It’s in the Annals Of the Four Masters, that entry for the year 1498 records the death of a distant ancestor, Floirint Ó
Corcorain, “saoi cruitire”, a master harper. How many of these eight melodies, or their melodic prototypes, were
already in his repertoire?
I wrote the 8 miniatures for cello and piano in 2016 and 2015. These traditional “sean nós” melodies have been
haunting me since my rural childhood in Tipperary.

I had long been appalled by the settings of old Irish melodies attempted by Beethoven, Haydn, Britten, Harty and too
many other well/meaning composers, by their often saccharine harmonies, their rhythmic iron corset or indeed the
foursquare form too oftena dopted….

In these 8 settings I have had to respect the fundamentally monodic nature of each song, to take great care of its
modal intentions and linear ornamentations and its rock/solid architectural form (normally an arched
ABBA structure).

Their rhythm is normally that of the Old Spanish sarabande, a heavy three in the bar. How the sarabande came so
strongly to impregnate the Irish harpers and the music they played or recited since the 16th century is anybody’s
guess. So I “set” a traditional Irish air and the cello has to sing its plaintive song while the piano remains orchestral
with its myriad colours and short phrases and echoes and motivs.