Aggie’s mazurka

“Seamus Egan: Traditional Music of Ireland” (& elsewhere)

Track 11. “Aggie’s Waltz”

Notes: “There is a definite traditional influence in this waltz from French Newfoundland. We learned it from the playing of Ron Fromanger, a fiddle player from Newfoundland.”

Here’s where I was lead astray. You just can’t find a decent concertina player nowadays you can trust… 😉

“Vals Från Transtrand” ~ track 6
Key signature: D Major
Submitted on July 10th 2008 by ceolachan.
https://thesession.org/tunes/8699

X: 2
T: Aggie’s
M: 3/4
L: 1/8
R: mazurka
K: Dmaj
|: FA |\
d2 dc de | f2 dA FG | A2 AF AB | BA GF E2 |
e2 e^d ef | gf ed dc | c2 B2 G2 | B2 AG FA |
d2 dc de | f2 dA FG | A2 AF AB | BA GF E2 |
e2 e^d ef | gf ed dc | A2 B2 c2 | d4 :|
|: fg |\
f2 d2 fg | f2 d2 fg | a2 af gf | e4 ef |
e2 c2 ef | e2 A2 ef | g3 e fe | d4 :|

Key signature: D Major
Submitted on November 17th 2003 by helga44.
https://thesession.org/tunes/2160

Yes, there are correlations to be made ~ but ~ 😏

should the first e be an octave lower, or do people actually play a minor 9th leap there?

I assume that’s what you mean, from ^D to e ~ the answer is ~ yes!!! 😏

~ or ~ you could ~ ~ | B>A G>F E>^d | e2 e>^d e>f | ~

~ to make it even easier on you… Now to go away and take it another few ways… 😉

Yeah, that triplet will make it easier for you. No one can say I don’t care about old age and aching limbs…

that my question was a bit confusing (I did mean from the d sharp at the end of the 12th m. up a minor 9th to the e at the beginning of the 13th | B>A G>F E>^D |
e2 e>^d e>f |), but getting a “yes” answer to an “or” question isn’t necessarily easy digest! 🙂 (Also, I think you might have made an error--Gods forbid!--in the header of your first reply). I find the minor 9th leap a bit jarring (which is not necesssarily a bad thing!) and was wondering about the intent.
Many thanks for taking into account my decrepit 42 year old limbs! (And here I was thinking the Yoga was helping…)

~ the ‘yes!’ is to the 2nd half of your ‘or’… (that’s you in the glasses)

It’s all the lost sleep lately… I’m la-la in the extreme…

Now for a good stiff shot of something inebriating to see if it will keep me down for more than 8 hours… 😏

‘people’ ~ several do… 😀

Something I’d forgotten to add, my tendency would be to not repeat the A-part, just to play it as 16 bars, making the whole tune fit nicely into the usual 32 bars worth…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY3uHxTmlms

play video

Sharon Shannon starts off with it in this clip --in Eb. She plays an irregular repeat pattern, and in the last part moves the leading notes into the next bar, so that you get the rather pleasant feeling that you are on the wrong foot.

I suspect she’s using an old instrument, old tuning, one not tuned down to modern D (A=440). I have one myself and refuse to tune it to A=440. I love it as it is, and besides, right or wrong, I’m convinced that moving reeds into modern pitch has consequences other than just a pitch shift down. I have a general impression that part of what is lost is some responsiveness, if not hugely different. But, I also kind of like that slightly brighter take on things. 😉 Fingering a D-scale on such instruments it comes out as Eb…

Interesting gam, thanks for the transcription, a ‘classic’ kind of variation on the B-part, which would have usually been that instead of doubling the length of the part, using something like this as more like a ‘trio’ ~ this too could be swung, and here it is again with some other possibilities following this not unusual ‘variation’ of the B-part:

f>d A>d f>g | f>d A2 (3def | f>g g>a a>b | b>a a>f f>e | e>f e>c A>c | e>f e2 A>e | e>f f>g g>b | b>a a>g g>f |
* Here’s where she moves the beat over, offset one, where the usual repeat would begin at the asterisk, where the bar line would have normally occurred…
f>g \
* f>d A>d | f>g * f>d A>d |\
And then she returns back to the usual melody. Interesting, and fun, but I wouldn’t double the B-part for it, personally… 😉
f>g g>a a>b | b>a a>f f>g | e2 e>d e>f | g>f e>d d>c | A2 B2 c2 | d2- d>A |]

Similar variations are often taken for other mazurkas, and tunes, following the chord, arpeggios, such as D-F-A, as for any of the many versions for “Shoe the Donkey”, for example:

|: D>G B2 B2 | D>G B2 B2 | ~ |: D>G B>D G>B | D>G B>d (3GAB |

There are many possibilties, another case of ‘chordal harmony’ in Irish music, though I have known a few folk who are adamant that mazurkas and waltzes are not ‘Irish’… 😀 Even for dance, playing around with tempo and beat is sometimes a bit of the possible humour in it all, though not necessarily taken so, but if the basic rhythm survives, as the count does here, and you don’t let it throw you, it’s good kick, but, at least in Sharon’s able hands, it’s still ‘dance’ music…

However, while this is good kick for stage and audience, for the sake of dancers, as dance figures are phrase conscious, screwing that up would be unkind, inconsiderate, disrespectful. What works for one situation doesn’t necessarily work for another. So, eating my words a bit, it’s not quite ‘dance’ music, though I do love and appreciate and have enjoyed many of her ways with the music, in and out of tightly ‘traditional’. This is a fine bit of fluff for an audience, but it isn’t really ‘good’ ‘dance music’, as it screws around with the phrasing in what would be an unkind interference for dancers… It would get in the way. That doesn’t mean I don’t find it interesting, or that parts of this variation aren’t fine and natural. But, that hiccup between the usual repeat of a long 8 bar phrase ~ that I’ve tried nad will forget, won’t bother with further. My primary interest in these dance tunes is the ‘dance’ in them and not so much in a cute trick like this, however much fun it might be on an initial listen. It distracts from the flow and the dance in this melody, that little short bit, rather than adding anything more than a distraction and a short lived “Wow! What happened there?” That interest is short lived for me, a bit OTT, even silly…but, for the punters ~ all things are possible and likely, eh?!