Seán Ó Riada is one of the most important Irish composers of the 20th century, and a key figure in the revival of Irish traditional music. In 1960, he assembled a group of traditional Irish musicians, named “Ceoltóirí Chualann“, to present traditional music in a classical music concert setting. They gave several influential concerts, and the group is considered a precursor to one of the greatest modern Irish music groups, The Chieftains, who have had 18 Grammy Award nominations.
In 1963, Ó Riada recorded a series for Raidió Éireann called “Our Musical Heritage”, in which he introduces and discusses Irish traditional music and its elements. In one of these he discussed the button accordion. I can’t find any transcription of his commentary online, but I love it so much I will transcribe it here.
Ó Riada prefaces his commentary with the following:
First of all, it needs to be emphasized over and over again, that Irish traditional instrumental music is a very close relation of Irish vocal music; that is, sean-nós [old-style] singing. The instruments which suit Irish music best are therefore those that most closely approach the personal expression of the human voice.
The fiddle is ideal. The player is in contact – in complete contact – with his instrument. The notes do not exist until he makes them; and his tone is a completely individual thing, differing from another fiddle player’s tone as much as one voice differs from another. This is also true to varying extents of the uilleann pipes, the flute, and the whistle.
Irish music is entirely a matter of solo expression, and not of group activity. It is the direct expression of the individual musician or singer. It is again very much a matter of personality. Whether that personality exists or not outside the music. That is to say, a singer, a piper, or a fiddler may be quite an unpleasant person when not performing but when performing it is his music personality which counts, which impresses us – the direct expression of his musical personality. Everything that comes in the way of that direct expression beclouds and confuses it.
Now, the most direct means of expression in music in the human voice. Next, in varying degrees, as I said, come the uilleann pipes, fiddle, flute, and whistle. In each of these the player makes the notes himself. He is in control. The notes do not exist until he makes them. The fiddle player and the piper make the notes with their hands. The flute player and whistle player, with their mouth and hands. They are at all times directly in contact with the actual notes they make. And as a result, they are the masters of the notes. They control them. Varying their loudness and their softness. Their tone quality, and even their intonation.
Then Ó Riada is ready to render his judgement:
This, the accordion player cannot do. He does not make the notes – they are already there before him. Ready to sound at the pressing of a button, produced in an almost entirely mechanical fashion. Thus, he has not the control over his instrument that the others have. He has only to press a button and pull or push the bellows and the note sounds for him. The tone and even the intonation have already been decided for him by the maker. Because of this, individual musical expression becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible for him. For this reason, if not for any other, the use of the accordion as a solo instrument in Irish traditional music is to be greatly deplored.
Most accordion players are so hampered by their choice of instrument as to be unable to produce anything but a faint, wheezy imitation of what Irish music should be. And the most unfortunate part of it is, that this instrument, designed by foreigners for the use of peasants who had neither the time, inclination or application to learn a more worthy instrument – this instrument is not just losing favor, but gaining vast popularity throughout the country. The reason for this is mainly, I think, the laziness which afflicts us as a nation at the moment.
We would all like to be musicians, but we don’t want to take the trouble. It is easier to play notes which are already made for us, than to make our own notes. Accordions, bigger and better accordions, and eventually the greatest abomination of all – the piano accordion – nothing could be farther from the spirit of Irish traditional music.
However, I’m afraid this has been a rather long digression. As I said, very few accordion players in this country can surmount the difficulties inherent in their instrument. Most feel on the other hand that something must be done to enable them to produce more expression on the accordion. As this can’t be done by means of varying the tone, and so forth, they have turned to the one thing which it is possible to exploit, namely ornamentation. And it is precisely with regard to ornamentation that accordion players have committed their greatest crimes. In recent years, a technique and style of chromatic ornamentation, utterly alien from the spirit of Irish music, has grown up.
But before I describe it, let me mention briefly the two basic principles of ornamentation. And incidentally, I did not invent these principles. These principles are based on practice – the practice of the best players under the best circumstances. They are not invented principles, they are merely observed principles.
And the first is: generally speaking, no ornament should go outside the mode of the song or tune in which it occurs. And the second is: no ornament should, by its position, draw attention to an irrelevant note in the phrase in which it occurs. As by doing so it destroys the basic shape of the phrase.
