Reviewing new Irish music: Double You (Finch & Ni Bhriain, 2023) and J.M. Synge’s travel writing (Bruna, 2017)

New traditional music, and a new look at an old playwright’s travel texts

It is a happy day when I can review two complementary works in different media. The 27 October release of the album Double You (a collaboration between Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and Irish fiddle and violin master Aoife Ni Bhriain) provides an aptly timeless soundtrack to accompany the scholarly insights of Dr. Giulia Bruna in her book, J.M. Synge and Travel Writing of the Irish Revival (Syracuse University Press, 2017). The latter is the first work to critically examine all of the great Irish playwright’s travel writings. The album provides a sort of soundtrack to guide our imagination of the now somewhat lost wild places from which Synge took inspiration.

Let’s start with the music.

The Double You album, by Catrin Finch ad Aoife Ni Bhriain (Bendigedig Records, UK)

The album, which was released by ethno-music label Bendigedig, consists exclusively of instrumental tracks, the names of which all begin with the letter ‘W.’ I enjoyed special access to the whole album as a reviewer, and I can say that it is a magnificently performed and technically well-recorded collection.

Double You album cover, Bendigedig Records

If you’re a fan of instrumental music that draws on classical, traditional and improvisational flourishes, you will enjoy Double You. Its ambient mood rises from often sparse beginnings, as in the sample track here, to build and create a complex sonic interplay that ultimately transforms the piece into another direction. The album itself is in some way a sonic re-imagination of the ever-changing landscapes and weather-scapes of the Irish and Welsh coasts. Have a wee listen.

The sample song is ‘Whispers,’ and this version comes not from the album, but from a well-attended 2022 live performance:

About the Musicians

The story behind the creation of Double You goes back to the pandemic down-time of 2021, according to notes provided to me by a promoter and attributed to Andy Morgan. At that time, “the producers of Irish-Welsh Other Voices Aberteifi Festival (the Welsh manifestation of the iconic Irish Other Voices TV music series that was born in Dingle, Co. Clare (sic, Kerry), in 2001), were plotting their programme for an online digital edition,” writes Morgan. “How about pairing Wales’ Catrin Finch, surely the most accomplished British harpist of her generation, with the polychromatic virtuosity of Ireland’s violinist Aoife Ní Bhriain? What better way to celebrate and embody the budding relationship between Dingle and Cardigan, Wales and Ireland?” The two musicians were excited about the project, upon being informed of it.

For her part, Finch grew up in a Welsh-speaking village near Cardigan on the west coast, and fell in love with the harp after seeing the Spanish harp master, Marisa Robles (born 1937) in concert at Lampeter, according to Morgan. By age nine, Catrin was making fortnightly 100-mile round-trip travels to study under the great Welsh harpist Elinor Bennett. Moving on the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Catrin Finch’s career moved at a rapid clip, winning regional and national awards, appearing on the BBC, studying at The Purcell School and The Royal Academy, where she graduated, Morgan writes, “with the Queen’s Commendation for Excellence.” Numerous recordings and orchestral appearances have followed since, including achievements that must have been somewhat surreal for the musician, as in 2000 when then-HRH Prince Charles of Wales decided to restore an “ancient tradition” that had not last been conferred in the reign of Queen Victoria: that is, the nomination of a ‘royal harpist,’ a role for which Catrin Finch was chosen.

Finch’s Irish partner on the album, Aoife Ni Bhriain grew up in north Dublin, from the opposite seafront facing Britain. She comes from a musical family, with her mother Fidelma being a music teacher and her father, Mick O’Brien, also a schoolteacher and “one of Ireland’s leading uilleann pipe players,” notes Morgan. He quotes Aoife joking that “there was no escape” from a musical career for her, owing to the constant activity in Irish music and dance on both sides of her family, going back generations. The West Cork Music Festival has described Ni Bhriain as “one of the most versatile musicians of her generation,” pointing out her classical studies in Ireland and Leipzig, numerous awards and international collaborations with diverse artists. Interestingly, the Festival notes that “she is a member of the avant garde string quintet Wooden Elephant as well as the Goodman Trio with whom she has explored the manuscripts of the music collected around Ireland in the1800’s by Canon James Goodman.”

Notes on the Music

In most music reviews, I would prefer to write less and not interfere with listener’s experience. However, Double You offers a few facts that are unique about the origins, and even instruments that make it useful to briefly include some highlights from Andy Morgan’s longer coverage, in which he quotes the artists as well. This summary also serves to show the truly international musical imaginations and vocabularies of both artists across genres.

Thus, Morgan mentions concerning the above song, ‘Whispers,’ which also opens the albums. After describing its origins as a melody in Ni Bhriain’s head during a ‘tea break,’ Morgan notes that her father “has spent a lot of time in Norway, and Aoife has visited the country many times.” In fact, for the album version of ‘Whispers,’ she bought there “a beautiful Hardanger fiddle, the nine-stringed variant of the traditional fiddle that is Norway’s national instrument, and she uses it here to dazzling effect” on the track, Morgan writes.

The second song, ‘Why,’ was inspired by “one of Aoife’s favourite Breton tunes, ‘Personne n’est a Cause’ (‘No one is to blame’), popularised by the band Gwerz.” The third track, ‘Wonder,’ is based on a Bach prelude, blending “variations with some original motifs,” improvisation, and closing chords that come from a Mendelssohn violin concerto. According to Morgan, Aoife described Bach as “the grandad of everything that happened in classical music.” Bach is a favorite of Finch’s too. She is quoted noting that he “created thirty variations on a very simple 32-part aria, all with the same harmonic structure but entirely different.”

The fourth track, ‘Wings,’ is “a new version of Catrin’s dream-like tune ‘Listen To The Grass Grow.” An interesting hybrid element exists in the album’s sixth song, ‘Waves,’ which partly derived from an Irish piper tune called ‘Galway Bay,’ to which Aoife added an extra beat. Recalling her storied musical family, the fiddler jokes with Morgan, “I wonder what my grandad (accordion player Dennis ‘Dinny’ O’Brien) would think about a hornpipe in 5/4.” Following a ‘wavy’ interlude, the song goes into “an old Welsh tune called ‘My Mother-in-Law’s Lament,’ which Finch called “…one of my favourite Welsh traditional songs.” Baroque composer Pietro Locatelli is cited by Morgan as an influence on the seventh track, ‘Woven.’ Noting that Locatelli “wrote a series of Capricci for violin” and that “these ‘Caprices’ can be extremely challenging to play,” Morgan cites Aoife’s decision to use the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle here, changing the song’s “sound world” with the song’s combination of baroque and Irish traditional sounds.

The eighth track, ‘Waggle,’ conveys inspirations including “…tango, gypsy jazz, improvisation, trad and classical,” notes Morgan. “It’s a hard one to play. A certain amount of virtuosity is a prerequisite.” The ninth song, ‘Wish,’ Morgan notes, combines two harp classics: ’Tabhair dom do Lámh’ (‘Give Me Your Hand’) and ‘The Ash Grove’. “The first is a 17th century tune written by Rory O’Catháin, a blind harpist from Derry who took offence at his snooty treatment at the hands of a certain Lady Eglington in Scotland and wrote this famous piece by way of reconciliation. The second is a very famous traditional Welsh tune in praise of the ash tree.”

I hope these inside details were interesting and helpful to better appreciate Double You and its range of influences. It is a masterful achievement by complementary virtuosos on their respective instrument, and the world is better off for it.

Now, we can proceed to the book review.

J.M. Synge and Travel Writing of the Irish Revival

By Giulia Bruna (Syracuse University Press, 2017)

While widely known for his theatrical works in the early 20th century, John Millington Synge also undertook travel writing, early travel photography, and journalism, writing about Ireland’s Aran Islands and West Kerry, among other places. And these trips also helped inspire Synge’s theatrical and other works.

J.M. Synge and Travel Writing of the Irish Revival

In this comprehensive study, Dr. Giulia Bruna explore the corpus of Synge’s travel writing, and applies theoretical comparisons to differentiate his approach from that of contemporaneous authors (including both those more favorable and unfavorable to the Irish locals). Bruna thus reveals Synge’s sensitive to his identity as a ‘visitor,’ and to the uniqueness of his hosts and their world-view, in both positive and negative terms. Bruna’s study is worth reading, not only for Synge specialists and travel-writing historians, but also for general fans of Irish history, colonial and post-colonial studies, and sociology.

Structure and Content

The book comprises an introduction and four main chapters, plus illustrations and other back-matter. The content, in order, addresses Synge’s travel writing on the Aran Islands, West Kerry, the ‘Congested Districts’ of Connemara and Mayo, and a section on Wicklow. Finally, an Epilogue on ‘Turning Home concludes the book.

