TEMPO
Bunting very clearly links port performance and structure with a tempo allegro. He
indicates in his publications that Port Gordon, Cumha na Daimhinse, the Féachain
Gléis and Cumha Bharúin Loch Mór should all be played in some kind of quick time,
with usually a hundred or more crotchets to the minute. This agrees with his
following statements in p18 of the 1840 Introduction.
The world has been too apt to judge of our music as of a peculiarly plaintive
character, partaking of our national feelings in a political point view, and
melancholy in proportion to the prospects of its composers. Nothing can be
more erroneous than this idea. When the meeting of the harpers took place
at Belfast, in 1792, the Editor, being selected to note down the tunes, was
surprised to find that all the melodies played by the harpers were performed
with a much greater degree of quickness than he had till then been
accustomed to. The harpers made those airs assume quite a new character,
spirited, lively, and energetic, certainly according much more with the national
disposition, than the languid and tedious manner in which they were, and too
often still are, played among fashionable public performers, in whose efforts
at realizing a false conception of sentiment, the melody is very often so
attenuated as to be all but lost. a
a Whatever reputation the Editor has acquired, as a performer of Irish music,
he owes to no superiority over others, save that of playing the melodies in
proper time, and as an humble imitator of the animated manner peculiar to
our old harpers.
Féachain Gléis