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National Music of the World. |
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tune, full of genius, full of capacity; less full, we critical English may say, of the cementing common sense which brings all these charming elements together in music.
I cannot pretend to form a guess whether the practice and proficiency of the harp, one of the two oldest instruments, dates back to an elder period in Ireland or in Wales. Mr. Bunting, who gathered many facts concerning it from the real old harpers surviving at the close of the last century, assures us that so early as the fourteenth century the instrument had thirty strings, in compass ranging betwixt C and D in alt. This is the date given to the richly ornamented instrument preserved in Trinity College, Dublin, played on by O'Neill through the streets of Limerick in 1760. Mr. Bunting names five different species of harps —the common harp, the high-headed harp, the down-bending harp, a portable harp used in ecclesiastical ceremonies, and the harp of Craftin. (I think this may have been Crofton, renowned in Irish legends.) This Irish harp had its imperfections and inconsistencies; no string for F sharp between E and G in the bass; only two of the major keys perfect in their diatonic intervals. It was tuned, too, in zn odd old traditional way. Here is what would be |
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