Books, Articles, and Academic Studies - Music

There are a small number of studies of vernacular instrumental music. These include books, articles, and academic theses, which I will add as I become aware of them.

See also Dance Bibliography for research on Dance.

Bartram, Chris; The Fiddle in Southern England [1]; Yorkshire Dales Workshops, n.d.

Campbell, Stephen William John; Doctor of Philosophy University of York,Department of Music, October 2012 Reconsidering and Contextualising the Vernacular Tradition: Popular Music and British Manuscript Compilations (1650–2000) PDF

Chandler, Keith; Articles on English traditional musicians on the Mustrad website [2]

Cooper, Paul; A series of papers on the subject of dances of the Regency Period [3]

Dellow, Becky; Fiddler's Tunebooks; PhD student and fiddle player, Rebecca Dellow, writes about her musicological research into C19th amateur musicians and their manuscripts. [4]

Eldon, Jim; Article on Billy Harrison, fiddler, on the Mustrad website [5]

Emmerson, George S.;Rantin’ Pipe and Tremblin’String: A History of Scottish Dance Music; Montreal:McGill – Queen’s University Press, 1971.

Faulds, Katrina; Invitation to the Dance:Social Dance and Dance Music in the English Country House 1800-1850; PhD Diss, University of Southampton; follow link to PDF

Faulds, Katrina (2015); Invitation pour la danse: Social dance, dance music and feminine identity in the English country house c.1770-1860; University of Southampton, Faculty of Humanities, Doctoral Thesis , 389pp Link

Fleischmann, Aloys and Mícheál ÓSúilleabháin; Sources of Irish Traditional Music C. 1600–1855; New York and London:Galland,1998.

Gammie, Ian and Derek McCulloch; Jane Austens Music: The musical world of Jane Austen; St Albans: Corda Music Publications, 1996.

Gammon, Vic; Manuscript Sources of Traditional Dance Music in Southern England, PhD thesis, published in Traditional Dance 4 (1986): pp53-72. Available, with much else, on Vic's personal web site [6];

Gammon, Vic; Articles on English traditional musicians on the Mustrad website [7]

Hall, Reg; I Never Played to Many Posh Dances; Major work on English Dance music, available as PDF download from Mustrad website [8]

Hall, Reg; A Few Tunes Of Good Music: A History of Irish Music and Dance in London; Major work (1000 pages) on Irish Dance Music, available as a flip book

Heath-Coleman, Philip; Articles on English traditional dance music on the Mustrad website [9]

Holderness, Chris; Articles on English traditional musicians on the Mustrad website [10]

Howson, John; Articles on English traditional musicians on the Mustrad website [11]

Johnson, David; Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century; Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2003

Keegan-Phipps, Simon; Teaching folk : the educational institutionalization of folk music in contemporary England; 2008; PhD Thesis, Newcastle University; Link

Kuntz, Andrew; Tune History Articles, An extensive series of individual tune histories written as articles for Fiddler Magazine over a long period by A. Kuntz. PDFs

Little, Alice; Research, PhD on the work Of John Malchair [12]

Pendlebury, Celia; (2015) Jigs, Reels and Hornpipes: A History of "Traditional" Dance Tunes of Britain and Ireland; [13] MPhil thesis, University of Sheffield. (on the page, go to the box labelled "text" to access). Also contains a useful bibliography.

Plus a thoughtful review of the above [14]

Pickering, Michael; Articles on English traditional musicians on the Mustrad website [15]

Seattle, Matt; Harmonic Proportion; Extracted from The Master Piper (3rd edition), Matt Seattle, Hawick, 2011, with permission; "The term Harmonic Proportion, already used in art and architecture, is applied here to a group of ideas or principles which have gradually coalesced from a study of Border pipe tunes"

Stevens, Greg; Article on William Irwin on the Mustrad website [16]

Summers, Keith; English Country Music: A Tradition in Isolation?; Article on the Mustrad website [17]

Williams, Dave; Stan Seaman, Melodeon Player; Article on the Mustrad website [18]

Yates, Cynzia; Excavating Notes: Archaeology of Canon in Manx Traditional Music, PhD Ethnomusicology, Cardiff University 2013

Yates, Cynzia; "…while the others did some capers": the Manx Traditional Dance revival 1929 to 1960, Master of Arts in Manx Studies Final dissertation, University of Liverpool 2006

Yates, Cynzia; The Andreas Flute Book, Batchelor of Music Final year dissertation, University of Wales, Cardiff 2002

Yates, Mike; Articles on English traditional musicians on the Mustrad website [19]

Conference Reports

International Council for Traditional Music:Study Group on Historical Sources of Folk Music. Conference Report, Copenhagen April 1995. Facsimile available at Google Books. You may need to translate some of it!

National Early Music Association, The Hornpipe (© 1993) Papers from a Conference held at Sutton House, Homerton, London E9 6JQ [20]

Play It Like It Is : Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic. Russell , I & Alburger , M A (eds) 2006 , Play It Like It Is : Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic . Elphinstone Institute Occasional Publication , no. 5 , University of Aberdeen, Elphinstone Institute , Aberdeen . PDF

Journals

The Folk Music Journal. The peer-reviewed journal of the EFDSS. Contents pages are on the FMJ website.

Magazines containing published un-refereed learned articles

English Dance & Song is the organ of the EFDSS. It has a web site where extra content is included for each issue.

Musical Traditions (Mustrad) Internet magazine containing many articles and reviews. [21]

See also Dance Bibliography for research on Dance.