Setting Sail jig

This is a track from The Chieftians album Film Cuts. Tracks 4-11 on Film Cuts were written/arranged by Paddy Maloney for a 1990 TV movie version of Treasure Island starring Charleton Heston as Long John Silver, Julian Glover as Dr. Livesy, and a 16-year old Christian Bale as Jim Hawkins. Many feel it is the finest film adaptation of the book thus far.

This tune is the Setting Sail track. I played the recording for a very gifted Donegal musician friend of mine who said he’d never heard it before, although he said it sounded Galecian in style. His thought was that it may have been composed by Paddy Maloney specifically for the film, as is possible with several other, if not all of the other tracks from the film.

Unfortunately, the tracks on the recording are labeled with the usual sountrack action descriptors, not with the names of the actual tunes used (although if you look, Cup of Tea has been correctly identified). The Treasure Cave track is Langstrom’s Pony, although it hasn’t yet been identified on the site. Further, not all of the music in the film made it onto the soundtrack album (I’ve identified at least three tunes that haven’t). Nevertheless, these arrangements (usually with full orchestra) are unanimously my favorites of all The Chieftains material that I own.

Have a go at playing this tune, it’s quite fun. If you’ve heard this tune before, do you know what it’s called?!

Coming Soon: be on the lookout for transcriptions of both versions of Loyal’s March that appear on the album (tracks 5 and 11), Island Theme (a three part 2/4 march with a fun form), Blind Pew (an unidentified a minor reel with an arrangement VERY similar to The Chieftains arrangement of Morning Dew), and a short b minor 2/4 march that didn’t make it onto the album that I will call The Sign of the Spyglass March.

Thanks all for any help identifying these tunes. -K

I just saw that this tune also appears on The Chieftains Santiago CD, an exploration of the Galician tradition. This confirms my friend’s notion that it is a Galician tune, although it is still unclear if it is traditional or was composed by of The Chieftians.

the first bar of the second repeated section should be a C natural instead of a C#. corrected in the ABC, but not in the sheet music.

It is a very famous muiñeira (sort of galician jig) always played in every foliada or session. It is usually played before another muiñeira, A camposa, composed by Os Rosales de Rianxo. Freixido belongs to the tradition. IMHO I think it was recovered by the group Berce.

The second setting is a minor key version that apparently sometimes follows the major key setting of the tune. On The Chieftains’ Santiago record (tr. 10), they play the main tune once in G and then switch to D. The minor section is then played in e minor before returning to the main tune in D (perhaps to avoid having to play Bbs?). It makes an effective transition but doesn’t seem to jive with other Galician tunes I’ve heard (such as Muineira de Chantada, which switches between d minor and D major), so I’ve put this setting in the home key of d minor.

-K

On The Chieftains’ Film Cuts, only the major key version of this tune is played. The minor version (again in e minor) does appear elsewhere in the film, but was not released as part of the soundtrack.

There are a couple recordings of this tune floating around the net with additional sections beyond the 3 I normally hear. I’ve added two of them here.

X3 comes from this setting, played in G and then in A:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEI1_isXe6Y&index=6&list=PLFx_fWBOcTjrNCpJOhMgNz09_siRLJiY2

play video

In this setting, the additional section is added as the B part, so the form is ABACD with A,C, and D being the 3 parts from the X1/Carlos Nunez/Chieftains setting.

X4 is from this setting, played in C:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDwcg0Y77_k&index=1&list=PLFx_fWBOcTjrNCpJOhMgNz09_siRLJiY2

play video

Here the new section is added as the D part, so it’s ABCADAD, and then he starts going into a version of the minor key setting (starting on what I have as the C part of X2…..)