Ceol Rinnce Nuachumtha / Composed Dance Tunes
All titles are original and the copyright of Peadar O Riada.  Publishing  is with Realworld Music
(I will add to the list in the coming weeks with both formats - MP3 files and sheet music)
Sorry for the delay in getting these music files to work properly and for their size at present - i am gradually learning this web design craft
The Bullock on the bonnet

This is a tune that i composed on the arrival to my home in the early hours of the morning, of my good friend Seamus Creagh.   He had met with an errant bullock on the road as he returned from a gig.  The bullock ended on the bonnet of the car and through the windscreen, with a leg each side of Seamus's head.   Seamus appeared out of the night with bandages galore and spattered in blood.  He was accompanied by the ambulance staff and they all joined into to a bit of a party that was going on in the Draighean at the time.  The tune kind of came to me as the adventure was being recounted to the company present.

    Sport (quicktime soundtrack)    Sport (Finale sheet-music)      Sport (Sheet-music.pdf)  
  This is a piece i composed whilst baby sitting my nephews and their friends at the same time that i was in the recording studio recording the album "Amidst these Hills".  I had run out of material and the engineer was waiting and running tape. It is built out of the laughter and play of the kids.  It was an enjoyable evenings work.

 Fiach        (Sheet Music)

This is the mirror image of the 'Sport' track in the first album.   This time i imagined the kids to be a little older - 10 or 12 years maybe, and doing what i spent some time doing at that age - hunting rabbits with dogs and running free around the mountains of my home.

     

Slide Dubh       (Sheet Music)

This slide was composed for a film called "Love and Rage" by Cathal Black.  Sean O Liathain of Sliabh Riach played it with me.  (He on fiddle and i on whistle)   Sean and i both appeared together for the first time in a television show on RTE in 1971.   He was playing fiddle and i was dancing in a half set with more of my comrades from home.  We had singers, musicians, storytellers and dancers from Cuil Aodha on that show.   The dance (with Sean O Liathain providing the music on fiddle, which was held in the old style - to the waist instead of under the chin) later featured as the title sequence in a series called come "West along the Road" also broadcast on RTE1. in recent years.


 An Draighean  
This is a piano piece that came to me whilst recording the album "Amidst These Hills."  The thoughts of an early May evening were what set me off in the sitting room at home in "An Draighean"  where this was recorded.   An Draighean is the name of our house and means the Black Thorn as it was built in a wood of blackthorn with oak, birch and mountain ash.

Aoibhinn Cronan
This was the first piece of music i intentionally composed.   My father had died and i had taken over the choir but i was  very young and stupid.  I had to learn to play the organ etc and as a good percentage of the choir members were only slightly older then me, they were not about to take orders from such a young pup as i.  So the younger kids and the older men stayed and came to rehearsals.  I had a Saturday morning session every week for the boys.    I had just taken over the beekeeping as well and was learning that trade at the same time.   So i found this poem By Douglas de hIde - Irelands first President since Independence.   The poem was about bees and it called to me - the music just seemed to come out of its own accord as i needed it.

 Caoire     This is part of a series of three pieces of music i composed for a Belgian Artist friend of mine called Lilly Von Oost.  (God rest her , she is now dead)   She worked in wool making wool sculptures and wall hangings.   She had a major exhibition in the Guinness Hop Stores in Dublin in 1987 and asked me to write the music.  As an exhibition started an one  point and was displayed in a space through which you moved, and in this case the space was actually divided into three rooms or halls, i asked her if we could make definite sections of the exhibition thus allowing me different ambiance's to play with.   Thus we had 'past'  which was pure wool and traditional use to a certain degree,  then we had 'future' for which Lilly used modern synthetic materials and then the third and main exhibition which i called 'past meets future' or present.   In Irish that  is 'Bhi', 'Beidh' agus 'Ta'.   'Caoire' (sheep)  is past and i had the help of my friend and neighbour Micheal Mac Suibhne and his sheep for this little piece.

Olann  fling      This is a bit of the second part (present)

Fonn olann.     This another bit of the second part  (present)

Beidh   (Future)  is the last part of this musical triptych.  The poem is the result of three rather frightening days i spent lost in New York in the early eighty's.  The lack of gentleness and soul is what i found frightening but i found during a recent visit that, that great city has changed to the good during the Clinton era.

Mo Ghille m' fhear       Sheet Music
This piece of music has come to the for very much in recent years.    It originally was a Jacobite recruiting song.   My father played it as a march, with the rhythm that is now associated with it,  for the funerals of two local heroes who passed away in the year precious to his own death.   I decided to use it for his funeral then.    The words are an amalgamation of three sets of words known as two separate songs.    I chose this as one of the first songs to teach the choir after my fathers death as i felt, rightly or wrongly,  that there was a danger that people would lose heart and that we needed something to rally us together.  Remember that those times were very anti Irish indigenous culture as far as we Gaeltacht people were concerned  - the Northern  situation was at its worst.   So arrived this version which has been so imitated since but for me and my people it represents a bit more then just a song to be brayed out for bucolic driven need or crass commercial opportunism.  We put it together to carry us through tough times which we never forget.  (End of rant!!!)

Go mBeannaiotar duit     Again this is an early composition.   (the text is the Irish Language version of the Ave Maria)

Imig faoi'n domhan uile.      This is the Pslam for Saint Patricks day.   This i set to music during the 1980's.  This bit of recording comes from a live broadcast concert in the National Concert Hall in Dublin.   I usually try and use what ever  is available when arranging something and on this occasion lifted the sugar bowls from the canteen as percussion instruments.


 Im long me measaim     This is based on a poem of my friend Donal O Liathain.   I was very taken with the idea's in the poem and this i tried to reflect in the melody  -  i hope some of the strength that these idea's stir in me, transfer to the music.

Samharadh, samharadh
This song im learnt and fell inn love with as a child listening to Sean O Se and the boys in Ceoltoiri Chualainne practicing and playing at the turn of the 1950's to the sixties.    This orchestral  i arrangementmade for the RTE concert Orchestra and a live Concert in the early  1990's.  The soloist is my nephew Maidhcí O Suilleabhain.  He was so young and small at the time that we had to put him on a chair in front of the orchestra and choir.   He sang away without fear and hit his high A with no problem.  When i heard him coming out with it in spite of the big venue, broadcast, crowds of musicians etc he made me as proud as any man can be in the presence of courage and indeindependence I have to admit that i sometimes gove the lads in the choir difficult tasks and expect them to fulfill them.  I never difedifferentiateween the hard and easy tasks and they always come up trumps
Connie and i play at the Mills Inn every Thursday night.   We have played many a tune in the last 35 years.   He is a great musician and composer.  


.Peadar on Concertina
Just a bit of a piece on my own in the concertina.   I used to play the accordion while waiting for my father  to get  me a set of uileannn pipes.  That never came to pass and i kind of moved over to the concertina by accident.   I would not regard myself as such a mighty player - but i really enjoy playing music and i find that it is a challenging instrument.



  Theme/Logo Music This was a demo piece i found on a tape the other day and dates back to the early eighties.   It was for some tv series and never came to anything.   The only reason i plonked it up here was the fact that i had started sampling that time and have since turned against even though other people seem to think it is the way to go.  We all change over the years?    



 Suantrai
My father used to play this for us in the evenings before we went to bed.   His father used to sing it to him when he was young.   I play it here in a recording made for the album  "Amidst these Hills"  on the same piano at home.  The windows were open during the same May session and i used to keep a lot of fowl that time.   The Mink and the fox has played hell with that interest at present.