Simple melodies of Scotland
- Scottish fiddle music
- The South Bridge of Edinburgh
- Bagpipes
- Miss Faw’s minuet
- Miss Carmichael’s Minuet
- Twas within a furlong of Edinburgh town
Scottish fiddle music
- Niel Gow 1793
- by Henry Raeburn
(National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh)
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Scottish violin music in the eighteenth-century stood at the crossroads between the native, “popular” tradition of country dance tunes like the jig, that shared many characteristics with bagpipe and other instrumental pieces, and the European style of baroque repertory.
Minuet tunes exemplify that unique combination of local and international features (minuets would also have been dance tunes in Bath). It is easy, for instance, to detect the traditional pentatonic scale in the first part of Miss Faw’s minuet, where the tune is limited to the five notes of C, D, E, G and A. On the other hand, the composition also incorporated the typical rhythm and tempo of the fashionable baroque minuet that would have been familiar to the young ladies to whom such pieces as Miss Carmichael’s minuet were dedicated.
Similarly, a specifically Scottish “drawing-room style” adapted the characteristically European idiom of the baroque trio sonata to variations on Scottish tunes, often published without their implicit accompaniment, as in Charles McLean’s Sonata on " Twas within a furlong of Edinburgh town".
The divide between “popular” and aristocratic music was thus much more blurred in Edinburgh than in Hogarth’s London.
The South Bridge of Edinburgh / The Haddington Assembly
- The South Bridge of Edinburgh
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- The South Bridge of Edinburgh (1787?)
- n°86 p.229, & p.233 in David Johnson, ed. Scottish Fiddle in the 18th Century: A Music Collection and Historical Study (Edinburgh: Mercat P, 1984)
after the Sharpe manuscript p. 233
Elisabeth Gradinarov, violin, private recording, June 1998
The alternative title is from Niel Gow’s Strathspey Reels (II.23)
It is a jig composed by an Edinburgh fiddler in the Autumn of 1787 to celebrate South Bridge’s opening
Bagpipes
- Geordy Sime
- Geordy Sime, Lowland Scots bagpiper “This represents old Geordy Sim a famous Piper in his Time”
from “Kay’s Edinburgh Portraits” c. 1835
Francis Collinson, The Traditional and National Music of Scotland (London: Routledge, 1984)
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- Mc Arthur Piper
- Mc Arthur Piper to Ranald Macdonald Esquire of Staffa a Highland piper
from “Kay’s Edinburgh Portraits” c. 1835
Francis Collinson, The Traditional and National Music of Scotland (London: Routledge, 1984)
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Miss Faw’s minuet / She’s sweetest when she’s naked
- Miss Faw’s Minuet
- N° 61 pp. 153 & 159 in David Johnson, ed. Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th Century :
A Music Collection and Historical Study (Edinburgh: Mercat P, 1984)
Gillespie Manuscript p.84
It comes from an earlier pentatonic piece
Elisabeth Gradiranov, violin, private recording, June 1998.
- Miss Faw’s Minuet
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Miss Carmichael’s Minuet
- Miss Carmichael’s Minuet
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- Miss Carmichael’s Minuet
- N° 61 pp. 153 & 159 in David Johnson, ed. Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th Century :
A Music Collection and Historical Study (Edinburgh: Mercat P, 1984)Gillespie manuscript p.75
It comes from the earlier pentatonic fiddle piece Galway’s Lament
Elisabeth Gradinarov, violin, private recording, June 1998.
Twas within a furlong of Edinburgh town
- Sonata on “{Twas within a furlong of Edinburgh town}”
- Charles McLean (fl 1736-40)
after a 1694 mock-Scottish theatre song by Henry Purcell (1659-95)
Andante, pp.180-81 and 190, in David Johnson, ed., Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th Century: A Music Collection and Historical Study (Edinburgh: Mercat P, 1984) quoting the McFarlane manuscript (1740), III.214.
Editorial accompaniment written by David Johnson.
Elisabeth Gradinarov, violin, private recording, June 1998
- Sonata on “{Twas within a furlong of Edinburgh town}”
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- The enraged musician
- by Hogarth (1741)
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