I wrote a tune the other day – a perfectly respectable tune. But I was worried; I admire lots of professional fiddlers and accordionists, and I would hate to think I’d plagiarised them. The trouble is, there are only a finite number of notes, and clearly the most common combinations will have been used countless times. So much for originality! I did ask one friend if they recognised it. They didn’t think so.
However, when I was playing it over last night, it suddenly dawned on me that there’s a Scottish song – which I sang only a couple of weeks ago in a talk – that has a similar opening. The song itself sometimes begins on the tonic (doh’), sometimes on the dominant (soh), and in that instance, sometimes has a flattened leading note in between dominant and tonic (soh te doh’). It’s been used with various words.
Here’s the version I sang, with a simple soh-doh’ start:-
‘My love’s in Germanie’ is in the minor, quadruple time. Meanwhile, my own tune is in the minor, but triple time, with a three -quaver lead-in.
Wait, ‘Ashokan Farewell’ starts with the same soh te doh’ three-quaver anacrusis in triple time, but it’s in a major key.
In fairness to myself, it’s only the first few opening notes that may have been influenced by ‘My love’s in Germanie’, aka ‘Ye Jacobites by name’. The first full bar above became two bars in my tune. The rest goes its own way, and it’s an instrumental tune rather than a song! Just goes to show how easy it is to be subconsciously influenced, with absolutely no intention of ‘copying’ anything. It’s just musical memory.
In the circumstances, I have at last come up with a name for my tune:- ‘My love’s in Germanie – Again’. (It can commemorate a series of European tram-riding summer jaunts made by my husband and his friends over a number of years!)
Listen to My love’s in Germanie – Again, by Karen McAulay on SoundCloud
https://on.soundcloud.com/i1EfrwBjxPZXLH4D7
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 