STRUCTURE
Having taken as much as possible into account, I consider it most likely that the
entire original harp composition was a standard thirty two bars long and that the
material most representative of the phrasing of the original structure of the second
half would be that of the lute versions which finish on the dominant note.
All surviving versions of the first part begin the piece on the tonic note and I view
this as correct. The note lengths of the opening phrase of the lute versions would
cause the first part to exceed the eight bar length I would require. Taking the first
two bars of Cumha Iarla Wigton as a parallel situation, I suggest that the note
values of the crotchet and quaver pairs in the first three bars of Port Robart be
compressed into pairs of dotted quavers and semiquavers. For me, this produces
a satisfactory first four bars but leaves the end of first part one bar short in the lute
material. I suggest that the last four bars of Fuath nam Fìdhleirean best supplies
the material for the last four bars of the first part.
Correspondingly, the Féachain Gléis would be seen as varying from the original
chiefly by the omission of the material from the lute versions pertaining to bars 3 &
4 which would leave the harp set deficient of the proposed standard length by two
bars. The additional ommission of the material pertaining to bar 9 (a D sonority)
disturbs the even phrasing of the piece and causes it to lurch. The replacement of
the material pertaining to bar 15 with what is more or less a repetition of that of
bars 7 & 8 brings the number of bars back up to an even count but still brings the
setting a further step away from the melody and harmony of the original.
Féachain Gléis