When Irish harps are playingGaelic harp is centerpiece in Ann Heymann's life

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

WINTHROP -- Ann Heymann's love affair with the Gaelic harp began nearly 30 years ago after reading a book about the role it played in old Irish civilization.

Her husband Charlie is about one-half Irish and grew up on the North Side of Chicago, where he first heard Irish dance music drifting through his neighborhood from house parties. He's been playing various stringed instruments since he was 14 years old.

The two met in Chicago and they haven't looked back. For nearly 20 years, the Heymanns have made their living playing, recording and studying Irish music. Specifically, their lives revolve around the old Gaelic harp.

As far back as 900 A.D., Irish harpers were using the clarseach (pronounced klar-SHUCK) as musicians in the courts of Irish kings and chieftains. Family genealogy, Irish laws, poems and chants were spoken in Irish Gaelic to harp music in the early days, and harpers played for special occasions like clan gatherings, dances, weddings and funerals. Harpers held a high role in Irish society at the time.

But that culture ceased to exist with the advent of British rule in Ireland, Charlie said, and the harpers became travelling musicians who still played at gatherings and also served to bring news from other parts of the island.

So for 200 years, the clarseach and all the poetry that went with it all but faded from the Irish landscape until the late 1700s, when the harp and the Irish Gaelic language were not only revived as a musical instrument and a language but also as symbols of Irish nationalism and mythology following both the American and French revolutions.

To this day, the Gaelic harp is found on many pieces of Irish money and is still a symbol of the government in the Republic of Ireland, as well as being the logo of a particular brand of Irish beer. Irish Gaelic -- or Irish, as the Irish themselves call it -- is still spoken although English is still Ireland's predominant language.

That wasn't necessarily what got Ann Heymann hooked on the harp, though. It was a book, written by an organist from Belfast who transcribed some of the oldest harp music in Ireland, that lured her to the learn the clarseach.

"It was curiosity about how it sounded," Ann said. "It was a dead tradition that needed restoring."

There is a difference between a clarseach and a modern Irish harp, said Ann. The clarseach's strings are made from metal, while the strings on a more modern harp are made from nylon or gut. The strings on a clarseach are struck with the harper's fingernails, while more modern harpers play by plucking the strings with the pads of their fingers. Charlie pointed out that cutting the fingernails of a harper was one form of punishment long ago.

Ann was a horse trainer before she won a harp competition in Ireland in the mid-1980s. Because there was no instruction on how to play the Gaelic harp, she had a clarseach built and she taught herself. She is now highly regarded as a performer and authority on the Irish harp today.

The Heymanns have traveled all over the world to play their music. Ann has been to Ireland, Scotland, Australia and Germany to record and tour with Celtic groups like The Chieftains, Altan and Planxty. She's also written several articles for cultural journals and made presentations about the harp to some of Ireland's most respected Gaelic scholars.

Charlie grew up playing the guitar, button box accordion and the cittern. He said first heard Irish music when he growing up in the Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park. He said some of the houses in his neighborhood would host visiting Irish musicians, who played for dances and house parties. Charlie said their music would drift around the neighborhood occasionally and wound up hitting his ears.

The Heymanns have been to Ireland so many times, they can list their favorite city -- Galway -- because of its college-town atmosphere and close ties to Irish traditions. They've also played in Belfast and Dublin and Glasgow, Scotland, but say they have mixed feelings about all three of them.

Ann and Charlie say that once you've heard Irish music, there's no turning back. You can find evidence of their connection with Irish culture in the living room and dining room of their house in Winthrop. There is a Gaelic harp resting on a chest and another one laying on a table beside the dining room window. Charlie's instruments are stacked neatly in the corner by the door.

Although Ann and Charlie make up the Celtic duo Clarseach, so named for its reliance on Ann's skills with the harp, their two daughters, Orla, 14, and Honor, 12, sometimes tour with them and give the music a kick by demonstrating some traditional Irish dances like jigs and reels. Orla is the more experienced of the two girls and practices her steps on the hardwood floor in the living room wearing hard dancing shoes.

"It's annoying. It's not my style," said Honor when asked about how she likes having all her mother's harps in the house.

Although St. Patrick's Day has usually meant Clarseach "tours like mad," Ann said she, her daughters and Charlie are taking it easier this year. In the past, they've played most of the Irish pubs in St. Paul and Minneapolis and were on the bill for last year's Irish Fair of Minnesota on Nicollet Island.

This year, however, the Heymanns are taking it easy. Ann said one gig at Kieran's Irish Pub in Minneapolis is the only St. Patrick's Day event that Clarseach is playing this year.