> > > I'm still bashing away at Peacock, and only recently took note of the > > > metronome settings in the recent edition, some of which are, to me, > > > stratospherically fast.
I have never taken note of them so can't comment. What I eventually took note of was the remark of Thomas Bewick quoted in the earlier NPS facsimile reprint (my copy is now falling apart but treasured) - "with his old tunes, his lilts, his pauses, and his variations, I was always excessively pleased". Somewhere else it is written that Peacock was the best player of his day, though not a scientific performer (correct me if needed). I strongly suspect that there is a literal meaning to 'pauses' here; in the slower tunes based on song airs, imitate what a singer does with the last note of a line by holding the last note of a phrase. This requires a sensitivity to music beyond reading the dots, and is an aspect of expression (not to be confused with self-expression). It can be overdone of course, but an absence of passion - or any emotional involvement - will leave us cold. For the faster tunes I don't think there is necessarily an optimum speed for a Peacock tune or anything else, it depends on the occasion, the company, the available 'juice' (NOT the liquid kind). Richard Y mentioned All The Niight I Lay With Jockey - I'd recommend you also listen to Chris Ormston's recording. I play this tune on Border pipes (not NSP) and one thing I noticed recently was how the arpeggios in the last strain - which I previously thought of as mere padding - can come alive if the initial note of four is held as long as possible without making the next three impossible - does this work for any NSP players here? There's also the Clough procedure, which Chris does in his repeat, of filling out the arpeggio, B/c/dgd rather than Bcgd. There are other ways of varying what appears to be the most boring part of the tune, and there are other versions of this (and other Peacock) tunes which cast more light, much needed in the absence of a living culture of variation playing. (A word of caution - this tune has been misunderstood by some players who incomprehensibly treat it as an A minor tune and play it with inappropriate drone tuning, a recommendation thankfully not repeated in the 1999 edition.) To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
