When I had a go on a replica (Dunn?) keyless chanter Francis has made for Graham Wells, I got the feeling that the staccato style was almost required of the player, by the way the instrument responded. If that was true of the early NSP in general, then the staccato style must surely go back that far too.
There is no point closing the end of the chanter - losing a note from the range - unless you want at least the option of staccato. Several of the Peacock tunes, most obviously Meggy's Foot, explicitly require staccatissimo in places, and passages of other tunes - especially pedal passages |GgBg GgBg| etc, absolutely need to be played tight on NSP. It's worth pointing out that you get analogous passages to these in Dixon, /for an open ended chanter/, but BP respond differently to NSP; these strains just don't work legato on NSP. The Clough tradition went back to the early days of the instrument, and they certainly placed great stress on this stylistic point. I wonder what they played UP like when they still had a set? They must surely have been nearer the closed end of the UP stylistic spectrum. I think the issue is not that staccato is musically the only way the NSP can be played, but that the instrument has always been played this way (with important exceptions - Billy Pigg, Richard Mowat), and, importantly, that the oldest tunes work best this way on the instrument. So a legato style can be musical, but isn't much represented in the tradition of the instrument, particularly in southern Northumberland. John -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of cwhill Sent: 17 June 2011 12:40 To: Dartmouth nsp list N.P.S. site Subject: [NSP] Re: Deaf/dead ... If there is a "correct" was to play, that must have been decided at sometime by someone. I'm thinking here of the closed fingering techniques, one finger off at a time, no choyting etc. I can understand the concept of setting rules for a competition (so like is compared to like) but when did this idea of "proper piping" come about? Is it something that came about accidentaly or was is a joint decision from somewhere. ... Colin Hill On 17/06/2011 09:43, Francis Wood wrote: > > > On 17 Jun 2011, at 09:24,<[email protected]> wrote: > >> I reckon being dead is an even greater impediment to hearing them played now. > > Well, if he hadn't been the late Beethoven, how could he have composed the > Late Quartets? > > Francis > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > > > > ----- > No virus found in this message. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 10.0.1382 / Virus Database: 1513/3707 - Release Date: 06/16/11 > > ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 10.0.1382 / Virus Database: 1513/3709 - Release Date: 06/17/11
