Performer: Katy Adelson
Culture/Origin: Ireland
Orchestration: fiddle (with added East West plugins for sound effects)
Maybe it's the Irish in me, but I absolutely love Irish music, especially jigs. They make you want to get up and do a jig, and I'm not even a dancer or one who likes to dance in public. This particular jig is called "Swallowtail Jig" and it's a well-known fiddle tune that was composed in the nineteenth century during the Irish immigration to the United States. As jigs are, it is meant to be a dance, and this jig is sometimes called "The Dancing Master" (Barra, 2016).
Classification systems are useful as they help with easily identifying what type of music you are listening to, as well as what instruments are being used, in this case, a fiddle (which is also a style of playing a violin or other instruments in the violin family). A distinctive feature of Irish jigs are their subdivision of beats. Irish Jigs are in duple meter, but the beats are divided into three equal parts. During performance, the beats are stressed musically so that they can be easily felt (Wade, 2013, p. 79).
References:
Barra, M. (2016, February 25). Swallowtail jig. Retrieved from http://www.violinadventures.com/2016/02/25/swallowtail-jig/
Wade, B. C. (2013). Thinking musically: Experiencing music, expressing culture (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Josh, who doesn't love a good jig? I did not know the true backstory about the jig until my husband met a girl in his Master's who is a fantastic violinist and violist and she prided herself on her jigs. She has been playing them all her life, and yet she never truly plays the same every time. It must take true talent to play a jig that quickly with so many embellishments.
ReplyDeleteAlong those lines, although we call this instrument a violin, the sound it makes depends on the person who plays it. For example, a Romanian violinist can play a totally different sound from an Irish or bluegrass fiddler. Each style has its own distinct sound, depending on how the beats are stressed and what embellishments are added by the musician. I cannot imagine how challenging it is for a violinist to learn how to create the many different styles on their own.
Hi Joshua,
ReplyDeleteI love Irish Jigs. As a violinist, they are so fun and exciting to play and perform for people. My grandmother who is from Ireland loved this music and I always performed Irish music and jigs for her! It is so much fun to add little turns, trills and ornaments into the music as you play, this is to ensure that you never actually play it the same way twice and Irish music is known for this. Doing these jigs actually has helped me become a better improviser and it also helped break away from the very precise and accurate elements found in classical music. I felt like I had freedom and I wasn't so restricted in my playing. Thanks for sharing your thoughts this week!