Mix Margaret Dylan Jones

This Irish tune has become famous as "Danny Boy" but those words were only fitted to it in 1913, about sixty years after the wordless melody was collected in County Derry and published.

Many years ago I began making arragements of Londonderry Air for my choirs using the lyrics "In Derry Vale" by W. G. Rothery. I much prefered Rothery's lyrics to Fred Weatherly's "Danny Boy."

In 2018 I began re-writing "In Derry Vale" to modernise the lyrics in a similar fashion to my new versions of Amazing Grace and Greensleeves, borrowing some words from Rothery. Each of these songs will be published in multiple versions for different forces and with a choice of lyrics for different singers and audiences.

Londonderry Air is particularly difficult to harmonise (that is, it's very hard to choose a good sequence of chords). I have never yet found a convincing harmonisation of it; they all seem to have some awkward progressions and sometimes strange chords. You can almost see the arrangers pulling their hair out, trying to find chords which fit! So I am very proud to have produced a good harmonisation which I think works well.

Publication of the first versions with my new lyrics is due in early 2019.

www.mixmargaret.com/londonderry-song

http://www.mixmargaret.com/londonderry-love-lost.html

http://www.mixmargaret.com/londonderry-air-project-overview.html

Original music, words and arrangements © MDJ 1997-2019.

See my other arrangements of traditional tunes:

Amazing Grace
Greensleeves