ANALYSIS
The MS33 and MS20 settings of Táim i mo Chodladh are very sparse with regard to the
bass: almost 2/3 of the beats of the piece contain no simultaneously struck bass and
treble. Just under ¾ of the beats of the Straloch lute setting of Port Priest (75 out of 104
beats) display the same phenomenon and almost 6/7 of my metrical version of the
Féachain Gléis (47 out of 56). This can be contrasted with under 2/7 of the beats in the
version of Cumha Bharúin Loch Mór (Scott's Lamentation) published in the Introduction to
Bunting's 1840 volume (40 out of 144). Bass and treble are struck simultaneously on most
beats of the setting of the Fairy Queen found in the Joly collection book fragment.
In both settings of Táim i mo Chodladh, the number of beats struck simultaneously in bass
and treble (which includes passing notes) is almost the same (out of 120, 46 in the MS33
setting and 44 in MS20). The MS33 version uses almost two thirds the number of
non-octave concords between the main bass note and treble that the MS20 setting does
(12 instances rather than 19) and usually replaces the interval of the third with more
octave correspondence between the main bass note and treble (32 instances in MS33
rather than 24 in MS20). Thus about ¾ of the MS33 bass magadises the melody
(paralleling it in a different octave) compared to just over half of the MS20 bass. This
magadising aspect causes the removal from the MS33 bass of the possible hypothetical
chord of the subdominant which occurs in the MS20 setting. In the key of G (the key of the
MS29 notation), this leaves us with two hypothetical chords of G & D and a possible
hypothetical chord of E
The higher number of 5ths between bass and treble in these settings stands in contrast to
the small number of occurences of the 5th in the published version of Scott's Lamentation
in the Introduction to Bunting's 1840 volume. Several dyads within the bass of Táim i mo
Chodladh doubly emphasise the interval of the 5th between bass and treble and in this
respect the piece comes nearer the style of the Féachain Gléis although in that piece a
dyad is not struck in the bass when a 5th appears between treble and bass.
In depicting Hampsey's style in the MS33 version of the piece, Bunting adds the noteworthy
bass chord of the 4th & 5th which appears regularly in the Féachain Gléis and at the end
of the 1840 Introduction version of Scott's Lamentation mentioned above, but which is not
given by Bunting in his published fingering charts. This chord may appear at the
beginning of the second section of Port Priest.
Táim i mo Chodladh
Analysis