The Long Haul mazurka

Written in an idle moment this evening.

Written? That implies a deal of conscious intent.

This tune just kind of arrived - bar the odd tweak - fully-formed.

Anyway - hurray for Cinderella rhythms!

Nice Tune. Really.

Go raibh m

Good on ya’ Aidan … May your compulsion to create Mazurka’s endure. But, I thought you were in repose from composing?

Very pretty tune - where do you accent each bar?

Lovely tune, Chopin (May we call you Fred?) You must either have Donegal or Polish blood in you somewhere - perhaps both.

We’ve (by which I mean practitioners of Irish Traditional Music) got reels and jigs by the thousand, but there are probably less than 20 Irish mazurkas, so if anyone’s going to write new tunes, they should be mazurkas - or perhaps double polkas or 6/8 marches.

X: 1
T: Long Haul, The
M: 3/4
Maybe the accent thing would be more obvious if I stuck to convention and wrote the mazurka as consisting of three phrases per bar each two notes long - in which case the first note in each pair is accented.

L: 1/8
R: mazurka
K: Gmaj
|:E DG|B2 BA Bc|A2 AB cA|d^c d=c AF|GF GE DG|
B2 BA Bc|A2 AB cA|d^c d=c AF|G3:|
|:A Bc|d2 de fd|g2 ge fg|a2 ab ag|fe dB cA|
B2 BA Bc|A2 AB cA|d^c d=c AF|G3:|

I set it out as I did originally cos it came into my head as a waltz. However, after toying around with it I realised it had the dottedness more typical of a mazurka …

Ooops … don’t know what happened there!? Bit of dubious cut-and-pasting …

Anyway … as you’ll have worked out, the poast above should have read …

Maybe the accent thing would be more obvious if I stuck to convention and wrote the mazurka as consisting of three phrases per bar each two notes long - in which case the first note in each pair is accented.

X: 1
T: Long Haul, The
M: 3/4
L: 1/8
R: mazurka
K: Gmaj
|:E DG|B2 BA Bc|A2 AB cA|d^c d=c AF|GF GE DG|
B2 BA Bc|A2 AB cA|d^c d=c AF|G3:|
|:A Bc|d2 de fd|g2 ge fg|a2 ab ag|fe dB cA|
B2 BA Bc|A2 AB cA|d^c d=c AF|G3:|

I set it out as I did originally cos it came into my head as a waltz. However, after toying around with it I realised it had the dottedness more typical of a mazurka …


As regards Polish and Donegal blood … the only thing Polish in my bloodstream is the occasional drop of vodka and the only bit of Donegal in my bloodstream, a drop of Inishowen poitin I once had which came late in the day after having had too much already and which gave me such a scary drunkenness that I swear its effects are with me yet …

Did I say I was giving composing a rest?

May even have meant it at the time.

But … too obsessive/compulsive to let it lie for long!

I’ve made a quick and dirty recording of myself playing this tune. You can hear it at

https://crosseyirishmandolin.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/long-haul-v2.mp3