DYADIC BASS CHORDS
In the original notation of the bass in the first four bars of the Féileacán, there were
some A dyad chords under the last three quavers of the first four bars where were
rhythmically identical to the G dyads. Bunting is seen to have scribbled them out
and replaced them with more G dyads.
The original bass may have had only either G and A pitches or just G pitches alone,
but it is impossible to know because this is a neat copy of the tune, not a primal
scribble. However, if one presumes that the bass was originally composed solely of
magadising note G and A notes only, presented in octaves as per Burns' March,
and where the A would have related to a hypothetical D dyad, one could envisage a
historical process changing these pure rhythmic octaves into the rhythmic dyads
notated by Bunting which, by containing the note E, would then contradict the
original theoretically harmony; in the case of the first four bars of the Féileacán, that
would be alternating G and D triads.
Whatever the implications for the authenticity of an oscillating dyadic bass in the
Féileacán, Bunting may, in that notation, be representing for piano a feature of
harmonisation that he may well have heard Denis O' Hampsey or other harpers
using in other pieces: the replacement of a theoretical D dyad with an A dyad
because it was the note A which was doubled in the original magadising bass
instead of D.
Féachain Gléis