At this point, Ó Riada uses the piano to illustrate permissible and impermissible ornamentation. He then caricatures the chromatic ornamentation he was hearing performed by the very influential Irish accordion players of the time, i.e., Paddy O’Brien and Joe Burke (though he does not name names). These players “throw in as many semitones” as they can. Eventually, Ó Riada renders a simple tonal phrase in the key of G into an unrecognizable chromatic mess [QED]. He continues:
The worst feature of it, to my mind, is not so much the incidental semitones, as is the dreadful habit they’ve got of using the downward semitone-inflected mordent, where you begin on a note, go to the semitone below and back to the note. Funnily enough, it is far more common than the upward-inflected mordent, where you begin on the note and go to the next note above it.
So the main downfall of the present day accordion players is the downward-semitone inflected mordent. This kind of thing is of course complete and utter rubbish; and it is up to the musical public to make their disapproval felt.
As I said, there are very few accordion players in this country who can sufficiently overcome the disabilities and limitations of their instrument. So as to make what they play sound like Irish music. But one of these few players is Sonny Brogan of Dublin. He is a man who understands the limitations of his instrument, but who strives to counteract these not in a mishmash of wrongly placed ornamentation, but by emphasizing the most traditional elements in the tunes he plays. His ornamentation is simple usually confined to the single cut, or grace note, and the roll.
Ó Riada then plays recordings of Brogan playing the reels “Repeal of the Union”, “The hut in the bog” and “Gordon’s reel”, and finally the jig “Morrison’s”. He highlights Brogan’s use of variation.
To sum up then, the accordion has been played in this country – the two row button accordion, that is – for upwards of 40 years. And I’m afraid that it has come to stay. However, while I have emphasized its unsuitability for solo playing, it can be a most useful instrument in a band – something about which I am going talk next week. As a proverb says, it’s an ill wind. If only most Irish accordion players would try to fit in with the tradition instead of flying in the face of it, something would be achieved.
And one last word about the accordion: I wish, and indeed I wish again, that all Irish accordion players would drown, muffle, destroy, subdue or in some other fashion, silence the bass of their instrument. I haven’t yet heard an accordion player who knew the right bass to play, and it’s far better to play no bass anyway. It only interferes with the tune and confuses it.
Ó Riada continues his programme by talking about the concertina, which he finds to be superior to the accordion for Irish traditional music (e.g., “it’s not one tenth as unwieldy as the accordion”), and laments its decline.
One repercussion of my research in applying AI to model transcriptions of Irish traditional dance music is that I have become a dedicated student of Irish accordion. But I take no offense to any of Ó Riada’s verdicts and criticisms. Some of them are clearly laughable, such as peasants too busy to learn a “more worthy” instrument, and his nation “afflicted” with laziness. Some are uncomfortably nationalistic, such as those instrument-making foreigners. Some are contradictory, such as when he lauds the concertina over the accordion while overlooking that concertinas and accordions were being made by the same foreigners, and that the concertina involves the exact same mechanics as the accordion. And some are curiously unfair, such as overlooking the great expression that can be accomplished with the bellows. At least the accordion can produce dynamics like the human voice, which is not possible on the uilleann pipes – a more “worthy” instrument for Ó Riada. I am however persuaded by his opinion on some approaches to playing bass on the accordion. I think sparse is the best approach, and only if it fits harmonically.
Ó Riada’s main argument with the fashion of accordion playing at his time is focused on music theory: the “great crime” of downward semitone-inflected mordents. Therein lies Ó Riada’s great crime: using a music theory that is in and of itself foreign to Irish traditional music to castigate contemporary practices of Irish traditional musicians.
I see Ó Riada’s programme on the accordion as a wonderful time capsule from just before Irish traditional music began its transformation into a major economic resource for Ireland – something that is due in large part to Ó Riada. The accordion would soon become a principal instrument of Irish traditional music. Controversy around the accordion would be replaced with controversy around the guitar and the bodhran, group playing, and eventually commercialization – the latter of which was as vigorously denounced by more modern “gate keepers” as Ó Riada denounces the accordion, e.g., Tony MacMahon in his wonderful 1996 essay, “The Language of Passion“.
Folk the Algorithms 