JAVS Spring 2007

true bardic harpers. They would have sung the text while playing.

occurs, the consonant D plays a viral role, thus rhyming musically those sections. The upbeat to the first measure is on the word do. The second occurrence is in m6 on the word d

second bears with an A-flat. D-flat, the lowered seventh degree, also becomes rather important as an Irish feature, not only because of the tonality it implies, bur because it is parr of the rhyme structure of the passage. M55 rhymes with m57 because of the use of D-flat leading to F at the end of each bar. M57 has a passing note berween these rwo pitches, bur the rhyme structure remains clear. Arnold Bax's Concert Piece also contains the chromaticism that was prevalent in his era. Bax was known at this stage to have been influenced by Richard Strauss. However, Bax also realized that he needed to create a voice for his own compositional style, and so he turned to his "Mistress", Ireland, and her musical heritage. In doing so, Bax created his own composi tional language in this early work that would inform his later pieces. He wrote about this development of his cultural style in his autobi ography, " In part at least I rid myself of the sway of Wagner and Strauss and began to write Irishly, using figures and melodies of a definitely Celtic curve, an idiom which in the end was so much sec ond nature to me that many works of mine have been called Irish or Celtic". '-' This Celtic nature was realized in his thematic ideas, experimentation with modality and traditionally based Irish keys, Irish ornamentation and native singing styles, as well as Irish rhyme structures within melodic phrases. Bax once proclaimed that the Irish "country's musical awak ening lies very near my heart. " 1 • It became clear to young composer

Internal rhyme is another Irish ele ment that Bax uses within his melodic structure. It was tradition al that the songs of the harpers would have specific internal rhyme and meter strucrures. 10 In examin ing a song from the O'Sullivan col lection, one can find these rhyme parrerns. In the following song, "An Clar Bog Deil", the poetry rhymes on the downbeat of every fourth bar {Example 13).! 1 The words that are rhymed are spre, me, chleibh, and deil. There are further internal rhymes within the structure where the music reflectS these rhymes. When music is repeated, ir is rhus rhymed. For instance, the music in the first half of bars rwo and fourteen is the same, and the sound of the words pwnt and fUinn are related. The vowel sound "ui" and the end of the word emphasizing the "n", as well as a similar phonecic structure berween "p" and "f", rhyme the rwo words to each other. Finally, in the inicial upbeat to the first meas ure, the figure begins on a conso nant sound of D. In the three instances where this upbeat figure

10

mo chletbh.

dhoan - ghn1

gC'IUS-eal \lumhan'• gao do

me•gu~ lu

a

I~

• • -- och

leab - rudh fulM

Exampk 13

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