Analysis
The style of the Fairy Queen shows the pre-dominance of magadising between treble and
bass. (Magadising is when melody is sung in parallel at different pitches). Ignoring treble
passing notes, over 2/3 of the beats of the bass is in octaves with the treble. There is a clear
tendency of the 3rd to appear between the two hands when the melody note is the
third note of a hypothetical triad: 25 of the 31 3rds between treble and bass are of this
nature.
Rarely more than two notes at a time are struck in bass and treble. In this MS, features such as
occasional octave doubling in the bass can appear at the beginning, middle or end of a
musical section, marking points of dynamic emphasis in the musical phrasing, and in the Fairy
Queen, octave doubling appears in the bass at the beginning and middle of the first section of
the piece. Occasionally, a chord - a 4th in the treble (glas) - can be found at the end of
musical sections of the tunes in the MS.
Whenever a single pitch on the down beat in the bass is repeated on the next beat in another
octave in the bass, the note is first struck up the octave and then down the octave. On
down beats in this MS, the bass is never struck without a corresponding treble note, and vice-
versa – this is unlike Bunting's representations of Gaelic harp style where bass and treble can
stop moving simultaneously and where we have occasional use of a melody note
alternating between bass and treble over two beats, with the brunt of the rhythmic
movement being taken first by one hand and then the other (instances in the notation of Dr
John Hart, p18, in this MS do not count, as the metre does not match the metre of the song
words).
Fairy Queen
Analysis