Jack Campin wrote:
> Ted Hastings' list comes near to being my hitlist of books best donated
> to a primary school art class for a papier-mache project. I have never
> had much time for the Balnain House approach of gratuitous rewrites of
> pipe tunes for the fiddle, shifting mode and range, with no indication
> of what they've done;
Despite the fact that my list doesn't include a single book published by
Balnain House. However, I don't suppose there's any point in letting facts
get in the way of gratuitous criticism.
Jack also wrote:
"Somebody really oughta do a collected Skinner. His later music (after
WW1) was never published except in small folios, and there are a lot of
popular tunes there: The Spey in Spate, The Weeping Birches etc."
and then continued:
> > 5. The Fiddle Music of Scotland (James Hunter)
>
> would get my nomination as the dullest compilation of Scottish music
> ever printed;
Although it includes both the tunes referred to above ("The Spey in Spate"
and
"The Weeping Birches") as "never published except in small folios". Again,
don't
allow the facts to get in the way.
Jack also wrote:
> > 8. The Gow Collection of Scottish Dance Music
>
> despite the title, has very little to do with the Gows. The tunes are
> not often given in forms they'd have recognized or necessarily liked.
> If you want to find out about the Gows' music the way they created and
> played it, there's still no alternative to the original sources that
> gives you any idea at all.
According to the preface to "The Gow Collection":
"The music in this book comes from a selection of folios published in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by Nathaniel Gow.
Unlike other publications of this era, these works feature remarkably
few mistakes or misprints, possibly because the publisher also was the
son of the composer. In preparing this material for modern notation,
we have made very few changes; most of these changes reflect the norms
of modern notation. None of them change substantially the work of the
Gows."
I'm afraid it's beyond me how music which "comes from a selection of
folios ... published by Nathaniel Gow" can be described as having
"very little to do with the Gows".
Personally, I rather enjoyed Jack's list. I share his liking for the
older tunebooks and I enjoyed his inclusion of a number of songbooks,
had not already appeared in other lists. Since the focus was on Scottish
Music I would probably go for Grieg-Duncan, rather than Bronson,
but that's a matter of taste.
However, I'd prefer it if he didn't let his obvious distaste for modern
collections spill over into ill-informed criticism.
Regards,
Ted
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