An amount has been said here before about this, and there is much agreement and disagreement. I find two exemplars of the view that there indeed linguistic rhythm infused to this music, the reel, the 12/8, and others. Here are two lovely examples, both very addictive and exemplary in their individual qualities:
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
thank you, dragut. I believe this is subtle, and it has taken me some time to find this. It is still imo, but I suspect there is quite a lot to it. What is the timing of the Irish language song?
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
bit too cerebral for this time of night for me chum. I havnt a clue what u are on about. then again I am half cut.. nonetheless, nice clips! breathes a sigh of relaxation , back to work (barman). nice when people actually post relevant interesting stuuf on the mustard as opposed to the influx of nonsense in recent times. cheers
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
nice clips sure, mm. you need to relax into them and feel the rhythm of each language. Beautiful. Half cut would be good, full cut would be much better. Cheers, mate.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
question - who is the fella that went to africa with Paddy Keenan? class singer. was at their gig in seamus ennis centre there a while back and yer man reduced me to tears.. like his sounds pull somthing out of ye. anyway, his name would be good. cheers
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
As homeward bound one night on the deep
Swinging in my hammock I fell asleep
I dreamed a dream and I thought it true
Concerning Franklin and his gallant crew.
With a hundred seamen he sailed away
To the frozen ocean in the month of May
To seek a passage around the pole
Where we poor seamen do sometimes go.
Through cruel hardships they vainly strove
The ship on mountains of ice was drove
Only the Eskimo in his skin canoe
Was the only one that ever came through
In Baffin Bay where the whale fish blow
The fate of Franklin no man may know
The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell
Lord Franklin with his sailors do dwell
now my burden it gives me pain
For long lost Franklin I'd cross the main
Ten thousand pounds would I freely give
to sail on over where Franklin, he lives.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
I think I see what you're driving at.
But many Irish nonsense songs in English are sung to the single jig rhythm too. I suppose there's much made in linguistic circles of the application of Gaelic rhythms to spoken English, particularly in the west, so maybe I do have a handle on what you're saying...
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
is it not sometimes said, historically, that the reel is more English and it is the jig that is originally Irish.
I think the rhythm and syntax of the languages lends themselves to one more than the other perhaps. They seem interchangeable sometimes in a quirky sort of way, but there is that definite rhythm sometimes matched by traditional word rhyming as well, in English poetic mode. It is beautiful in Lord Franklin, and it matches the 4/4 perfectly. Very dreamlike, hypnotic.
Same as in Tiocfaidh but a different timing in Irish language. The syncopation around it is exquisite.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
This is a really interesting thread, would like to think about some other examples though - the Lord Franklin words were written about 1850 and set to the tune of the Croppy Boy I think?
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Canntaireachd and puirt-a-beul don't use "real" words though, do they? So they don't have to relate in themselves to the rhythms of spoken language. To me it's the melodies they represent / are associated with that make them sound gaelic - which turns into a circular argument if the rhythms of those melodies turn out to be language-dependent. Or am I havering here?
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Of course it's a circular (and somewhat tiresome) argument. Canntaireachd was used, insofar as I understand it, to teach people the melodies of tunes in absence of an instrument to learn them on and became a skill in and of itself.
If you are listening for the "linguistic rhythm" of whatever language in the melodies of tunes, you'll hear it as your ears -- and therefore perceptions -- will be attuned to what you process as similarities.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
If seeking the rhythms of a particular language predisposes one to find them, then perhaps what Nicholas suggested should be inverted. Rather than exarmining the thoughts of someone bilingual we could recruit someone who speaks neither Irish nor English, has no pre-conceived notions and can be furnished with musical and spoken reference material and asked to report on what they hear.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
A lot of mediaeval English songs are intended for 9/8 tunes. That continued for centuries. The metre of "Lord Franklin" is not very natural to most native English speakers, and its clunky inverted constructions are just weird. It sounds like the songwriter was desperate to fit his words into a wildly unsuitable tune. You couldn't have found a worse example.
A lot of Irish text has dactylic rhythms. People first noticed that coincides with jig metres a very long time ago.
