Ball has traveled the United States with a one-man show honoring O'Carolan.
"His story is so engaging," Ball said in a telephone interview from his Northern California home. "I take a slice of history and bring it to the present with all the difficulties and humor of those fascinating times.
O'Carolan lived in an Ireland burdened by poverty and oppression, where sadness and deprivation were legion, Ball said.
During O'Carolan's period, Ball said, "Noted Irish Catholic musicians living in the countryside were anonymous, though their music was well known. He was a celebrated guy, legendary, though without a biographer."
All that's known about O'Carolan comes from anecdotes and legends, Ball said. "So much of his history is a blank."
Ball tells O'Carolan's story through music, interpersed with a story told through the character of poet and harpist Charles McCabe, O'Carolan's lifelong friend and traveling companion. The tale is charged with wit and pathos that demonstrates both the power of friendship and the vital role of the artist in troubled times.
But Ball isn't alone on stage. He has the quite rare Celtic harp, about one-third smaller than its symphony counterpart.
"It's not only visually striking, but the sound is entrancing," Ball said.
The Celtic harp is strung with brass wire rather than the usual gut or nylon string. It's an exact replica of the instrument Irish musicians strummed some thousand years ago with their fingernails to bring out what Ball describes as "the crystalline, deeply resonant quality" that poets have likened to "the pealing of bells."
"They played for kings and chieftains, they were celebrated in myths and legends and they were lavishly honored," Ball said of the Celtic harpists. "The sound of their harps was the sound of Ireland."
Ball owns two of the instruments; his first one is 20 years old, costing about $1,000.
It's not just the instrument and music that captivates audiences. "It's the story and the joy of being told a story."
"For (O'Carolan) the lack of words was an unimaginable loss," he said. "For in words, in stories nurtured and spoken, he not only found light and warmth, laughter and exaltation, he found the very continuation of his culture, of his land, of himself."
Ball, born and raised in California, thought he might become a lawyer like his father. But he developed a talent for piano and guitar. In college he played tin whistle and learned that he was drawn to words, the music of words, writers who made words sing and to Irish writers.
As he began to study history, Ball was attracted to the lyrical, turbulent past of Ireland. He enrolled in graduate school and made his way to Ireland, where he fell in love with Irish oral tradition, and later the Celtic harp.
Back in the United States, he made his way to Penland School of Crafts in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where he encountered a branch of the living oral tradition that had captivated him in Ireland.
Eventually, he returned to California, gathered the stories and history he had learned and blended them with music.
"What makes this show successful is the power of one person talking to an audience," he said. "Most people have not been told a story for many years."
Celtic harpist performs "O'Carolan's Farewell to Music: Patrick Ball
Concert time: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Click for online
calendars and events.
