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REVIEWS The four manuscript books presented here are, along with William Vickers' Great Northern Tunebook, some of the most important collections of English tunes of the period. Dating from the 1780s through to the 1840s, they cover the whole range of dances popular during the period. This handsome production is more of a performing edition than just a scholarly tome, so the tunes have been arranged by type - Marches, Cotillions, 3/2 Hornpipes etc, in a most practical manner. The best material gets the briefest reviews and, in short, no self-respecting performer of English dance tunes can afford to be without this volume........ Paul Burgess English Dance and Song
(journal of the EFDSS)
Now
a comprehensive
selection has been published by Andy in book form, sandwiched between
chapters
of excellent contextual information including family and local history,
C18th
dance history, and tune source information referenced to other
manuscripts,
early published dance collections and information available on the web.
There
is also a history of the very silly Greensleeves dance collected from
the
Winders by Sharp and a very good overview of dances and dance rhythms
which all
budding tune detectives ought to read. Mudcat
cafe If a
better tune book is published this year I shall be (a) very surprised
and (b)
delighted to have two such excellent tune books appear in the same
year!
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The
Winder family came
from Wyresdale near Lancaster and formed the mainstay of
a village band from the late 1700s to the First World War. Whilst in
Scotland and Ireland, the tradition of music for village
dances is largely unbroken, in England it virtually
died out with the Industrial revolution and the Great War but
fortunately, these tune-books that were hand-copied by members of the
Winder family have come down to us and show the repertoire of country
dance and song tunes from the early 1800s
(see here for more information about the Winders) Now available... The complete contents of four related manuscript books.. 280 pages, over 600 tunes. Background information on the tune-books, the music, dancing masters and Georgian entertainment. Extensive notes on the history of the tunes. Price UK and USA.. £20 + £3 P&P Price elsewhere... £20 + £6 P&P For more details or to place orders, contact (include your address and a phone contact): andy.hornby@gmail.com or buy via paypal.. Preview.. Click the thumb-nails for larger images:
Folk
Roots review
by Vic Smith, November
3013 It
would be
difficult to describe this publication without resorting to
superlatives. Put
simply, it is one of the best, most important and largest collections
of
English dance tunes from manuscripts to be published in recent times. How important is this book to those who play English traditional dance tunes or to those who have a serious interest in English traditional music? The word "essential" comes to mind. Mustrad website http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/r_index.htm top marks: a great collection of tunes and an
extraordinarily
informative amount of well researched and well
written background
material. It
is always the explanatory notes on the music that make or break a
collection of
folk songs or tunes; this kind of music carries the story of the
culture with
it. It was Baring-Gould’s skill in this direction that first attracted
me to the study and
practice of English
music, and Andy
Hornby nobly follows in this fine
tradition of interesting erudition. I have a lot of
English tunebooks on
my shelves, and this is now the stand-out example.
Anybody interested in the music of the
British Isles needs a copy. Greg
Stephens |
Links to web addresses mentioned in the book: | |
Books
Airds Airs, vols 1-6. ABC files available at: http://www.campin.me.uk/ Playford's Dancing master, 2nd edition, 1651 - Online facsimile http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/playford_1651/ Playford's Dancing master, 2nd edition, 1653 - Online facsimile http://www.shipbrook.com/jeff/playford/ Playford's Dancing master. complete listing of tunes from each edition http://www.izaak.unh.edu/nhltmd/indexes/dancingmaster/ John Gay's Beggars Opera. PDF version of http://www. Thomas Wilson's Treasures of Terpsichore, 1816 http://www.walternelson.com/dr/terpsichore J Collingwood Bruce Northumbrian Minstrelsy. Newcastle 1882 Online PDF version of this and other relevant books at the Internet Archive http://la600200.us.archive.org W. Chappell , Popular Music of the Olden Times (2 vols) 1860. online at: http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/popular-music-olden-times-1/ International Music Score Library Project. Free downloadable versions of many dance books including Walsh’s, Playford’s, O'Neil's and Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland. http://www.imslp.org/wiki/Category:Country dances National Library of Ireland. Books on Irish music & song including the full text of Grattan Flood's A History of Irish Music, 1905 and Thomas Moore's Irish melodies. http://www.libraryireland.com/Music.php Cecil Sharpe’s Morris Book. Volume 1 http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/morris-dance/ Lionel Bacon’s Handbook of Morris Dances, 1974. ABC version http://www.themorrisring.org/more/Tunes/ The Craggs of Greenbank, the diary of David Cragg who emigrated to Canada in the 1820s. http://www.ourroots.ca/e/toc.aspx?id=2365 History of Dance Streetswing. History of dancing with useful background information http://www.streetswing.com Earthly delights. Useful history of western social dance. http://www.earthlydelights.com.au/history.htm Colonial Music Institute. Dance Figures Index: English Country Dances, 1700-1827. Extensive listing of contents of country dance collections. http://www.danceandmusicindexes.org/DFIE/Index.htm |
Useful links The Village Music Project: Many hand written and printed tune books in ABC format. Also important articles about the context of this music and performance style http://www.village-music-project.org.uk/ Bodleian Library: The Allegro collection of Broadside ballads. http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads/ballads.htm The Fiddler’s Companion: A growing resource of information about thousands of traditional tunes. Biographies of important publishers and musicians. Listing of CDs, books and links. http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/FCfiles.html Tunesearch. New wiki version: http://tunearch.org/wiki/TTA ABC is a simple and intuitive text based computer code invented by Chris Walshaw. Simple free programmes for most platforms convert the code to written music and midi audio. The website has links to thousands of ABC collections across the internet and has a search engine for finding abc tunes. http://abcnotation.com/ The Session. Search site for (mostly Irish) tunes in ABC & discussion forum http://www.thesession.org/ National Library of Scotland. Search for broadside ballads http://www.nls.uk/broadsides/search.html Music manuscripts etc. http://digital.nls.uk/gallery.cfm US Library of Congress. Large collection of early dance instruction books http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dihtml/dicatlg.html http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=country%20dance%2 The Contemplator. Useful site with song search and lots of relevant information. http://www.contemplator.com/folk.html Folk tune finder. Another good tune search site. http://www.folktunefinder.com/ Richard Robinson’s Tunebook. Great resource of traditional music in ABC form http://richardrobinson.tunebook.org.uk//list National Early Music Association. In-depth discussion on history of the hornpipe. http://chrisbrady.itgo.com/dance/stepdance/hornpipe_conference.htm Mustrad. Wide ranging site for tunes and song history, lyrics and huge list of interesting articles. http://www.mustrad.org.uk/ Particularly interesting article by Greg Stevens about William Irwin, 19th century Lakeland fiddler and composer. http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/irwin.htm Pete Cooper. Articles about English fiddlers, tunes, manuscripts, publishers. http://www.petecooper.com/eftnotes2.htm Detailed analysis of rhythms in Irish traditional music. http://www.irishtune.info/rhythm/ Useful links to online resources e.g. tune and song books. http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/ Comprehensive resource of information about Robert Burns. http://www.burnsscotland.com Hornpipe Music. Music book publishers. tunes from Walsh, Wright and Marsden mss.(as Three extraordinary Collections). Early bagpipe material. http://www.hornpipemusic.co.uk/3xcolls.html |
The TunesABC filesThe Winders of Wyresdale my original selection John Winder Dancing Master's book 1789 HS Jackson book 1823 Edward/James Winder's book 1835 Various tunes from Lancaster and the Lakes |