John Kenny - Dragon Voices: The Giant Celtic Horns of Ancient Europe (2016)

The DragonVoices disc is occupied with sounds made by the lip-reed instruments that were part of the culture of the Celtic peoples of Europe. They made trumpets and great horns in various forms. The Scandinavian Lur — have a close look at something as prosaic as the wrapper for Lurpak butter — is another example from a parallel culture. Among the rare Celtic examples is the carnyx: "a two-metre-long bronze trumpet surmounted by a stylised animal head". One of these was excavated from a site at Deskford in Scotland, in 1816 and what is heard here is an early 1990s reconstruction. Add to this a modern facsimile of the Tintignac carnyx, discovered in southern France in 2004. To complete the array there's a freshly made copy of the Loughnashade horn from Ireland. I mentioned speculation earlier on because there are no scores or texts. Instead music archaeology has concerned itself with "the physical construction of these instruments … their likely playing techniques". What we hear is not claimed to be what was played then. John Kenny, who tackles all three instruments, can be seen playing these uncannily strange instruments in a series of magnificent colour illustrations in the CD booklet. Mr Kenny is the motive force behind this disc and his extensive scholarly notes run in detail across this well planned English-only booklet. He has specialised in performance on these instruments for a quarter century. The music is his, newly written, and where needful it explores the sounds of the carnices and horns in solo and through multi-tracking in duo and ensemble. Other feasible instruments are added for variety.

Going by his titles, John Kenny's compositions take as their subjects "Celtic mythical characters, … ancient ritual … and … real places in Ireland, Scotland and France". Liadain and Cuirithir with its lugubrious long bassy notes and squealing saxophone tones (also appearing in Tintignac Lament) contrasts with Forest Camp: all French horn notes (similar to Britten's Serenade) and deep rumbling didjeridu sounds. Dance of Herne recalls the squalls and creaks of whale-song. The pristine chime of the crotales alleviates the groans of the Tintignac quintet in DragonVoices. Cu Chulainn - a Tintignac solo - includes mysterious fanfaring that might be from some Cimmerian landscape created by Michael Moorcock or Robert E Howard. The squeezed and rapid squeals of Invocation are paralleled by the staccato chatter of The Hunt. Calanais derives from a piece written for Mr Kenny's visit to the Callanish Stones in Lewis. It overlays the long lyric tones of the Deskford trio with skylark song and wave sounds. Ocean Stone boasts long, slow-humming held notes while the fairy ringing chime of the crotales again puts in an appearance for Ships in the Night. Shamanic drums are used in Shaman 3 and Gaels and Gauls. Cailleachan uses the Deskford instrument with seed and pod shakers. Its fanfare might recall Mario Nascimbene's horn-call in the film The Vikings. Another external reference occurred to me in Mór-rióghain where bereft banshee calls bring to mind Robert Lamb's The Children of Lir in his original version with jazz band on the Saga-Psyche LP label. I shall not be surprised if Mr Kenny is not snapped up for future Hollywood sword and sorcery epics. Quite apart from his undoubted scholarship he has a communicative skill that will go a long way.

Review by Rob Barnett, MusicWeb-International.com

Those attending the Historic Brass Society Session of the EMAP (European Music Archaeology Project) in Viterbo, Italy in 2015 had the rare experience of viewing, listening to, and playing a number of reproductions of ancient brass instruments. This was the result of a five-year project undertaken by EMAP to reproduce and explore the sound world of ancient Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Celtic cultures. John Kenny was part of that conference and this recording is an offshoot of his long experience playing and composing music for those instruments. In this CD he primarily plays three instruments; the Tintignac carnyx after a first-century BC original found in Tintignac, France (made by Jean Boisserie), the Deskford carnyx after a first-century BC original found in 1816 at Leitchestown, Scotland (made by John Creed), and the Loughnashade horn after a first-century BC original found in 1794 in Co-Armagh, Ireland (made by John Creed).

