Simon Chadwick

Early Clàrsach

Friday 19 September, 13.00

St Andrew's Church

Tickets £3/Under 16s £2

Simon Chadwick is based in St Andrews, Fife. He has been working on the music and traditions of the early Irish harp, or early clàrsach, since 1998, playing repertory taken from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscripts on replicas of the instruments preserved in museums. As well as teaching and performing he runs an informational resource project, earlygaelicharp.info. He is also Honorary Secretary of the Historical Harp Society of Ireland and Assistant Director of its annual early-harp summer school, Scoil na gCláirseach.

Simon plays a unique replica of the medieval ‘Queen Mary’ harp which he commissioned from the sculptor David Patton of Roscommon, Ireland, in 2006. It is probably the most faithful replica yet made, copying not only the shape and form of the original but also its fantastically intricate decoration which is rich in late-medieval symbolism and allegory.

This programme of historical harp music showcases the lost early-Gaelic-harp tradition of Scotland and Ireland. The formal, learned instrumental music of court and castle is recreated with rarely-heard laments, battle music and other pieces preserved in the oral tradition for many generations of harpers before eventually being written down in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Visit Simon's homepage here