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. Â All the harmonies and some decorations are mine. There are 5 movements.
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I MAINLY CELEBRATIONS: Â I found all the melodies in The Mona Melodies, a group of traditional tunes (probably heard in Douglas) collected in 1820. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â My source was the book Ed. Colin Jerry Kiaull yn Theay 1: Â 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.