English is a lot less regular - its main metrical feature is that it usually accents the first syllable. Hungarian does the same, so Hungarian prosody sounds pretty natural to an English speaker.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
perhaps, because dactylic rhythms in Irish language no doubt preceded jig metre, it can be supposed that jig metre might have derived from them. The timing in Tiocfaidh an Samhradh in the above clip certainly sounds very natural, although it would probably have been an accompanied sean nos song originally.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Is there such a thing as an accompanied sean nos song? I thought that being unaccompanied was one of the hallmarks of the sean nos style, which would make the phrase 'unaccompanied sean nos song' a bit redundant.
And isn't there a term that applies to redundant phrases?
Rona Lightfoot, one of first great lady pipers. She believes an understanding of gaelic helps when playing gaelic based music. Phrasing etc. Of course it's not essential but to me as a Gael there is something special when I hear her that I can't hear from many other acclaimed pipers.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
The rhythms of the language might be *suited* to jig rhythms, but I don't think you can supposed that they're *derived* from them. Not least because they seem to have been prevalent across Europe before they became popular in Ireland.
I see that Wiki says that jigs originated in England in the 16th century. Even if you look up "Gigue" or "Giga" in Wiki, you'll find that it says that it originated in England, from where it was adapted both in Europe and in Ireland and Scotland. England seems to have had them about a century before anyone else. (Though I must admit, I had thought that there were Italian precedents a lot earlier than that.)
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
eb - the problem with that analysis is that it only takes into account printed sources. Assuming that the surviving sources are the only sources to have ever existed demonstrates weak historical analysis, apologies to Wiki. England in the 16th Century, and particularly London, witnessed a radical process of urbanisation and upward social mobility: the upper classes and emergent middle classes of London took an interest in 'Country Dances', as well as other home-grown entertainments such as mumming and morality theatre, and sharp London publishers began to see an opportunity to make money out of it by gentrifying the dances and putting them down on paper, as well as introducing country entertainments into permanent venues (the theatres). With regards to music, this is best exemplified in Playford's 17th Century 'Dancing Master' series, but the process began before. The dots, unfortunately, don't mean s**t.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Without any evidence to the contrary, one could suggest that the jig was uprooted from the Irish countryside by the Tudors and Elizabethans, forcibly transported across the Irish Sea, and paraded through the English countryside in chains for the entertainment of the Sassenach hordes... Hold on, am I confusing my Empires? Isn't that what happened to the British when those barbarous Italians came over here to steal our land?
But seriously, the idea that a simple dance rhythm such as the double-jig should be geographically specific, rather than something which emerges spontaneously in a number of separate geographical regions, is a weak one.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Maybe. Not my analysis, so I'm not going to defend it. But what it does suggest is that there's no good reason to suppose that it originated in Ireland, as a result of linguistic matters.
I think, if you look into it deeper though, DR, that you'll find that the WIKI 'analysis' is not based on published 'dots', but rather - originally - on other sources, some of whch will have been based on dots and others, maybe not. Not sure - haven't really got time to look right now ...
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
What other sources do you imagine there are? Field recordings? Not too many ethnomusicologists around in 16th Century London...
Anyway, I don't suppose the jig originated in Ireland any more than it originated in North Africa or Persia, that's exactly my point. There are a finite number of rhythms to which one can dance, and the jig is one of the simplest, therefore it seems reasonable to assume that it developed independently at different times, in different regions, without any cross-cultural transference.
Its given popularity at any given time, however, is an entirely different kettle of historical fish...
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
I know that there are many other sources for making reasonable assumption about music and its history - the written word, for example. Historical accounts, passed down word of mouth followed by written accounts etc etc
I totally agree with your comment "I don't suppose the jig originated in Ireland etc ..." But I think Duij, or Ray (Raigh?) or whoever he is now *was* suggesting that one could suppose that it originated in Ireland.
I think you and I seem to be agreeing, Dragut. You may have picked me up wrong, and I seem to have picked you up wrong, is all.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
I suppose what I mean is that the assumptions that allow the subtleties of rhythm to be shoe-horned into a mathematically-precise system are present whether you're describing music pictorially or linguistically. The other point is that any written source only tells us about that written source, it doesn't tell us about any other sources that may have existed and been lost, nor does it tell us about other unwritten sources of information which have not, until relatively recently, been available to the historian. If a piece of paper from the 13th Century with an Italian jig written down on it turns up, we can make assumptions about the Italian origins of the jig until a Persian manuscript from the 12th Century turns up etc. etc.
If the Wiki article was written properly it would state that the first written evidence of the 6/8 rhythm being used in dance music comes to us from 16th Century England. And from there on, one's assumptions are one's own.
Pedantry has a home in historical analysis I suppose.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Considerations of whether jigs arose in England or Ireland or anywhere else as well, are interesting, but beside the point that I sought to make, which was, as above:
"I think the rhythm and syntax of the languages lends themselves to one more than the other perhaps." ie to jigs or reels, or something else.
(Waltz time for example was particularly popular in traditional Australian music, I'm not sure why, although I have some notions about informality in the language and the culture and perhaps the juxtaposition of such a musical form in a given landscape to reflect something or other, but again, beside the point).
You can take a traditionally performed sean nos song, totally unaccompanied, very slow, very hard to identify the timing, or even to be conscious of it at all, then when a contemprary take on it is done, as does Micheal O'Domhnaill in Tiocfaidh an Samhradh, it is readily transformable into a 12/8 jig for goodness sake! I think that's remarkable.
I do think Michael O'Domhnaill was a huge talent in this context as well, of demonstrating the possibility of this linguistic relationship to the rhythm and timing of the music.
For me, those two clips of Micheal are prime examples of his talents in this area.
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
"Jig" in 16th century England usually meant a comedy sketch attached to the end of a play (I have a book about these, "The Elizabethan Jig", which includes scripts). It *sometimes* also meant a dance or dance tune, which was *sometimes* in 6/8 or 9/8, but you have to look at the context each time.
It's reasonably common in Gaelic for a phrase to end with a dactyl /-- . Much less so in English. That pattern does match a lot of Irish tunes, whereas tunes for songs in English or Scots more often end with a stressed note. (BTW you also get dactylic endings in ancient Greek, and one of the oldest fully notated tunes in the world, the Scholion of Seikilos from about 100AD, ends that way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RjBePQV4xE .
Here's a Scottish Gaelic one, with words supplied:
Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
An amount has been said here before about this, and there is much agreement and disagreement. I find two exemplars of the view that there indeed linguistic rhythm infused to this music, the reel, the 12/8, and others. Here are two lovely examples, both very addictive and exemplary in their individual qualities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3UcnUqc0qk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj4RHYJdcE4&NR=1
Go mbeannaí Dia duit, a Micheal.
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
I don't see the connection you're making between the words of these songs and the rhythms of reels and single jigs. Care to elaborate?
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Dragut Reis
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
thank you, dragut. I believe this is subtle, and it has taken me some time to find this. It is still imo, but I suspect there is quite a lot to it. What is the timing of the Irish language song?
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
I haven't a notion.
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Dragut Reis
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
is it different to the timing of Lord Franklin to you?
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
bit too cerebral for this time of night for me chum. I havnt a clue what u are on about. then again I am half cut.. nonetheless, nice clips! breathes a sigh of relaxation , back to work (barman). nice when people actually post relevant interesting stuuf on the mustard as opposed to the influx of nonsense in recent times. cheers
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Miss Mulligan
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
nice clips sure, mm. you need to relax into them and feel the rhythm of each language. Beautiful. Half cut would be good, full cut would be much better. Cheers, mate.
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
question - who is the fella that went to africa with Paddy Keenan? class singer. was at their gig in seamus ennis centre there a while back and yer man reduced me to tears.. like his sounds pull somthing out of ye. anyway, his name would be good. cheers
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Miss Mulligan
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
full cut would also equal loss of Job ! ha ha
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Miss Mulligan
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Liam Ó Maonlaí ?
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Slightly Mad Scientist
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
the very one! cheers
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Miss Mulligan
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
(feverishly looks at watch and searches you tube)
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Miss Mulligan
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
As homeward bound one night on the deep
Swinging in my hammock I fell asleep
I dreamed a dream and I thought it true
Concerning Franklin and his gallant crew.
With a hundred seamen he sailed away
To the frozen ocean in the month of May
To seek a passage around the pole
Where we poor seamen do sometimes go.
Through cruel hardships they vainly strove
The ship on mountains of ice was drove
Only the Eskimo in his skin canoe
Was the only one that ever came through
In Baffin Bay where the whale fish blow
The fate of Franklin no man may know
The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell
Lord Franklin with his sailors do dwell
now my burden it gives me pain
For long lost Franklin I'd cross the main
Ten thousand pounds would I freely give
to sail on over where Franklin, he lives.
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
that's 4/4 time, it suits the English language.
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-IdyWs3axc
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Miss Mulligan
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
the Tiocfaidh an Samhradh is syncopated around a 12/8 (I stand to be corrected). Absolutely gorgeous the both of them.
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goJ6vYJQU9w .. legend
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Miss Mulligan
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
another 12/8 in Irish language - the language seems to like that rhythm.
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
I think I see what you're driving at.
But many Irish nonsense songs in English are sung to the single jig rhythm too. I suppose there's much made in linguistic circles of the application of Gaelic rhythms to spoken English, particularly in the west, so maybe I do have a handle on what you're saying...
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Dragut Reis
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
is it not sometimes said, historically, that the reel is more English and it is the jig that is originally Irish.
I think the rhythm and syntax of the languages lends themselves to one more than the other perhaps. They seem interchangeable sometimes in a quirky sort of way, but there is that definite rhythm sometimes matched by traditional word rhyming as well, in English poetic mode. It is beautiful in Lord Franklin, and it matches the 4/4 perfectly. Very dreamlike, hypnotic.
Same as in Tiocfaidh but a different timing in Irish language. The syncopation around it is exquisite.
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Reels are originally Scottish apparently. They definitely don't like what we would consider to be reels in traditional English music.
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Dragut Reis
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
that's interesting. Maybe the English is more the hornpipe, sure it would go well in the Lord Franklin song. A sort of "sean nos hornpipe" rhythm?
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
You're talking about Irish Irish songs such as The Song Of The Stampi, or The Mad Goat, right? Not the Nancy Spain sort of stuff?
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
This is a really interesting thread, would like to think about some other examples though - the Lord Franklin words were written about 1850 and set to the tune of the Croppy Boy I think?
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Lynn W
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
You got it Lynn, was just looking that up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Franklin%27s_Lament
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
So the question becomes did Cailín Óg a Stór have words originally?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cail%C3%ADn_%C3%93g_a_St%C3%B3r
We've got an Irish air from 1584 with English words set to it in 1852, so where does that leave this whole discussion exactly?
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
An Irish speaker who's pondered this topic could probably come up with definitive statements on this, being familiar of course with both languages.
Those of us who don't know Irish can only paddle about and come up with droll conclusions that are fairly personal and subjective.
This is not meant as a put-down! I think it's an interesting subject.
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Cantarach. Look it up.
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Canntaireachd and puirt-a-beul don't use "real" words though, do they? So they don't have to relate in themselves to the rhythms of spoken language. To me it's the melodies they represent / are associated with that make them sound gaelic - which turns into a circular argument if the rhythms of those melodies turn out to be language-dependent. Or am I havering here?
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by Slightly Mad Scientist
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Of course it's a circular (and somewhat tiresome) argument. Canntaireachd was used, insofar as I understand it, to teach people the melodies of tunes in absence of an instrument to learn them on and became a skill in and of itself.
If you are listening for the "linguistic rhythm" of whatever language in the melodies of tunes, you'll hear it as your ears -- and therefore perceptions -- will be attuned to what you process as similarities.
# Posted on September 4th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
If seeking the rhythms of a particular language predisposes one to find them, then perhaps what Nicholas suggested should be inverted. Rather than exarmining the thoughts of someone bilingual we could recruit someone who speaks neither Irish nor English, has no pre-conceived notions and can be furnished with musical and spoken reference material and asked to report on what they hear.
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Slightly Mad Scientist
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
A lot of mediaeval English songs are intended for 9/8 tunes. That continued for centuries. The metre of "Lord Franklin" is not very natural to most native English speakers, and its clunky inverted constructions are just weird. It sounds like the songwriter was desperate to fit his words into a wildly unsuitable tune. You couldn't have found a worse example.
A lot of Irish text has dactylic rhythms. People first noticed that coincides with jig metres a very long time ago.
English is a lot less regular - its main metrical feature is that it usually accents the first syllable. Hungarian does the same, so Hungarian prosody sounds pretty natural to an English speaker.
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Jack Campin
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
There you go Jack, spoiling it all for us half-assed amateurs by actually knowing what you're talking about...
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Dragut Reis
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
perhaps, because dactylic rhythms in Irish language no doubt preceded jig metre, it can be supposed that jig metre might have derived from them. The timing in Tiocfaidh an Samhradh in the above clip certainly sounds very natural, although it would probably have been an accompanied sean nos song originally.
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
an 'unaccompanied' sean nos song.
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Is there such a thing as an accompanied sean nos song? I thought that being unaccompanied was one of the hallmarks of the sean nos style, which would make the phrase 'unaccompanied sean nos song' a bit redundant.
And isn't there a term that applies to redundant phrases?
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by AlBrown
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
When a syllable of a sung word is extended into a sequence of notes going up and down the scale, these are called 'melismata'.
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIEqsFq8oMM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YN9M02sLLA&feature=related
Scottish gaelic, but obviously the same thing.
Rona Lightfoot, one of first great lady pipers. She believes an understanding of gaelic helps when playing gaelic based music. Phrasing etc. Of course it's not essential but to me as a Gael there is something special when I hear her that I can't hear from many other acclaimed pipers.
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by bogman
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
The rhythms of the language might be *suited* to jig rhythms, but I don't think you can supposed that they're *derived* from them. Not least because they seem to have been prevalent across Europe before they became popular in Ireland.
I see that Wiki says that jigs originated in England in the 16th century. Even if you look up "Gigue" or "Giga" in Wiki, you'll find that it says that it originated in England, from where it was adapted both in Europe and in Ireland and Scotland. England seems to have had them about a century before anyone else. (Though I must admit, I had thought that there were Italian precedents a lot earlier than that.)
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by ethical blend
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
"And isn't there a term that applies to redundant phrases?" - pleonasm
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by RichardB
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
eb - the problem with that analysis is that it only takes into account printed sources. Assuming that the surviving sources are the only sources to have ever existed demonstrates weak historical analysis, apologies to Wiki. England in the 16th Century, and particularly London, witnessed a radical process of urbanisation and upward social mobility: the upper classes and emergent middle classes of London took an interest in 'Country Dances', as well as other home-grown entertainments such as mumming and morality theatre, and sharp London publishers began to see an opportunity to make money out of it by gentrifying the dances and putting them down on paper, as well as introducing country entertainments into permanent venues (the theatres). With regards to music, this is best exemplified in Playford's 17th Century 'Dancing Master' series, but the process began before. The dots, unfortunately, don't mean s**t.
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Dragut Reis
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Without any evidence to the contrary, one could suggest that the jig was uprooted from the Irish countryside by the Tudors and Elizabethans, forcibly transported across the Irish Sea, and paraded through the English countryside in chains for the entertainment of the Sassenach hordes... Hold on, am I confusing my Empires? Isn't that what happened to the British when those barbarous Italians came over here to steal our land?
But seriously, the idea that a simple dance rhythm such as the double-jig should be geographically specific, rather than something which emerges spontaneously in a number of separate geographical regions, is a weak one.
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Dragut Reis
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Maybe. Not my analysis, so I'm not going to defend it. But what it does suggest is that there's no good reason to suppose that it originated in Ireland, as a result of linguistic matters.
I think, if you look into it deeper though, DR, that you'll find that the WIKI 'analysis' is not based on published 'dots', but rather - originally - on other sources, some of whch will have been based on dots and others, maybe not. Not sure - haven't really got time to look right now ...
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by ethical blend
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
What other sources do you imagine there are? Field recordings? Not too many ethnomusicologists around in 16th Century London...
Anyway, I don't suppose the jig originated in Ireland any more than it originated in North Africa or Persia, that's exactly my point. There are a finite number of rhythms to which one can dance, and the jig is one of the simplest, therefore it seems reasonable to assume that it developed independently at different times, in different regions, without any cross-cultural transference.
