I think a lot of the Peacock sets are a bit like the Oswald ones, a slow ornate version of the tune and variations. Oswald makes this explicit sometimes by reverting to the basic tune at the end - but sometimes they are self contained, and sometimes have unrelated pieces attached.
In Peacock's sets often, as with Peacock Followed the Hen, the first strain, though ornate, could hardly be called a variation on the tune. The basic tune itself at a playable speed for the variation set would not be a jig but a dirge. Similarly, O'er the Border fits the first line (only surviving?) line of the song pretty well, 'All the company's coming and my bonny hinny's amang them' You need more than the odd twiddly bit to turn a statement of the tune into a variation. What Clough did with 'his' Bobby Shaftoe was straightforward and rather different - everyone knows the tune so he only wrote the variations, starting with something not ornamented but altered from the tune,and after he finishes, uses the rest of the page to explain the non-standard drone tuning. But the Peacock set evidently starts with the tune itself. John ________________________________________ From: Matt Seattle [[email protected]] Sent: 06 November 2010 13:42 To: [email protected] Cc: Gibbons, John; nSP group Subject: Re: [NSP] Re: Where hast thou been a' the day, waggin' thy hand? On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 6:11 AM, Julia Say <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 6 Nov 2010, Julia Say wrote: according to my current prejudice ... some variation sets were written down without the "ground" on the front. (Bobby Shaftoe in Clough MSS is like this and Clough says so: I believe Peacock's Felton Lonnen is also, although I don't want to bring that into this discussion since Matt & I have already had one lively episode over it earlier this year). Well, you HAVE brought it into the discussion. I can see what you mean, but by analogy Peacock Follows The Hen, Newmarket Races, Suttors Of Selkirk, Gillan Na Drover must also be variations with the grounds missing since, like Felton Lonnen, they all exist elsewhere in simpler dance versions. Which means that, though I see your point, I don't agree with it as a matter of principle. With the exception of Clough's Bobby, where he is explicit, the variation sets are variation sets and may stand alone. But as a matter of practice I do accept it, including in my own playing, as a discretionary option for structuring a larger performance piece, in cases where it “works” - a subjective aesthetic judgement. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
