October Gathering Summary
The first workshop of the new season was led by one of our founders, Barbara McOwen, who traveled north from Arlington to regale us with the history of old-style 16-bar reels, and how they were supplanted in the 1930’s by modern 32-bar reels.
Barbara treated us to a wide-ranging discourse that brought us gently from warming up on the A major scale, thence to the pipe (mixolydian) scale, to the first ‘Little’ reel, Daldowny’s. After spending a while learning the notes and form of the tune (it is comprised of only 5 unique measures that repeat), we played it through a few times.
Then we tackled the A major reel Return From India, which has a very ‘familiar’ opening strain! The tune is in both Jerry Holland’s Collection and in Kerrs’ - one with broken thirds, the other with repeated A note in one section. This prompted a discussion (which I won’t expand on) - the upshot was that for the concert set, the A and B parts would be reversed, to mesh easily into the upper range notes of Daldowny’s.
The final old-style Reel, MacThomas Has a Dirk, is another pipe reel, with ambiguous notation for the G sharp notes. Barbara’s advice was to play them sharp if leading to an A note, and to leave them natural if part of a G major section.
Royal Scottish Country Dance Society
The sea change in music for Scottish Country Dancing coincided with the death of James Scott Skinner (1927), the rise in popularity of accordion music, and the formation of the RSCDS (1923). The Society was formed to codify the old style dances in the face of new influx of continental ballroom dances such as the waltz or quadrilles and, later on, American-style dances like the One-step or foxtrot.
For the new-style 32-bar reels, Barbara provided us with a nice pair of tunes, both from Shetland composers:
Tom Anderson’s hornpipe Hurlock’s Reel (Harry Hurlock played bass in the Lerwick Orchestra and drums in Davie Robertson’s dance band, in which Tom was the fiddler) is followed by a Ronnie Cooper reel Auld Willie Hunter, named for the father of the fiddler ‘Young’ Willie Hunter who was a fiddler in the Hamefarers dance band.
To complete the building of a promising new concert set, Barbara chose to begin with a slow Cape Breton march Mary Ann MacDougall’s, followed by the flowing, musical strathspey John McAlpine, then picking up the tempo for Niel Gow’s Strathspey, played in Cape Breton style: with ‘hack’ bowing and at a tempo to match the following reels.
Think of the feeling you get when a rough landing in a jet plane is followed by a safe touch down - still travelling fast - but with a sigh of relief: that’s also the feeling of going from a choppy C.B. strathspey to smoothly rolling reels.
Have fun with Scottish music.
And remember to smile.
