Reel d’ issoudun

Notes

“Reel d’Issoudun” is a vibrant and technical Québécois fiddle tune that belongs to the category of “airs tordus” (crooked tunes). While it bears the name of a town in France (Issoudun), it has been firmly rooted in the French Canadian tradition for generations, famously preserved and popularized by the virtuosic group Les Têtes de Violon.

The tune is characterized by:

• The “Crooked” Structure: Like many old-style Québécois reels, it often features irregular phrasing—meaning it might have an extra beat or a “cut” measure that keeps the dancers and the rhythm players on their toes.

• The Lift: It is celebrated for its rhythmic “swing,” a hallmark of the Lanaudière and Mauricie regions of Quebec. It is a tune that demands a high level of “double-stopping” (playing two strings at once) to create the thick, droning sound essential to the tradition.

About the tune: It’s a French-Canadian reel in A major, collected in 1983 from fiddler Joseph Couture of Issoudun, Québec, and is notably a “crooked” tune — meaning it has an irregular phrase length at the end of the B part, which you can see in the longer B section. Natunelist

About the chords: The tune stays firmly in A major throughout, so the chord palette is simple — A, E, E7, and B7. The A part is very drone-like and could honestly be played over just A the whole way through. The B part has more movement between A and E, with the B7 providing a nice leading-tone push back to the A cadences. These are suggestions — Québec fiddle tunes are traditionally unaccompanied or accompanied very simply.