Movement 2 from Midden Find is called “Henge.” Or is it called “Perhaps?” Or perhaps it is called “Widdershins?” Listen and read on…
“Henge,” movement 2 from Midden Find
- Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Hardanger d’Amore
- Contemporaneous, conducted by David Bloom
- Co-composed by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Dan Trueman
- Orchestral setting by Dan Trueman
- Recorded, Mixed, and Mastered by Matt Poirier
from the album Stromatoliths, on Many Arrows Music
Like a stromatolite, “Henge” has a layered organic history. It began as a fragment of something either Caoimhín or I created (I can’t remember which), on top of which the other layered something new, and round and round it went. Eventually, a tune we called “Widdershins” emerged that we recorded for our second duo album, The Fate of Bones (more on this below). When we began work on this tune for Midden Find, we removed some layers and explored others, with the full palette of Contemporaneous in mind. In the process, at some point we were calling it “Perhaps” and we still sometimes remember it that way, perhaps because of its provisional layered status, where something new was/is always possible. In the midst/mist of this, a curious bit of text emerged…
“Henge” was discarded long ago, then dug up again. It seems to us as though it could once have served for a ritual or meditation.
Indeed, I feel like I’m digging up something here myself, and that it was at one point at the service of a creative meditation.
Caoimhín has much more interesting things to say about “Henge”:
Close to me here, close to where I live in County Kildare, are vast peat bogs, beautiful moonscapes of dark black acidic earth which hide many secrets. The National Museum of Ireland is full of treasures unearthed from these bogs—gold and silver objects, vessels wooden and otherwise, the occasional Bronze Age horn or other unknown musical instrument, and human bodies, perfectly preserved and pickled by the bog's long acidic and anaerobic embrace. The idea of these things ignites our imagination, this deep mystery of what these objects meant, what these people believed. There is glorious room for conjecture. There is plenty of space for doubt.
On our second record, myself and Dan made a tune called “Deiseal”:
“Deis” is the Gaelic word for “right” (as opposed to left), and deiseal refers to the superstition that you must walk around “things” in a clockwise fashion, “rightwise,” for good luck. Sun worship, in the Northern Hemisphere at least.
It goes without saying that the opposite exists, the bad luck associated with anti-clockwise movement—“an taobh tuathail” in Gaelic, or “widdershins” in English. And it goes without saying that myself and Dan felt a deep obligation to balance our “Deiseal” tune with its flipside “Widdershins.” It also appears on The Fate of Bones:
In Midden Find it is transformed through the ritual of Dan's orchestration into “Henge,” something other.
One of the things I really like about “traditional” music is that the tunes we play are not far removed from the social function they served—there's a tangible reason for their existence that was somehow essential to the culture from which they sprang. One myth has all our music divided neatly into three: “goltraí,” “geantraí” and “suantraí,” being the musics of sorrow, delight and slumber respectively. Lullabies, dance music, and the laments.
We might add ritual to that list. Perhaps we can imagine “Henge” as the music for some strange euphoric pagan custom, in and around the year 3000 B.C., of a bright and cold frosty midwinter night. County Kildare, perhaps. Exactly what that custom entailed, how the people moved, danced, chanted and shrieked, well that's one for your own personal conjecture and doubt.
And perhaps, suggests Caoimhín, spinning left-wise to this tune’s stromatolithic naming history, it’s a bit like…
The White Knight's Song by Lewis Carroll
Alice was walking beside the White Knight in Looking Glass Land.
"You are sad." the Knight said in an anxious tone: "let me sing you a song to comfort you."
"Is it very long?" Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
"It's long." said the Knight, "but it's very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it, either it brings tears to their eyes, or else,"
"Or else what?" said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
"Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes.'"
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested.
"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is 'The Aged, Aged Man.'"
"Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself.
"No you oughtn't: that's another thing. The song is called 'Ways and Means' but that's only what it's called, you know!"
"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting On a Gate': and the tune's my own invention."
For those so inclined, here is the score for “Henge” (which still bears the “Perhaps” title, for now):
More about the remaining three movement coming soon…