Celtic Requiem - Mary McLaughlin
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Celtic Requiem is an exciting recording on the Windham Hill label which features the talents of Gourd Music's own William Coulter and Mary Mc Laughlin of Daughter of Lir fame.
The Catholic Mass for the dead is called a "Requiem Mass" (Requiem is the Latin word for "Rest") and this collection of songs and tunes from Ireland are songs of sorrow and hope for loved ones who have passed on. The album draws on traditional as well as liturgical sources and pays tribute to the three forms of mourning in the Irish culture: "caoineadh" (lament); "marbhra" (elegy) and "cumha" (air without words).
“Celtic Requiem” (with William Coulter) Windham Hill 01934-11314-2 (1998)
“This fine album takes a sacred and secular look at bereavement, and bases its musical structures on Irish Keening, elegies and airs. ...The duo both compose new material and glean old traditions in this melancholy album, which nonetheless breathes with an inner life in opposition to its gloomy themes. ...Such blending of the sacred, the pagan and the primala make this a lament to cheer about.”
Sing Out! Fall 1998 (vol. 43 no.2)
