Dear Friends, My sincere thanks to all who responded to my last posting of Irish tunes, expressing their sympathy and condolences on the death of my mother. Yesterday we had my mother's funeral, which she had planned herself. The recessional hymn that she chose was "Lord of All Hopefulness," based on a traditional Irish melody very similar to the ones I had played for her just before she died (the hymn "Be Thou My Vision" uses the same tune). According to Wikipedia, "The music is the Irish [1]folk song, Slane, which is about [2]Slane Hill where in A.D. 433 [3]St. Patrick defied the [4]pagan [5]High King [6]Loegaire of [7]Tara by lighting candles on Easter Eve." As soon as I got back to town yesterday afternoon, I began arranging it for baroque lute, using the Jan Struther keyboard arrangement as a point of departure. Today I made a rough recording of it and am posting it here as a final tribute to her. As far as I can determine, it does not appear in O'Neill's "Music of Ireland" or in Petrie's "The Complete Collection of Irish Music," but anyone who was raised in a Christian church is likely to recognize it. It is a melody that I have loved since my youth. I hope you like it, and, as always, I welcome feedback, suggestions for improvement, or constructive criticism. A rough recording can be found on my Ning member page.
Best regards, Stephen Arndt -- References 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_song 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slane#The_Hill_of_Slane 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Patrick 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_King_of_Ireland 6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B3egaire_mac_N%C3%A9ill 7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_of_Tara To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
