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from Edward Bunting, The Ancient Music of Ireland (Dublin 1840), Page 25: Graces performed by the treble or left hand.
Irish bualadh suas
spoken by Gráinne Yeats
Scottish Gaelic bualadh suas
spoken by Tony Dilworth
Irish bualadh suaséirí
spoken by Gráinne Yeats
Scottish Gaelic bualadh suas-èirigh
spoken by Tony Dilworth
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“By third, second, and first fingers, ascending one string each time.” Simon Chadwick 2008 |
No stopping instructions are given; however it is clearly indicated that this is a compound figure, and that it is intended to be repeated again and again ‘ascending one string each time’. This provides some puzzles in execution - if the fingers are merely played as indicated, the lowest string of each triplet is left undamped and rings dissonantly. On the other hand if the ring finger returns to silence its string, the figure becomes awkward to play smoothly. Both these solutions are demonstrated above; you can see and hear that the second is more stilted and awkward to play.
Perhaps the 5th finger is meant to trail behind cleaning up the dissonance. There is a Welsh figure in Robert ap Huw's manuscript called (little finger plait) which is an ascending triplet fingered with middle, index and thumb; the first two notes are marked as stopped, presumably by the ring and little finger reaching under.
Simon Chadwick 2008
Bualadh suas no suaserigh - Succession of triplets
Bualadh means 'beating, striking'; suas means 'upwards' (opposite of anuas, as in no.29); no is the Gaelic for 'or'. On p.31 Bhualadhsuas is explained as 'Successive triplets', and Bualladhsuas as 'Ascending'. Somebody has clearly got it wrong! Suaserigh is an compound of suas and the verbal noun éirí (earlier spelt éirghe), 'rising', but such a compound is decidely unusual in Gaelic and may be an untraditional coining. We are here given, then, two alternative names for this succession of triplets, 'beating/striking upwards' and 'up-rising'; but it may be that the second term intended is bualadh suaséirí ('striking of up-rising'?).
Colm Ó Baoill 2002