Practice video

Here is a computer generated flute with a follow-along prompt to help with learning the tune or practicing the chords.

(The video managed the repeats like this: AABB AB with the final ending played at the end, but you don’t have to do it that way. AABB AABB is fine.)

Sheet music preview

Sheet music download

The story behind the tune

I found this tune in a notebook right after Lament for Sarah June. They make a nice set when played together, with the slow air first, then the jig.

Pam wrote the first part in Bm and the second part in G, but I’ve put them it in Em/G because (a) I think she was trying for a minor-major modulation, and using the relative minor works just fine and is less confusing, and (b) this way it fits within the range of a recorder, flute or whistle. Chords are mine. -HH

The post June’s Jig appeared first on Pamela Holm 1960-2019.

For a hint of their deep, complex mother-daughter relationship, see this poem. Our mother’s memorial website is at JuneMaginley.ca.

Audio on tenor recorder

Heather Holm, tenor recorder

Practice video

Here is a computer generated flute with a follow-along prompt to help with learning the tune or practicing the chords.

Sheet music preview

Sheet music (PDF) and download

The story behind the tune

I didn’t find this tune until 2021 when my brother Mike was finally able to come to Nova Scotia with some of the boxes that I wasn’t able to get in my car after cleaning out Pam’s Ottawa apartment after her death, two years before.

I loved the tune from the beginning, but at first struggled with finding the metre, as Pam had apparently done as well. She had written it in 3/4 time, and attempted to count the measures to figure out the structure. That tells me that she created the tune in her head before putting it down on paper. It stuck in my head until one morning I woke up with the idea to write it in either 9/4 or 9/8 time. Suddenly it all made sense, with phrases that scanned. I’ve used 9/8 simply because it’s easier to read joined eighth notes than quarter notes. It’s not a fast tune.

She also wrote it in D, but I transposed it into a suitable range for tenor (or soprano) recorder, in G.

I’ve also worked the chords a lot, finally settling on the ones indicated. But there are other possibilities.

Pam may well have written it in 2014, as it’s in the same mostly empty notebook as early drafts of Another Bright Star and I Found a Place where Angelica Grows, which she sang at our mom’s funeral. But it’s opposite a written note dated 2017.

It can be followed in a set by June’s Jig which was on the next page in the journal.

The post Lament for Sarah June appeared first on Pamela Holm 1960-2019.

Read-along video, played by Bev Shaw and Liam Britten

Bev Shaw (the violinist in the video of Pamela singing Another Bright Star for our mother’s funeral) and her guitarist/tech wizard son, Liam Britten, took advantage of being isolated in different places to produce this recording of Pamela’s Waltz to the Angels. I’ve added it to the read-along animated score.

Audio only, by Bev and Liam

Sheet music download

Sheet music preview

For practice

Editor’s notes

Was this waltz ever going to be a song? Pam started writing words for it, but only got 16 bars in.

Music wafting from Heaven, rocking the world on your wings
Give us the grace to hear the voices of beloved angels as they sing

Sometimes I think that Pamela was challenging herself to practice things she’d learned when studying music at Concordia University back in the 1980s. This waltz was originally written in A♭, and the chords are in Roman numerals. “Capo 1” is written in the top left corner, which makes me think she never actually played it with the bar chords that the key of A♭ would demand on the guitar (which she did know how to do, by the way) but played it in G if she played it on guitar at all. In March 2006 she had just moved to Perth, and I think she had access to a piano.

So I’ve written in out in G. Capo it if you want, but your fiddlers and penny whistlers will be happy if you keep it in G. The key of A♭ is home to some very fine piano waltzes, which worked well for Chopin and Brahms, but if this one is going to get played for dances, G it is. It’s going to be in my repertoire.

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