Far Down Far - Maeve Gilchrist

Francis O’Neill was an Irish-born member of the Chicago Police Force who rose to Superintendent between 1873 and 1905. Chief O’Neill had substantial influence on the evolution of Irish Music in the twentieth century due to his collection of Irish folk tunes and songs. Among his many published works is O'Neill's Music of Ireland, a collection of over 1,850 pieces of music. An Irish immigrant living in the US during the peak wave of migration, employed by the relatively new and deeply disorganized concept of a Police Force while also living a life deeply connected to the music of his homeland; his collection of tunes seemed a natural place to find a seed from which this composition grew. I was drawn towards a jig called “The Far Down Farmer”. During my research into the Irish involvement in the building of the American Transcontinental Railroad, I read about the tension that existed on occasion between Catholic and Protestant workers. The Catholic workers, often from a more economically depressed background, were sometimes referred to as 'Far Downers'. I took this simple, two-part jig, and deconstructed the vocabulary, using the motifs and intervals as if I were building a train, laying the tracks and allowing the melody to build up momentum and speed as it gets slung between our respective instruments. I hope that this composition pays tribute to the roots of the tune and the back-breaking work of the workers on both sides of the religious and cultural divide while allowing the melody to fly in the hands of women who would likely never have been given a fiddle or a flute, let alone a hammer to build with!