Aside from the geographic and textual delineation, this chapter structure allows Bruna to introduce new aesthetic and theoretical elements as the book progress. Thus, the first chapter discusses the concept of ‘travel and modernity’ in Ireland’s most remote and far-flung offshore redoubt, while the second reconsiders the theme of popular entertainment. In the third, the emphasis is on the balance between travel writing and journalism. Finally, the Wicklow Essays depict the playwright in a geographically and conceptually distinct region, in the ‘Garden of Ireland.’

Some Interesting Notes

It should be noted that part of what makes this book interesting is its inclusion for comparative reasons of many now-obscure authors of Synge’s period and earlier. According to Bruna’s Introduction, the book “…sheds light on a critically overlooked genre: travel writing compiled by Irish artists and activists affiliated with Revival networks” (p. 4). This approach opens a wider conversation and context in which the playwright’s travel texts can be understood. Bruna also cites from a large secondary literature of scholarly sources. These readings on Synge might be otherwise obscure for the non-specialist.

Bruna argues that Synge “…saw travel as engrained in his academic and artistic aspirations and wrote some of the most poignant travel writing of the early twentieth century” (p. 1). She also notes that Synge suffered from Hodgkin’s Disease, from which he would die at a relatively young age, and that his travels and writing came amidst rest, recuperation and relapses of this disease. In his early twenties, Synge also traveled in Germany, France and Italy, deepening his knowledge of their respective languages and literatures.

Bruna covers Synge’s travel writing on Ireland published between 1898–1908, generally, he was also writing plays for Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. Synge’s works here include a travel book, The Aran Islands (1907), “…and a series of travel essays about Wicklow, West Kerry, Connemara, and Mayo that appeared in newspapers and periodicals,” during his lifetime and in posthumous anthologies. Bruna notes that these publications, as with Synge’s plays, occurred “during a crucial time for Ireland’s national self-determination.” She argues that far from being simply source-material for Synge’s own dramatic works, his travel texts “…challenge inherited modes of place portrayal associated with imperial and nationalist discourse” (p. 3).

While scholars have compared Synge’s travel writing to contemporaneous works of local anthropology and ethnography, Bruna notes, the comparison to travel writing of his era has been less documented. Literature too had its impact on Synge’s work; the author quotes scholar Tony Roche, who “…identifies textual connections between The Aran Islands and the eighth-century tale The Voyage of Bran, arguing that ‘Synge composed the account of his journey to the Aran Islands with growing awareness of the literary and mythic antecedents of such voyages’” (p. 4).

Although scholars have studied prose, poetry, drama and even journalism of the Irish Literary Revival, Bruna contends that modern studies “…do not pay specific attention to the genre of Irish travel writing, which was nonetheless thriving in both periodical and book form” (p. 6). The use of the Irish language, of course, was of key importance to Revivalists, she notes.

On another front, Bruna also comments that Synge’s time was one of rapid technological change that affected mass travel, such as the legalization of the automobile with 1896’s wonderfully-named ‘Locomotives on Highways Act,’ which allowed “horseless carriages” on British roads. And, while today Joyce’s Ulysses most famously captures the early years of Dublin’s electric tramway, Bruna reminds that Synge “…compared the introduction of electric tramways in Rome and Dublin in an article for the Irish Times in 1896” (p. 10). These technological changes and modernization that opened Ireland, to not only wealthy foreign tourists but also the middle class-local tourists, and expedited a nascent tourism industry, also enabled a ‘democratizing’ process of travel, the author writes. This allowed more diverse classes (as well as more female travel writers) to participate in travel, which aided Revival interests. Here, legislation accompanied technological change to aid traveler safety (Bruna points to early Irish railway laws providing for female-only carriages).

Such peripheral details are among the unexpected bonuses of a book ostensibly about the works of Synge. Bruna cites several other works, such as the travelogue of Mary Banim (with sketches by her sister Matilda) that was commissioned by the Freeman’s Journal of Dublin, and which saw the sisters travel into distant parts of the country via rail, long cars and ferries, as well as walking. In the book, which features sites that were starting to be popular with tourists, Banim “...is devoted primarily to the rediscovery of Ireland’s cultural and physical heritage” (p. 11). This is just one of many contemporaneous works cited for purposes of contrast as the book unfolds.

Synge in the Aran Islands

While there is not space in today’s article to discuss each chapter of Bruna’s book, some comments on the intriguing first chapter will suffice to show how the book generally operates. Thus, Bruna covers Synge’s travels and writings about the islands, establishing both a historical context and a theoretical perspective of post-colonialism and travel-writing studies, before using these theoretical models to inform her textual interpretations.

