Variations on an Irish Ballad

Movements

Theme

Variations (15)

Coda

Appendix: Five Unused Variations

Program Notes

I'd always wanted to write variations on a theme, but could never find one I liked enough to spend a large amount of time with. During a YouTube deep dive, I stumbled upon a popular Irish Ballad called "Foggy Dew". The structure of the song was a simple ABA, which is perfect for writing variations on. I set to work, adapting the theme in a key that fit its somber mood, and then wrote as many variations as I could think up. Ultimately, fifteen of them made the cut. The piece was finished in the spring of 2019.