Cadences.

Goodness, a lot of ink is spilled regarding their function in pibroch. (And more is about to be spilled here, ironically.)

A lot of angry words, too. And heart-felt assertions. And insistent demands. And glib dismissals of differing opinions.

Here’s the deal:

A cadence is an embellishment.

It is meant to enhance the melody. It is meant to lift up the melody. Certainly, it can disrupt the melody in order to create tension, in order to disrupt audience expectation. But it’s ultimate purpose to make the melody memorable.

Singers can do so in a myriad of ways. Harpists in their own ways. On the pipes, as Rab Wallace has stated, the E “sings against the drones” quite nicely.

It is for this reason that the earliest manuscripts show so many variant options and possibilities.

Today’s performe’s have two subtle ways: the appoggiatura cadence (holding the E) and the acciaccatura (which does not rob the melody note when played). This latter has two styles according to the manuscript evidence: as a “tripping” or “trickling” cadence that holds the E every so slightly; and as a “streaming” cadence, more akin to what the harpists may have played.

[We have mentioned this in previous posts. This should not be new.]

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Today, cadences are profoundly abused.

So many pibroch performers play them with such emphasis, that the fundamental notes and rhythm of the actual tune are lost. Simply lost. All we hear is “E”, “E”, “E”, with what often comes across as ancillary afterthoughts with respect to the original tune (and the song behind it).

{There are plenty of examples. We will not call out any one particular performer or performance.]

Some of if it can be attributed to a misunderstanding and reading of the cadences. Some of it can be due to a formulaic performance of the movement, one shaped by an idiomatic reading of the notes on the page. Most of it is due to a strong desire on the part of competitors to simply mimic, without thought, what they believe they have been taught regarding how they should be played.

And this will grow even more extreme as recordings continue to reinforce the effort to copy, without thought, the performances of other respectable musicians, particularly winning competitors.

The results is the experience of listening to performances that make it difficult to conceive how selective oral transmission could possibly have passed on the tradition.

Fundamental rhythmic elements of the urlar are lost to overwhelming E cadences, making it very difficult for both audience and performer to grasp the substructure of the tune until the later motions and cycles take hold.

In fact, more often than not, the cadences in the Urlar become elements of the tune itself, introducing decay to the fundamental structure.

Too much of a good thing is happening today.

Cadences are to supplement, not supplant the melody.

If you can’t hum the main melodic line of a tune, whether by reading it off the page or after hearing it played, the cadence has been performed badly.

Try that test, and you’ll get an idea of just how poorly we understand pibroch today when we perform it.

More to follow…