The chapter’s historical overview of the documented travel and research writings about the Aran Islands before Synge is particularly interesting. Bruna cites “the so-called Antiquarian Revival of the early nineteenth century,” and the 1822 travels of George Petrie to the islands; he was followed by an influential British Association research study visit in the 1850s, led by Martin Haverty.

The Haverty visit evidently included a feast marked by sherry and the visiting French consul joining in on an Irish jig. It also saw the researcher’s local translator make a speech in Irish, in which he “…reminded his fellow-islanders that for the sake of their honor as well as their interest, they should endeavor to preserve their ruins.” Bruna thus claims that from at least 1857, the islanders were aware of their unique ‘antiquity’ and opportunity as a touristic commodity. The presence of many notable Irish academics at the same event also brought the Aran Islands into the collective imagination of scholars (p. 19).

Bruna mentions a follow-up event in 1900 (a completely different era for Irish nationalism), attended by Gaelic League language promoters. This expedition led to the Irish-language travelogue of Agnes O’Farrelly, Smaointe ar Árainn (Thoughts on Aran, 1901).

These early travelers brought their own amenities, such as coffee and other specialties, to enjoy otherwise unavailable comforts of home in their wild setting. Even Synge had his ‘outsider’s’ accoutrements; he was among the first to bring a camera, and also amused his hosts with the modern contrivance, an alarm clock (p. 20).

Bruna describes the Aran Islands as a sort of internal “contact zone,” for encounters both colonial and nationalist/revivalist, owing to the islands’ remoteness, archeological sites, and primary use of the Irish language (p. 20).

Synge’s travel writing on the islands was more realistic than the idealized form popular with some Revivalists. In his depiction, “…Aran is not the uncorrupted pristine environment shut out from modern society and its socioeconomic dynamics,” Bruna writes. “From the beginning, Synge points clearly to the economic dependency of the islands on immigration to America and the commercial relations between the two countries” (p. 19).

Indeed, from his early encounters with locals, Synge learns that they are not simply peasant farmers, fishermen and spinners of yarns unaware of the outside world; rather, in addition to the diaspora connections, local girls are already accustomed to being tour guides for sites of interest in the summers. Bruna notes that even then, the islanders were thus “…acclimated to intercultural and interlinguistic exchanges with America and Europe” (p. 19).

Theory and Applications to the Text

Bruna argues that “in subverting tropes common in many typologies of travel writing, Synge displays a keen understanding of the essentialisms evident in much travel literature of both colonial and revivalist origin” (p. 21). The argument is generally sound. As the rest of her treatment shows, Synge displays in his writing a remarkable awareness of the people of Aran, and his writing favors realism over idealized treatments that certain parts of the readership would have preferred.

The only problem, as with many academic books, is the narrative can become dense and muddled with jargon, though usually not for long. This is just something that comes with the territory, and the expectations of academic publishers. I do not know enough about the cited theorists to have an opinion on the veracity of their arguments, either independently or when applied to this particular case.

Generally, Bruna argues that in his writing about the islands, Synge “…shies away from the entrapments of holistic and stereotypical representations that appear in previous travel writing about Ireland,” and that therefore his book “The Aran Islands does not conform to previous specimens of travel literature, which still fall under an essentialist dynamic; rather, the book subverts these inherited modes, expressing an alternative anticolonial potential” (pp. 21-22).

But it is not as simple as what scholars today would call being ‘anticolonial.’ Bruna then compares excerpts of Irish and English travel authors of Synge’s time under her chosen theoretical model, identifying cases in which there are either prevalent positive or negative stereotypes about the local Irish populace. These are cited, of course, as general contrast to Synge’s treatment, which is argued to be not only more impartial, but more counterbalanced in his ‘celebrative’ words about the islanders and in his critical ones. Indeed, in this measured way of approaching his own text, Bruna and other critics argue, Synge both kept his writing in balance, and offered a subtle critique of the impulses behind and management of the Revival itself (p. 25).

……………………..

If you’re interested in reading Synge’s actual travel works, check out The Aran Islands in the Penguin edition.

Synge’s travel articles were collected in an anthology from Lilliput Press (2009).

If you’re interested in a recent scholarly article on some responses of Brian O’Nolan (Flann O’Brien) to Synge, see Professor Joseph Brooker’s 2023 article in The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies.