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Hello and welcome back!
This time, I bring you two settings of the same tune, which vary in a way that I had not initially expected to be possible.
Often, as I go through this collection, I find that if there is another setting of the same tune, even if it's removed by three or four hundred tunes, I remember that I learned the tune from the book, and I'll go back and categorize it as a duplicate. With this one, however, I had to be reminded by the title, yet when I went back and played the first instance again, I recognized that they were the same melody - it was just that one was set in 3/4, and the other in 4/4.
The other changes are comparatively minor: one is in D Major, the other in D Mixolydian, and the dramatic descent in the B part is structured in a different way, but the fact of the time signature changing was challenging for me.
In the lengthy and valuable preface to the book, Pigot's own opinion on the importance of free, unmeasured timing is made very clear, and in at least one instance in the body of the work, Pigot has described a setting (of a tune called An Buachail Coal Dubh or Black Slender Boy) as having the timing all wrong. With 6/8 tunes, I am generally confident in keeping the rhythm relatively strict, but with 3/4 and 4/4, I have tried to exercise care in at least trying the tune with a slower tempo, and with more rubato.
Even with the context of the original freedom of timings of many of these melodies, I struggle to perform a melody without some idea of a time signature. In the past, I've toyed with formulating notation for music without measures, where durations are never summed into rhythm. It's hard to say whether a system like that would be pertinent to the music written here, or whether the measures are important to the breath of the music. If Pigot was so certain that a melody had been set incorrectly, then perhaps he had clear ideas about the function of measures, but placed less importance on the durations making them up.
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As I have two settings today, I also have two recordings. You may note that I have placed less emphasis on chords in the 4/4 setting. This is for practical reasons - I have had significantly more trouble weaving chords into that version. I don't have a full explanation of why this is, but I think it is mostly to do with the mode change. All the same, I've included a C# halfway through, and a full A Major, borrowed from D Major, for dramatic effect in the conclusion of the 3/4 recording.
Another important note is that with the 4/4 version's initial appearance, I was unable to appreciate the beauty of the tune. I still hold some misgivings about quirks of the melody; the "Frère Jacques" descents in the B part, the ending phrases being so explicit and square in the A, but even so, this and several more examples have lead me to believe that even with complete certainty on the first pass, I should revisit all of these in time, to give each tune its due, and make another honest effort at understanding why each of these tunes found its way into this wonderful collection.
I hope enjoy the tune!