Music

Category Editor Paul Burgess

Music is an integral part of singing and dancing and often an accompaniment to other activities like processions and ceremonials.

Singers and Dancers are just as much musicians as people who play instruments.

Folk tunes are very often divorced from their original setting and played for another purpose or just for the joy of it. Thus a song tune can become a dance tune or a concert piece.

Sometimes a good tune inspires the addition of words to make it a song.

All of these things happen.

Here we can pool information about where tunes came from, when, what they were used for, possibly who published them, how they travelled and where they are to be found now.

Tunes

Such a small word - such a big subject! Let's start with a Tune Index

Instruments

• Fiddle

• Viola

• Cello

• Double Bass

• Bagpipes

• Melodeon

• Bagpipes

• Piano Accordion

• Button Accordion

• Concertina

• Flute

• Piano

• Jaw Harp

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Resources

Recordings

• Firebird Records

• Musical Traditions Records

Books

• 'The Fiddler of Helperby' The Life & Music of a Yorkshire fiddler Yorkshire James Merryweather & Matt Seattle (1994)
• 'Joshua Jackson' Tunes, Songs & Dances from the 1798 Manuscript of Yorkshire Bowen & Shepherd - Yorkshire Dales Workshop (1998)
• 'The Ironbridge Hornpipe', A Shropshire Tune Collection from John Moore's Manuscripts - Gordon Ashman - Dragonfly Music (1991)
• 'Northern Frisk' A Treasury of Tunes from North West England - Jamie Knowles/Pat Knowles/Ian McGrady - Dragonfly Music (1988)
• 'The Coleford Jig' Traditional Tunes From Gloucestershire - Charles Menteith/Paul Burgess - 2nd edition (2007)
• 'The Border Bagpipe Book' Music for Lowland Pipes, Northumbrian Half-Long Pipes & Scottish Small Pipes - Ed. Matt Seattle - Dragonfly Music (1993)

Manuscripts

Many musicians over the centuries have written down their repertoire in music books and some of the old ones have survived into the 21st century. The oldest one so far identified was written down by Henry Atkinson of Morpeth Northumberland and is dated on one page - 1694.

Some good work has been done in transcribing these books and making them available as paper published tunebooks or as abc code collections on the internet.

Historical Publications

Tunes and dances are bound together and when Walsh and Simpson, et al published the dances the tunes came attached. Mostly, modern musicians raid the tunes and skip over the dances. You should follow the dances to find the tunes.

Manuscripts by County

Online Tunes

• The Village Music Project
  

A study of English social musicians from the 17th Century onwards from their manuscripts. Contains information about fiddle manuscripts, plus many of their contents transcribed into abc format.
http://www.village-music-project.org.uk/

• The Farne Project
  

A selection of texts, pictures and recordings of Northumbrian Traditional Music, including a number of traditional tune resources. There are scans of one of the oldest tune manuscripts in England written down by Henry Atkinson in 1694. There are recordings by a variety of musicians including Willy Taylor, Joe Hutton and Will Atkinson.
The Farne Project