Star of the County Down
for violin and piano
© David Gompper
Star of the County Down, is the final offering of Three Irish Fiddle Tunes. The collection as a whole leads off with
Star of the County Down is a fantasia, a genre that has a rich heritage of its own. The principal melody is present virtually from the initial to the final measures, and the rhythmic vamping and contrapuntal interplay between violin and piano in the opening strain is but a harbinger of things to come. The two instruments continually trade off portions of the melody and do so in a manner reminiscent of protracted figure/ground exchanges.
The harmonic palette throughout is richly chromatic, and introduces the modal and pentatonic underpinnings of the theme to an assortment of 21st-century considerations. And yet none of this is about "musing" in the casual sense of the word. Instead, the primary concern is to instill the traditional melody with the quality of an echo: allusions to past selves though they may well be, no echo ever stands as an exact replica either of the source or, indeed, of earlier reflections. And thus it is that the farther we move into Star of the County Down, the more tightly the piece comes to inscribe itself within its own closed borders. The conversational teaming of the violin and piano continues to increase in intensity until at its apex a veritable perpetual mobile emerges. Events unwind following the climax and gradual decrease is registered in rhythmic, chromatic, and textural terms. But again there is a transparent purpose behind the strategy: it is a preparation for the total transformation of the source material presented in the ensuing--and closing--meno mosso section. Here we encounter apotheosis and irony, for our exposure to the ultimate motivic framework is unimaginable without the very past that is practically no longer recognizable in it.