Athbhliain faoi mhaise duit, a chairde uile, agus go raibh maith agat as mo bhlag a léamh. Seo cuid de mo phleananna don bhliain seo chugainn.
I had a rest from writing up my research over the Christmas and New Year break, and now I am thinking ahead.
I was really losing motivation with these obscure and unclear notations I was working through in the Damn your Body pamphlet. I have compiled a sub-list derived from my Old Irish harp Transcription Project Tune List Spreadsheet, and I see that I only have about 13 items still to look at in this pamphlet, plus another 10 or so of similar tunes elsewhere in QUB SC MS4.29. I suspect that many if not most of these tunes may prove to be vocal transcriptions and not taken from harp performances, but the only way for me to make that judgement is to work closely through each one. I may do them all in one go with a very summary commentary just to get them done.
After that I still have two aspects of the Old Irish Harp Transcriptions Project to consider; one is the approximately 18 tunes in MS4.29 which were transcribed from the playing of Denis O’Hampsey, and the other is harp transcriptions from other manuscripts; 7 tunes from Patrick Quin in MS4.33.1, and three from Dominick O’Donnell in MS4.12.2. These are all very important and fascinating harp transcriptions and I have deliberately left them to the end so that I can look at them with the experience gained from studying the more difficult or obscure transcriptions I have been dealing with up to now.
Other projects coming up include hopefully some library and museum visits, generously funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, to try and clear some of my backlog of things to look up. I haven’t actually visited a museum or library for research since February 2020. I’ll write here anything important that comes out of those trips!
I am also going to be doing some events; dates are already fixed for two HHSI series, the online academy where I have been invited to give an online talk as part of Sylvia Crawford’s course from 7th May to 18th June; and I have also been asked to do some events at the summer festival which will hopefully be in person in Kilkenny from 23rd to 29th July.
I will also be spending more time in 2022 with bell-ringing; I am supposed to be responsible for Northern District meetings, though I have no idea if and when we will be able to organise any at this stage. It would be nice to organise more training and collaboration between towers in the District but this is really so dependent on the restrictions and guidance that it is very hard to plan ahead.
Many thanks to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for helping to provide the equipment used for these posts, and also for supporting the writing of these blog posts.
Happy new year! May this one be better, whatever it is better than, so long as it is better!
I look forward to keep reading whatever you write about.
Go raibh míle maith agat! “Onwards and upwards” as they say!