Passion for Irish harp brings rich past to life

When you’re one of the few people in Ireland who plays the historic Irish harp, an instrument that dates back more than 1,000 years, it pays to have a good imagination.  Siobhán Armstrong is the sort of person who can readily cast her mind back to the 1500s, envisaging how King Henry VIII and his daughter, Queen Elizabeth, tried to conquer Ireland. But as she does so, her thoughts are less about bloody battles and more about the events surrounding them.

“What did they get up to in the evenings? What music did they listen to?” she asks of the Gaelic chieftains and those who were seeking to subjugate them. In many ways, that’s a rhetorical question for Siobhán, who is also renowned as an Early Music performer on the continental stage, specialising in the European harp.

“So, I know what they were listening to,” she explains of the music that would have prevailed at the time.

The result is a new CD from Siobhán and her group, The Irish Consort. Music, Ireland and the Sixteenth Century will be officially launched this Friday as part of the Galway Early Music Festival, following a concert from the group.

Entitled Saints, Heroes and Kings – 300 years of Music across Cultures in Ireland, this Friday’s concert will also feature local performers, singer Róisín Elsafty and Ronan Browne on whistles.

Siobhán’s album, meanwhile, focuses on music and song from the Tudor era, showing the contrast between Irish music and that of the invaders.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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