Music: 'Ladies of Spain'

Note on the use of music in Sunset Song
By Dougal Lee, musical director of the Prime Productions production

'Ladies of Spain'

Long Rob's 'theme tune' is 'Ladies of Spain'. It is, perhaps, an unlikely song - it describes sailing home from Spain to (probably) London and lists the landmarks seen from the deck of a sailing vessel making its way home up the English Channel. Perhaps Gibbon uses it because it's a widely known example of its genre, but emotionally fairly neutral: the singer regrets leaving the Spanish ladies, but hopes he'll be back soon. Strangely, Cecil Sharp House, the headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, have more than eighty examples of the song collected in the field in their library, of which not a single one was recorded in Scotland. It is by no means impossible, however, that Long Rob could have known it. As Long Rob and Chae Strachan provide the music for the wedding in the book, it seems right and proper that in the play we should use them to play, and imply the singing that goes on. The other element which underlies the wedding is the sense of a new age dawning, of an old world dying, of the approaching conflagration of the Great War. No one in an audience is likely to pick up on the fact that when Long Rob sings 'Ladies of Spain' at the wedding the tune is slightly different to that employed in Act 1: it slides from a bright major key tune to a more plangent minor key variant, the better to reflect the ominous use of 'Flouers o' the Forest' which is so central to the wedding party.

'Ladies of Spain' is in 3/4 time and although Gibbon does not say Chris and Ewan do so, it seems appropriate to use a verse of the song as a waltz for the bride and groom. Having established that, it is no great effort to build the tempo and elide into a brisk 6/8 for some long dancing.

Music: