Annotation:Carolan's Welcome
Tune properties and standard notation
CAROLAN'S WELCOME. AKA - "O'Carolan's Welcome." Irish, Air (3/4 time). E Minor (Johnson): A Minor (O'Sullivan). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Johnson, O'Sullivan): ABB. Donal O'Sullivan (1958), the primary source for information on Turlough O'Carolan (1670-1738) and his music, identified this as one of the O'Carolan tunes which has come down to us without a title and was one of his melodies "probably composed for patrons whose names have been lost; they have come down to us either with wrong titles or with no titles at all." O'Sullivan finds the tune in the Forde manuscript in the Royal Irish Academy, [Dublin, p. 62] which was reprinted with slight alterations by P.W. Joyce in his Old Irish Folk Music and Songs [London,1909], p. 293. "Carolan's Welcome" is a modern title for the tune, appended by the Irish group the Chieftains for the occasion of the Pope's visit to Ireland in 1979. The piece was also re-worked by the Pope's composer, Monsignor Frisina, who orchestrated it for the album "A Christmas in Rome" [Bonnie Shaljean, Appendix to the 2001 edition of O'Sullivan's Carolan].
Source for notated version: "The present tune was given to (the collector William) Forde (1795-1850) by Patrick McDowell and is marked 'said to be Carolan's'" [O'Sullivan]; Kit Nelson and Kathrine Gardner (San Francisco, CA) of the band ContraBandits (who knew the tune as "Carolan's Circle Waltz") [Matthiesen].
Printed sources: Complete Collection of Carolan's Irish Tunes, 1984; No. 171, p. 119 (appears untitled). S. Johnson (The Kitchen Musician No. 3: Carolan), 1983 (revised 1991, 2001); p. 14. Matthiesen (Waltz Book II), 1995; p. 11. O'Sullivan (Carolan: The Life, Times and Music of an Irish Harper), 1958; No. 171, p. 197 (untitled tune).
Recorded sources: Folkways FTS 31098, Ken Perlman - "Clawhammer Banjo and Fingerstyle Guitar Solos." Green Linnet GLCD 1200, Lunasa - "Otherworld" (1999). Rounder 0216, John McCutcheon - "Step by Step" (1986). CBS 36401, Chieftains - "Boil the Breakfast Early." Lunasa - "Otherworld." See also listings at: Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [],
Alan Ng's Irishtune.info [].