Just out of curiosity and at the risk of asking a silly and/or obvious question (I have very little musical training):
Is there some sort of fixed set of musical rules governing the relationship between the A and the B parts of a jig or a reel? In other words, is the B part somehow determined by the A part? Does B riff off A in some set way?
Thanks!
There are not any “rules” (other than the A and B sharing the same number of measures) but there are a lot of things you’ll notice are typical.
First of all, many times the A part will consist mainly of notes from the lower register and then the B part will bring it up to the second register (speaking in relation to the whistle here) with the second repeat of the B part leading right back into the A. There are a few jigs I’ve played that have an identical A and B part, the only difference being which register the notes are played in.
You’ll also notice that the last phrase or two in the B part (or only in the repeat) will sometimes be very close if not identical to the last few phrases in the A part. You’ll also notice other small phrases that the two parts will have in common to tie the tune together.
These are true not just for jigs but for reels, etc. There are probably more characteristics that some others might come up with too but to answer your question, I don’t think there are any “rules” as you ask but rather typical reoccurances that are common in ITM. Usually the tune will not change keys from the A to B part but there are examples out there of tunes that do morph as such, however, those do not account for the majority of the tunes in ITM.
Interesting question, I hope my answer brings some light to it… I’m sure someone will come along who can articulate it a little better.
One thing you might notice, once you learn a large number of reels, is that there are a lot more A parts of reels than B parts, in effect.
So, you might learn ten different A minor reels which share the same B part… well, not exactly the same, but very nearly the same, so close as to be very easy to mix up. Likewise there’s a generic D reel B-part which, with slight variation, serves dozens of different reels.
I haven’t really noticed the same thing with jigs, though it’s probably true with them as well.
Yes, the rules were set in Paragraph 4, Article 7 of the Third International Conference on Jig Protocols, held in Dublin in 1937. 
No, seriously, no prescriptive rules. Or as many as there have been jig-makers. Descriptively or statistically, I suppose you could analyze some general features of jigs - or any tunes - that are considered pleasing, that sometimes characterize the ones that survive in the tradition, which acts as a gigantic filter. I believe musicologists like Breandán Breathnach have looked at these sorts of things.
For example, often if the A part tends low, the B part will tend high by contrast. Or vice versa. The final phrase of the B part may pick up the final phrase of the A part. Or maybe not. Phrases may be echoed in call and response, or melody may be more linear. Tunes may develop by accretion, with the A part of one tune merging with the B part of another tune, at the whim (or faulty memory) of the player-creator. Basic melodies and fragments and patterns get re-used time and again.
It’s like any art form. Are there rules of Impressionist painting? No, but there are general principles and features that distinguish it from other genres. Folk art is no different, though the principles may not be articulated by the creators except in the doing.
Why do you ask?
Added: Crossed posts with straycat and pancelt. I see we mentioned some of the same things.
I think some of the most beautiful art, poetry, music, is substantially
constrained by form. Sonnets, jigs… Operating within
formal constraints can make for wonderful things.
Just curious. I’ve been reading an interesting book about Louis Armstrong’s formative years as a musician and the birth of jazz (“Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans” by Thomas Brothers) … and for some reason, it got me wondering about what has shaped ITM … how it gets “put together,” what rules or conventions ITM composers and players operate within …
Thanks to you and all for the interesting replies.
Another thing about this topic: if you listen to many hundreds of Irish reels and jigs you’ll note that oftentimes it seems that the parts get mixed up. So, you’ll come across a reel that seems to be the A part of one reel married to the B part of another (usually with slight variations of each part).
This is especially true of the big multipart tunes, tunes with five or six or seven parts. You’ll hear various versions with the parts in different order, or some parts missing etc. Or the tune might accrete by borrowing parts from other tunes.
Years ago I learned a reel Molly On The Shore which had six parts as I recall. Later I found two of the parts, under a different name, as a two-part reel in an uilleann book. (Interesting that these two parts are in A minor, while the rest of Molly is in G major, leading me to suspect that Molly kidnapped them at some point.)
With all this mixing, it’s no surprise that oftentimes the A part and B part of a tune have no apparent musical connexion whatsoever.
In other cases the B part is clearly based upon the A part, often by having a motif which occurs later in the A part serve as the opening motif of the B part.
My theory is that the older traditonal ITM dance tunes are not through-composed but rather are a series of traditional motifs/licks which are strung together.
The analogy is with DNA: using only four elements you can create all sorts of things.
It’s similar to the way traditional Bulgarian dance music is played. “Tunes” per se do not exist, rather there exist dozens of motifs/licks/segments/fragments which the musician strings together on the fly. When Bulgarian folk orchestras were created in the 1950’s the musicians had to iron out the sequence of segments so that they could all play together in unison, in effect creating “tunes” in the Irish sense.
The ITM motifs exist in groups or families, all the members of each group serving the same rythmic purpose and sharing tonality. It’s why good ITM players can pick up new tunes immediately upon first hearing them: they don’t have to memorise a specific string of notes, merely the sequence of “motif families”. When ITM players do “variations” they’re not improvising scales arpeggios etc based upon the chord like jazz players do but rather simply selecting various members of the same “motif family”.
Here are a couple videos I put up showing this approach, each video demonstrating a dozen or so members of a “motif family” they might be called:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6fmINqse5Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyj5LMH6aOI
It’s not just your theory. The classic exposition of this idea - known as Oral Formulaic Theory in folkloristics - is “A Singer of Tales” by Albert Lord (and Millman Parry). Lord was one of my folklore teachers.
Their goal was to get to the roots of Homeric epic composition by studying contemporary Serbian epic narration with gusle accompaniment, and extending previous work by Aanti Aarne and Stith Thompson in identifying a universal typology of folktale motifs.
It’s a small step to extend this approach to music and the kind of motif based “snippets” composition and structure that underlies a lot of ITM dance music.
good ITM players can pick up new tunes immediately upon first hearing them: they don’t have to memorise a specific string of notes, merely the sequence of “motif families”.
It’s the same principle behind oral poets reciting 3-4 hour long narratives in verse. They’re not thinking in terms of specific words, but of chunks of narrative and prosodic patterns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milman_Parry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Lord
Very helpful videos. Thanks
Maybe not, but for over 20 years I’ve been telling people that it’s my belief that that is how ITM is structured, composed, and learned and they look at me like I’m a crazy person.
Yes, this is analogous to how many traditional musics are played, especially in oral trads.
If you took the I in ITM to stand for Indic, you would be able to utter this paragrapgh as a succinct and accurate description of the several oral folk traditions of the South Asian sub continent.
This type of thing spills over into “higher” art music of those traditions also. In the indic traditions “motif families” are given names. You can have two different raagas (archetypical melodic forms) belonging to totally different scales having in their names a “motif family” descriptor because they both feature that motif in the raag.
I find this area interesting. I don’t know why Sean O’Riada said Indian and the old Irish music have much in common. I think he meant structurally but I intend to look into this when research time permits.