Thank you, Francis, for your appreciation. Dobson played in Mr. Thompson's String Band, as well as with Mr C A Richardson of Alnwick, whose compositions Dobson copied into his book. We will never know for sure whether or not Dobson, Darling, Readshaw and Wallace used 'dots' for performance purposes. Probably they played familiar tunes from memory; perhaps they wrote down new tunes which they'd acquired by ear so that they weren't forgotten. Maybe they copied tunes from publications/other people's books to save the expense of buying music. I have done all three since I was a teenager. But we weren't there in the nineteenth century, so all we can do is take the evidence we have and try to put it together in a logical way.
Apologies for there being no reference to smallpipes, but here are a couple of snippets which people can interpret as they wish: The Alnwick Journal July 16, 1860: QUADRILLE BAND Mr B. Thompson begs leave to intimate that his String Band is always ready to attend Horticultural and other Fetes, Balls, Soirees, Pic-nics, and similar parties. Music, and Musical Instruments of every description, supplied to order on the shortest notice. The Alnwick Journal October 15, 1859: NORTHUMBERLAND LIGHT INFANTRY As the Band of the above regiment is about to be augmented, 10 or 12 Young Men from 16 years of age, and upwards of 5 feet in height are immediately required. They will receive a sound instruction in music theory, and upon the following instruments: Clarionets, Cornopeans, French Horns, Euphoniums and Side Drum. Margaret Francis Wood wrote : On 3 Nov 2009, at 10:01, Anthony Robb wrote: > In my 20+ years playing up north I got to at least a couple of > hundred > dances, parties, sessions, music evenings & concerts with a fair few > established players and never saw a page of dots used once Perhaps they were saying "Look out, its that Anthony. Quick, hide the dots, everyone!" More seriously, Anthony, Margaret & others, I am hugely enjoying this correspondance which shows this list at its best. Thanks for some great stuff. Important that it gets written down, and even if it gets no further than an email posting, that in itself has some permanence. Francis To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- This message was sent on behalf of marga...@wyngarth7.fsnet.co.uk at openSubscriber.com http://www.opensubscriber.com/message/nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu/12993083.html
