Artist Spotlight: Helen Lawlor

Helen Lawlor works at the intersection of music and cultural heritage. An award-winning Celtic harpist, Lawlor is also a renowned scholar in the field of Irish musical culture and ethnomusicology. She currently lectures at the Dundalk Institute of Technology in addition to performing as a harpist in the university’s sinfonia. She will visit Harvard on Wednesday to present a lecture entitled “Religion, Revival, Recital: Perspectives on Irish Harping in the Twentieth Century” in the Forum Room of Lamont Library.

The Harvard Crimson:  How did your interest in the historical tradition of Irish music start?

Helen Lawlor:  When I was doing my master’s and thinking about research projects, I considered the harp tradition…. My own background of having been a traditional musician first and then having a conservatory model education allowed me to see the variety of forms from a practitioner’s point of view. I did a short master’s thesis on harping first, and that formed a basis for the proposal for a Ph.D.

THC:  How does the harp play into Irish history?

HL: The Irish harp has always been important culturally in Irish history. The triangular-shaped harp existed in Ireland as far back as the 10th century. In old Gaelic Irish society, the harper was a very important person in the court of the chieftains.… This was true until around the 17th century, when changing patterns and changing tastes in European music became more widespread. So in the 18th century the tradition was at a low ebb. In the 19th century the harp was revived and is now the official emblem of Ireland.

THC: What different styles of harping exist?

HL: There are three main styles: art music style, traditional music style and early Irish harping. The easy one to start with is the…early Irish harp. It’s a small wire-strung harp that’s played with long fingernails…totally different from the new Irish harp. It’s a revival of an old medieval instrument, and it’s similar in many ways to the early music movement in that it’s a revival of techniques…. The traditional music style was popularized in the late ’70s [and] early 1980s…and in this style the harp is treated in the same way as other mainstream traditional Irish instruments. Music [in this style] is passed down orally and is subjected to improvised variation and ornamentation. The bulk of the repertoire is traditional Irish dance music...but there is also a body of work of newly composed music for the harp.

THC: The harp is increasingly used in contemporary pop and alternative rock music. Do you see any Irish influences on this music?

HL: Yes. There is, however, difficulty with the Irish harp in that it’s semi-chromatic and can only produce one semi-tonal movement at a time on a string. In terms of specific Irish influence, there are some performers who have collaborated very successfully with pop and rock musicians. For example, Cormac de Barra is an Irish harpist who is touring New York and Boston with singer Hazel O’Connor. In the 20th century the harp was popularized in a number of ways, and the popularity has led to more diversity in musical experience.