The IV-V-I or ii-V-I resolving chord patterns that are the backbone of tonal music clash with the ubiquitous endless vii-I cycle of modal (mixolydian/dorian) tunes.Rising up from the Iberian peninsula, over the span of two millennia the Celts engaged in cycles of conquest and retreat that left pockets of their descendents across Western Europe.
You hear lots of wrong chords and unnecessary 3rds because they are used to accompanying major/minor tunes. You can hear this pretty easily if you go to open Irish sessions where people will sit in who are not accustomed to Irish music. The other modes tend to throw off accompanists. As Western "classical" music developed, harmonic accompaniment became more common and accompanying chords standardized around major and minor scales. Modal tunes are really designed to be played without harmonic accompaniment. You tend to find that older mixolydian tunes received a sharpened seventh when they were published as sheet music, and dorian tunes were transformed to natural or melodic minor tunes.
During the 1800s many tunes that were modal were changed to be tonal. Not as a rule, no, but there definitely are tunes that pop up that are modal and lots of older tunes probably were modal. There might be a handful of tunes we could justifiably speculate about, but it would really only be speculation. So I think it would be hard to justify the claim that Irish traditional music goes back to the middle ages for example. Most obvious are the famine and the flight of the earls, fall of the old Gaelic aristocracy etc. We also have several cultural watersheds that might reduce the chance of medieval Irish music surviving into the modern era. And there are question marks that might hang over jigs being much of a thing before the baroque gigue became popular. It gets bit wonkier as we go back, but where we see songs that appear in English broadsides for example we can at least day they are unlikely to have been Irish songs from the middle ages. Like polkas and Germans and barndances and waltzes. Then there are the tunes we can exclude because we know the fashion came in in the 19th century. It does back to God knows when", but if you sit down with someone who really knows their stuff, you'll find so many tunes and songs were written in the second half of the twentieth century. Like everyone goes "oh it's all traditional.
Then there are tunes and songs that we can categorically say aren't old because we know who wrote them and when. Maybe a solid origin of a foreign tune that seems to have been adopted into the tradition etc.
That could be the tune itself, or a mention of it by name. Well yes, and I acknowledged that there may be a handful of tunes that go a long way back.īut if I'm going to give an origin for a tune I'd like there to be some kind of evidence or support for that assertion. Need help finding a tune? Try these online tune finders and tools Irish Music Magazine keeping you updated with the world or Irish music.Ĭomhaltas an organisation promoting Irish culture globally.Īn Intro to abc notation and ABC archives Technique and style in Traditional Irish Music Transcriptions of traditional players, with mp3 sound clips and comments.
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