Carolan’s Dream - played on celtic harp

Turlough O’Carolan was an irish harpist who lived in the mid-1600s and wrote pieces for the people he met and stayed with - playing music in exchange for hospitality. Tradition has it that the harp was played last thing at night, before people went to bed. The building I’m playing it in was a bakery built around 1790, serving the local houses. The bread oven is in the stone wall behind me, and the building has a new floor and triple-glazing on the windows. It’s a great mixture of old and new and a great place to play this music. Appropriately, I recorded this piece very late one night, and just went with the first take so the playing has the odd rough bits. I like to think that’s authentic - apparently Carolan never played the same way twice. Bet he never had as much trouble as I did finding DivX codecs, either! Only the melodies survive, so I’ve done this arrangement myself and I’m playing it here on a Pilgrim gut-strung harp. The arrangement and video is my