With regard to the Tom Anderson quote, "Never try to learn a tune you don't already know", as posted by Christopher Birch, I would suggest that it was a comment very much of the time i.e. small, closely-knit communities who were in regular communication with each other and who shared a common cultural and musical history.
The problem is that most people today no longer live in this type of community. To only follow this philosophy now would result in a great diservice to the music we love by restricting it to a smaller and ever-aging group of adherants. The result, of course, would be that eventually more and more music would be 'lost' to later generations. I would suggest that those today who desire to perpetrate this so-called 'ideal' are, in fact, also doing our music a great disservice. Those like Vickers, Bewick and others, and indeed the N.P.S., who had the good sense to recognise that unless tunes were captured in some sort of permanent medium, they would eventually be lost, as those who knew them became unable to pass them on orally, have ensured that these tunes were able to be passed on for all time. As for the written score, its first value is to record. What it cannot do is to demonstrate the interpretation of the music (although the adoption of more rigorous marking of, for instance, grace notes would help). For this, there is no better teacher than being able to listen to a master demonstrating his playing. As this is not always possible in today's more dispersed society, then we must rely on the score. There is a posibility that this may lead to the genre evolving over time. Is this an altogether bad thing? The purist may think so, but I would suggest that there is no such thing as a 'pure' tradition. All music evolves over time, not the least because of improvements to the actual instruments, but also in regard to tempering, changing tastes, the influence of other genres and, especially in the case of our music, music from other regions (e.g. Scottish music). It is noticeable how tunes in Matt Seatle's masterly reproduction of Vicker's collection have changed considerably since first collected. So, should there be a conflict between those who hold that only known tunes should be learnt or that tunes can only be passed on orally, or indeed that this is the only or best way to preserve them? Surely, the two traditions-oral and written- should compliment each other, both working together to ensure that our Northumbrian heritage is both preserved for future generations and made available to the widest possible audience. Peter Dunn -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
