I was listening to the classical station and heard a work by the American composer Aaron Copland. It was interesting to hear a few Irish tunes repeated through brief motives through out the work (particularly by the brass). One of the tunes I believe is the Mrs McLeod’s reel and I think it moves into some strange version of The Copperplate but I’m not sure.
If your interested have a listen to the work entitled ‘Rodeo: Hoe-Down.’ The piece starts about around 9min 10sec.
Interesting. I grew up playing classical music. I did alot of listening to Copland, but missed this musical quote in Rodeo for some reason. I was (still am) way into Rimsky-Korsikov too. Heavily folk influenced…to my ear anyway. No Irish tunes woven into his pieces though.
Copland used American sources for his injections of folk music:
“Hoe-Down”, the ballet’s final section, was prominently used by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association for television commercials in the US.[3] The well-known main theme of “Hoe-Down” is based on a unique version of the American folk song “Bonyparte” or “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” played by Salyersville, Kentucky fiddler William Hamilton Stepp, which was recorded in 1937 by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. A meticulous transcription by Ruth Crawford Seeger of that performance appeared in Lomax’s 1941 book, “Our Singing Country.”
William Stepp at the Old Time Fiddler’s Hall of Fame. Includes an MP3. Our Singing Country is still in print. You can hear him play Bonaparte’s Retreat on a CD called American Fiddle Tunes. And no, it’s not the same tune as the Irish set dance of the same name. In American music Miss McLeod’s is called Hop Light Ladies or Did you Ever See the Devil Uncle Joe? along with a couple of other titles.
Interesting. I grew up playing classical music. I did alot of listening to Copland, but missed this musical quote in Rodeo for some reason. I was (still am) way into Rimsky-Korsikov too. Heavily folk influenced…to my ear anyway. No Irish tunes woven into his pieces though.
t
For you Tom:
Funny how things are…My college composition teacher greatly revered Ol’ Nicolai and had me read his books on harmony and orchestration, which though a bit outdated still offer many great insights. He became of one favorites as well, for I felt that he really loved and respected the native music of Russia and of its Orthodox church, for which he wrote some of his best work…insanely gorgeous music. Through this same prof I came to appreciate the likes of Sergi Taneyev and Dmitri Shostakovich, but don’t ask me to play their music on pipes.
Another interesting classical composer who used Irish musical quotes was Sir Hamilton Harty, whose music reminds me somewhat of Sean O’Riada’s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Harty
The two musics have a few melodies in common, yes. Some people have found ancestors of Old Time tunes in old English music manuscripts as well. But people who have seriously analyzed this say there is just a prominent influence of African-American and possibly Native American music, not to mention a lot of homegrown innovation. Lots of scholars in the past have come up with the pat explanation that Old Time music is simply Anglo-Irish, which is a gross simplification. Music in the North (Contra etc.) is more British Isles in nature but Southern music like Stepp’s is much more complex in origin.
Agree about the sausage metaphor, but there are certainly pockets in the South where the Anglo/Irish/Scots influence is stronger and arguably the dominant one, i.e. the more isolated parts of the TN/NC border. There was even a song collected around the turn of the 20th century from the area of Spruce Pine NC in Scots Gaelic. Lots of examples in the recent Smithsonian/Folkways (re?)release of Bascom Lunsford (a collector of the 20th c from that area), including The Death of Queen Jane (remember the Bothy Band version?), Bonny George Campbell, The Mermaid Song, etc. It might be fair to say that the tune distribution in this part of the Appalachians is more heavily weighted towards the larger of the two “British Isles”.
There are also a fair number of dance tunes and marches (some possibly adapted from dance tunes?) traceable as Irish which were played during the US Civil War, on both sides of the conflict.
