The Playboy Of The Western World

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1962

Label: Gael-Linn

When Sean O Riada was invited by Four Provinces Films to provide the music for "The Playboy," his reputation as a composer of film music was already well established ("Miss Eire" in 1959: "Saoirse?" in 1961). In this instance, however, O Riada regarded his task less as one of composition than of design and direction, for, in the event, what he gave the producers was not a conventionally "original" score for conventional orchestra, but a wildly unconventional and exciting creative treatment of traditional Irish music.

The players, while they may be grouped in a roughly "orchestral" pattern - woodwind, "brass," wind, strings and percussion - do not form an orchestra in the modern Western sense. The high individualism of the Irish muscial traditon is preserved in performance: there are no written parts, each player making his personal contribution to the texture of the music according to a design pre-arranged in discussion with the director: an Impromptu a loisir, in fact! The instruments used are flute, uillean pipes, and tin-whistle; two double-row button accordians; two fiddles; bone-castanets and bodhran, or goatskin drum.

These instruments are used for playing this kind of music in different parts of the country; the music itself is of course to be heard in every corner of Ireland. Its strength and freshness and deep popularity (in the real sense of the word) make it the Irish folk-art par excellence: its potential for development may be judged from this recording.

More Pictures