A Lively Irish Medley

Much Irish music was written to be danced to and if performed in concert settings, the repetitions necessary to flesh out a single work for a good length make it sometimes boring. This medley incorporates nine different Irish dance tunes into a single concert work, playing each tune in its entirety but not adding repetitions. The melodies incorporated are: Limber-up Reel, Donnybrook, Dundee Hornpipe , Bunch of Roses Reel, Lamp Lighter's Hornpipe, Exile's Lament, Speed the Plow, The Last Rose of Summer and The Rakes of Mallow. The beautiful slow melody of The Last Rose of Summer is set in counterpoint to the lively Speed the Plow. Each of the sections can be performed on its own without the rest of the medley, making it a versatile work for every flute choir's library. Each instrument gets to play the melodies at various times, turning this into much more than a simple oom-pah accompaniment with the melodies in the top part.