Sheet Music: The Job of Journeywork

TitleThe Job of Journeywork
Alternate titlesJob of Journey Work
ComposerTraditional Irish
InstrumentationFlute solo
KeyD major
RangeC#4–A5
Time signature2/2
Tempo144 BPM
Performance time1:10
Difficulty levelintermediate
Download printable scorePDF Sheet Music (56 kB) (preview)
Download audio tracksMIDI (change tempo/key) MP3 (551 kB)
Date added2021-01-26
Last updated2021-01-26
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Categories
Celtic Music, Dance tunes, Traditional/Folk

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Tuesday 26 January 2021

Tune of the Day: The Job of Journeywork

Traditional Irish tune

The first printed appearance of this tune seems to be in James Aird's Selection of Scotch, English Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 3 (Glasgow, 1788). It is perhaps based on an older air called “My Wife She's Ta'en the Gee” (not to be confused with Nathaniel Gow's air of the same name).

Robert Burns notably used the tune for one of his songs appearing in the Scots Musical Museum, entitled “Here's His Health in Water”.

Samuel Bayard (1954) published a study of a tune family he called “The Job of Journeywork”, evidently feeling that “this long, irregular tune developed by the eighteenth century Irish dancing masters was somehow archetypical” (Cowdery, 1990). The second strain of the melody has been the one which has spawned the most variants, and according to Tomás Ó Canainn (1978) it is one of the “standard building blocks” of the Irish melodic tradition.