The recording includes 21 compositions by John Kenny for solo, duo or trio settings. The two and three part works are the result of studio multitracking. These works are improvisational in nature and comprise multiphonics and many other twentieth and twenty-first century techniques. To this listener’s ear, the pieces explore sound effects and tonal manipulation rather than a more conventional compositional devise of development of themes. Playing and writing contemporary music on and for old instruments, in this case, very old instruments is, to me at least, a perfectly acceptable undertaking. Composers and performers are always on the lookout for different tonal textures and at this stage in the early music movement there is a solid tradition of new works on old instruments. The carnyx and Loughnashade horn are lip-vibrated brass instruments but have their own unique sounds. Certainly similar to modern horns, trombones or even trumpets at times, but not quite. They have their own sound.

The liner notes by Kenny in this CD are wonderful, offering a concise history of these ancient instruments as well as a detailed examination of the important work of EMAP. In those notes he makes the case to explore those sound capabilities through the use of contemporary composition. Another argument could also be made that hearing reproductions of these two thousand plus year old instruments in this context prejudices our ears and imaginations as to what those instruments may have sounded like. Kenny makes the point that physiologically we are no different from people who lived two thousand years ago. True enough. He also goes on to point out that cultural context is the only difference as ancient man was not short of imagination. However, it is the cultural context that is the main point. No doubt, John Kenny’s mind is full of a vast array of sounds (Boulez, Cage, John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor etc.). Ancient man, as Kenny points out, was not in short supply of imagination but was completely without the experience of our sound-world. Hence, the ancients would likely not have attempted to make the sounds created here. Perhaps some additional tracks of the performer playing much simpler “excerpts” on the individual instruments would allow us to formulate a less “prejudiced” understanding of the historical use of these wonderful instruments. That philosophical debate aside, we owe both John Kenny and the others in EMAP a debt of gratitude for bringing these ancient beasts (as the dragon-head bells would indicate) back to life.

Review by Jeffrey Nussbaum, HistoricBrass.org

Exact Audio Copy V1.1 from 23. June 2015

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John Kenny / Dragon Voices: the giant Celtic horns of ancient Europe

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log date: 2017-10-20 05:20:41

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Analyzed: John Kenny / Dragon Voices: the giant Celtic horns of ancient Europe
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DR Peak RMS Duration Track
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DR11 -3.79 dB -22.22 dB 3:00 01-Liadain and Cuirithir
DR10 -2.63 dB -16.18 dB 2:21 02-Dance of Herne
DR10 -7.06 dB -22.64 dB 3:02 03-Forest Camp
DR11 -4.45 dB -24.63 dB 1:07 04-The Hunt
DR11 -2.09 dB -17.72 dB 6:43 05-After the Hunt
DR12 -8.19 dB -27.22 dB 2:26 06-Calanais
DR21 -4.92 dB -33.79 dB 1:56 07-The Shaman
DR12 -8.55 dB -29.79 dB 3:11 08-Ships in the Night
DR7 -4.17 dB -16.69 dB 3:20 09-Shaman 2
DR10 -5.18 dB -19.25 dB 2:21 10-Cъ Chulainn
DR19 -0.10 dB -25.39 dB 6:58 11-Ocean Stone
DR9 -4.11 dB -21.42 dB 2:48 12-Invocation
DR27 -0.37 dB -34.56 dB 1:22 13-Shaman 3
DR12 -4.19 dB -22.52 dB 2:20 14-Gaels & Gauls
DR11 -6.53 dB -23.77 dB 3:35 15-Dragon Voices
DR9 -6.72 dB -22.30 dB 3:48 16-Tintignac Lament
DR12 -10.07 dB -26.07 dB 2:09 17-Danse sacrale
DR14 -0.32 dB -24.81 dB 3:31 18-Cailleachan
DR7 -7.61 dB -20.52 dB 2:13 19-Cave of Shells
DR19 -0.28 dB -24.38 dB 3:13 20-Mуr-rнoghain
DR11 -1.69 dB -20.30 dB 5:18 21-Laughnashade Lament
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Official DR value: DR13

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