MANX LIFE SUITE for STRING QUARTET
String Quartet - Digital Sheet Music

String Quartet String Quartet - Level 2 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.1334145

Composed by Trad & Alan Edgar. Folk,Traditional. 36 pages. Alan Edgar Ted Moon #920362. Published by Alan Edgar Ted Moon (A0.1334145).

Here'a suite about life in the Isle of Man based on Manx folk tunes and religious music.  All the harmonies and some decorations are mine. There are 5 movements.

 

I MAINLY CELEBRATIONS:  I found all the melodies in The Mona Melodies, a group of traditional tunes (probably heard in Douglas) collected in 1820.  Hunt the Wren is a surprising, lively, traditional event on St Stephen's Day when villagers dance and sing round the town hoping for gifts. This tune is dorian.  A Lullaby in aeolian follows, then In Praise of Wine, in ionian, while at the same time fragments of the Lullaby are heard from inside a home.  The Wren group return.




II FAITH Religious music  I assume could have been heard in Manx churches.  Two supposedly Celtic-style antiphon melodies from a 13th-century breviary from Caen  (a) The Holy Cross (b)  The Saints.  I made them into parallel organum with a drone.  Between them is an elaborate ancient melody (labelled Martyrs) for Psalm 80 (Lord, come and save us), which I found with Gaelic words.  I accompany with 3 more parts.  The whole movement is in dorian mode.




III EMOTIONS:  Mourning for a Prince is a mixolydian tune also found in The Mona Melodies.  I give the tune to the viola.  In Praise of Beauty is sung by the cello in C major.  This tune is also found in The Mona Melodies, as Brown Oxen (Berry Dowin).  William Brown (Illiam Dhoan) (should be Dhone, I believe) is the air used for Love Lost and Found: again from The Mona Melodies.  I made it C minor at first (love lost) , then  the original version in F major (love found).




IV CAR JUAN NAN (Let's All Dance) is a reel, from which I took a few bars and made it into a round.  My source was the book Ed. Colin Jerry Kiaull yn Theay 1:  Manx music and songs for folk instruments




V WORK, REST and PLAY.  The Spinning Song is major/ionian, the Milking Song is major pentatonic, but my mooing bass part does not respect that: I found those tunes in  Kiaull yn Theay.   The Harvest Celebration Dance (Yn Mheillea) is from manxmusic.com.  The Goodnight Song (Arrane Oie Vie) was traditionally sung after a Christmas Eve event in the church, after more formal proceedings and after the singing of many gloomy vaguely religious songs there and a visit to the pub.  Collected from Mr E, Corteen and Mr T.  Taggart of Malew:  my source:  manxmusic.com.




DURATION: 15 minutes.