Is anybody except Nigerian scam artists still reading this?...
Kerr's collections have pages and pages of reels and strathspeys
in similar key signatures printed alternately, this being handy
for some kinds of dance that were popular at the time.
Whatever those dances were they must have been
Jack:
Concerning the Nigeria 419 scams, so named for the criminal code in Nigeria
naming (not enforcing against) such practice. Any and all perpetrators can
be forwarded to both the US Treasury Dept. and the Central Bank in Nigeria.
There is no way of knowing whether or not listing such
This is something that has puzzled me for years too. I had been led to
believe that Kerr's pages were laid out that way to provide suitable music
for the foursome reel, which was popular in the latter part of the
nineteenth century, but any descriptions of that dance I have seen always
have the
Maybe it's just one way to avoid putting all the strathspeys in a
different section from all the reels. Other tune collections mingle
strathspeys and reels, likely for the same reason: it's nice to place
a strathspey close to a reel that it might go well with.
Are the Kerr's books all strictly
have the dance moving from strathspey to reel, but not back to
strathspey
again.
I didn't think that the layout necessarily meant that they went back to
strathspeys after reels in a dance. I just thought it was like in Cape
Breton, where you wouldn't dream of playing a strathspey without a reel
David Francis wrote:
This is something that has puzzled me for years too. I had been led
to believe that Kerr's pages were laid out that way to provide
suitable music for the foursome reel, which was popular in the latter
part of the nineteenth century, but any descriptions of that dance I
I'm no historian, so be warned!
I believe there were dances known as strathspey reels. I don't believe
anyone really knows how they were danced; there are people who try to
work it out.
Is it possible that reels and strathspeys were not played as differently
two or three hundred years ago as
But there were also many fiddlers who
didn't read music in Cape Breton in the past.
Yes, it could be of course that the arrangement in the printed collections
followed the custom of the players, as per Nigel's post about Nathaniel Gow.
For the benefit of those who habitually stuck to the same
David Francis wrote:
...I don't have a copy of Kerr's to hand, but aren't the tunes
arranged into groups and numbered?
In Book 1 of the Merry Melodies they're in sets of six or four mostly,
but the other volumes simply start at No.1 and end at No.446 or
whatever - that's one hell of a set! In
In a message dated 4/5/2004 5:02:47 PM Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
In Book 1 of the Merry Melodies they're in sets of six or four mostly,but the other volumes simply start at No.1 and end at No.446 orwhatever - that's one hell of a set! In Kerr's Caledonian Collection -more
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