William Sweeney

Programme Note

salm an rhearainn is a setting of a specially written poem by Aonghas MacNeacail, who first began publishing poetry in Gaelic in the early seventies, since when his voice has become one of the most individual and insistent of the younger poets writing in Gaelic. Unafraid to experiment with new forms and influences, his poetry is nevertheless rooted in the Gaelic tradition. salm an rhearainn is set deliberately in the `common metre' (8.6.8.6) more frequently used for metrical versions of the psalms.
When the majority of the population of the Western Isles adopted a form of Calvinism, its progressive and democratic social influence was unfortunately accompanied by the wholesale destruction of an enormous part of the native music. Perhaps the Gaelic psalms can be seen as Gaelic music's revenge on a foreign culture. The plain psalm tunes, common to Scottish Presbyterian congregations, are decorated, stretched out of their original shape and interpreted individually by each member of the congregation, thus escaping the pious monotony of the lowland Scots act of worship. salm an fhearainn is an attempt to develop this tradition in a secular direction. The psychological and spiritual life of a people is expressed here in its material identification with the land on which its traditions have developed.