Its given popularity at any given time, however, is an entirely different kettle of historical fish...
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Dragut Reis
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
I know that there are many other sources for making reasonable assumption about music and its history - the written word, for example. Historical accounts, passed down word of mouth followed by written accounts etc etc
I totally agree with your comment "I don't suppose the jig originated in Ireland etc ..." But I think Duij, or Ray (Raigh?) or whoever he is now *was* suggesting that one could suppose that it originated in Ireland.
I think you and I seem to be agreeing, Dragut. You may have picked me up wrong, and I seem to have picked you up wrong, is all.
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by ethical blend
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
It's the Mustard, it burns, it burns...
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Dragut Reis
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
I suppose what I mean is that the assumptions that allow the subtleties of rhythm to be shoe-horned into a mathematically-precise system are present whether you're describing music pictorially or linguistically. The other point is that any written source only tells us about that written source, it doesn't tell us about any other sources that may have existed and been lost, nor does it tell us about other unwritten sources of information which have not, until relatively recently, been available to the historian. If a piece of paper from the 13th Century with an Italian jig written down on it turns up, we can make assumptions about the Italian origins of the jig until a Persian manuscript from the 12th Century turns up etc. etc.
If the Wiki article was written properly it would state that the first written evidence of the 6/8 rhythm being used in dance music comes to us from 16th Century England. And from there on, one's assumptions are one's own.
Pedantry has a home in historical analysis I suppose.
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Dragut Reis
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Considerations of whether jigs arose in England or Ireland or anywhere else as well, are interesting, but beside the point that I sought to make, which was, as above:
"I think the rhythm and syntax of the languages lends themselves to one more than the other perhaps." ie to jigs or reels, or something else.
(Waltz time for example was particularly popular in traditional Australian music, I'm not sure why, although I have some notions about informality in the language and the culture and perhaps the juxtaposition of such a musical form in a given landscape to reflect something or other, but again, beside the point).
You can take a traditionally performed sean nos song, totally unaccompanied, very slow, very hard to identify the timing, or even to be conscious of it at all, then when a contemprary take on it is done, as does Micheal O'Domhnaill in Tiocfaidh an Samhradh, it is readily transformable into a 12/8 jig for goodness sake! I think that's remarkable.
I do think Michael O'Domhnaill was a huge talent in this context as well, of demonstrating the possibility of this linguistic relationship to the rhythm and timing of the music.
For me, those two clips of Micheal are prime examples of his talents in this area.
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Duij / Enlyke Flynn / Skull Duggeraigh (you know, Skulduggery...Skull....Duggery...get it? Oh, never mind.
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Er ... yeah .. I got that, Duij. I was being deliberately obtuse for comic effect.
[sniff]
[walks off with nose in air]
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by ethical blend
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
I dont think its in the words at all
its in the dance of course
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by bazouki dave
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Chicken and egg?
# Posted on September 5th 2010 by Dragut Reis
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
I know, eb, was just diggin' yer.
Cheers,
Skull.
# Posted on September 6th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
Fairy Muff
# Posted on September 6th 2010 by ethical blend
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
# Posted on September 6th 2010 by ethical blend
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
phew. thanks for the smiley...
you scared me there for a second.
# Posted on September 6th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Irish and English linguistic rhythm in the music
"Jig" in 16th century England usually meant a comedy sketch attached to the end of a play (I have a book about these, "The Elizabethan Jig", which includes scripts). It *sometimes* also meant a dance or dance tune, which was *sometimes* in 6/8 or 9/8, but you have to look at the context each time.
It's reasonably common in Gaelic for a phrase to end with a dactyl /-- . Much less so in English. That pattern does match a lot of Irish tunes, whereas tunes for songs in English or Scots more often end with a stressed note. (BTW you also get dactylic endings in ancient Greek, and one of the oldest fully notated tunes in the world, the Scholion of Seikilos from about 100AD, ends that way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RjBePQV4xE .
Here's a Scottish Gaelic one, with words supplied:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/alba/oran/orain/fiollagan/
Anybody seen the original broadside for "Lord Franklin"? - it isn't in the Bodleian on-line collection. What tune did it say to use, if any?
# Posted on September 7th 2010 by Jack Campin