Promoting the Bagpipe Revival since 1986
The Bagpipe Society
A repertoire for the English bagpipe? Melodies from Playford
This edition is from our archives, so it is presented as scanned pages rather than text.
A Repertoire for the English Bagpipe?
Melodies from Playford’s Dancing Master (1651-ca. 1728) This is the second article in a series exploring musical sources for the creation of a repertoire for the English bagpipe. The introductory article (Chanter vol. 1, part 1) briefly reviews the renaissance of early English bagpipes and considers various strategies for the creation of a repertoire for these instruments. In this and subsequent articles I will present melodies culled from various sources from medieval times to the eighteenth century.
This article does not present all the melodies from the Dancing Master that are possible on pipes; instead I have chosen a handful of pieces that seem suitable. My prefatory comments on choosing and adapting English melodies for bagpipes are followed by a general introduction to the Dancing Master by Matthew Spring, a lutenist and musicologist with a special research interest in seventeenth-century English music. The notes following some of the melodies that are presented at the end of the article are also by Matthew Spring.
Selection and Adaptation Scouring through collections of English dance melodies and other sources produces a large quantity of material that seems suitable for performance on early English bagpipes. One quickly discovers, however, that not all of the material that can be played on bagpipes necessarily sounds convincing on these instruments. For every ten or so tunes that are possible, only one may be totally convincing as a bagpipe melody. So before we throw ourselves headlong into the search for old English melodies for the bagpipe, I think that it is worthwhile considering some of the principal points that go into making a successful bagpipe melody.
- Available Pitches: The Chanter The first and most obvious point in the selection of a suitable melody is that the notes of the melody in question must be available on the instrument that is to be used. Already we run into difficulties here as there is no standardisation in the style of chanter associated with early English bagpipes. Some instruments produce only the eight notes of the diatonic scale, others have chromatic possibilities and are capable of playing in major and minor tonalities. Some instruments have sharpened leading notes as the seven-finger note and these instruments are more suited to playing melodies in the major tonality, others have a flattened leading note and are therefore more suited to the performance of modal melodies.
While most instruments are limited to a range of an octave plus one note (the seven-finger note), other instruments are capable of overblowing and can play melodies that reach two, three, or more notes above the first octave. Some other instruments are fitted with keys to allow the inclusion of higher pitches.
In the process of selecting melodies to form the basis of a repertoire for English pipes, I have tended to choose melodies that are more or less restricted to one
octave. Not all of the melodies presented in this series of articles will be playable on all instruments conceived of as English bagpipes or adopted as surrogates for this purpose. Some of the melodies are more suited to instruments capable of playing modal style melodies while the others are more suited to instruments capable of playing diatonic melodies. However, it is always possible to adapt melodies transposing passages that fall outside the chanter’s range, and substituting sharpened leading notes for flattened ones and vice versa. Not all melodies can be successfully adapted in these ways; the success of such an adaptation depends entirely on the nature of the melody in question and the type of adaptation that is being attempted. (Methods of adaptation are considered in more detail below.)
- The Drone While a few melodies fit perfectly onto drones with just the right proportions of movement away from and back to melody notes that are consonant with the drone, other melodies have implied harmonic backgrounds that militate against a drone accompaniment. The easiest way to find out whether a melody fits on a drone is to play it; this experience quickly leads to an understanding of which melodies are likely to be successful. It is important to be critical in the selection of melodies to use over drones. Some melodies simply will not sit on a drone accompaniment and continued efforts to make them fit into this musical environment will only result in frustration.
Melodies like ‘Grimstock’, ‘Bobbing Joe’, and other melodies presented below have melodic outlines that easily accommodate a drone accompaniment, indeed some of them sound distinctly more interesting for it. ‘Greenwood or The Huntsman’ is an example of a melody that adapts less well to a drone accompaniment, especially in the form it appears in the first edition of the Dancing Master.
Music Notation
Greenwood or The Huntsman
Music Notation
Generally speaking, modulations or changes of key tend to make melodies less suitable for performance on bagpipes. There are exceptions to this rule, however, with modulations to the dominant, sub-dominant and submediant all being feasible especially where they occur as transitory modulations. A melody that has a pronounced structural modulation at the end of its first line, for example, is much less likely to work well on pipes.
Chanter Chanter
- Articulation, Ornamentation and Rhythm
Articulation and ornamentation, cutting and gracing, are among the most idiomatic and fascinating aspects of bagpipe playing. If a melody invites the forms of articulation that suit bagpipes then it is more likely to be a successful candidate for the bagpipe repertoire.
Rhythmic patterns are also important. Melodies with regular rhythmic patterns tend to be more successful than those with varied and irregular patterns.
Adaptation
In some cases melodies that are in many respects suitable for performance on bagpipes may require a certain amount of adaptation before they become tolerably successful bagpipe melodies. A melody that sounds attractive over a drone may not fit the chanter well. ‘Bobbing Joe’ is an example of a good rhythmic melody that fits well over a drone.
![musical notes]
While all the notes of this melody are available on some chanters, other instruments may not have the flattened seventh (the note f’ in this example) or the minor third (the note b’ flat in this example). An instrument that has a sharpened seventh in the seven-finger note would produce the following pattern in the second line if no adaptation were made:
![musical notes]
This totally upsets the modal flavour of the tune. By transposing the f’ up an octave, however, this problem is avoided and the melody remains much the same:
![musical notes]
For chanters that do not give a minor third (b’ flat) another solution is available; this is to play the melody starting with the five-finger note. The result is that the key note of the melody will be discordant with the drone, but as so much of the melody works around the flattened seventh the overall effect is still acceptable.
Instruments with the ability to change the pitch of the drone(s) can overcome this problem by bringing up the pitch of the drone(s) to the pitch produced by the five-finger note, and as a result no adaptation would be necessary.
To summarise, the essential principle of the adaptation of melodies to fit a given bagpipe involves the transposition of pitches, or the substitution of one pitch (or group of pitches) for another, without destroying the particular qualities of the melody. It is often surprising to find how much of a melody can be changed without the melody’s identity being lost, and it seems entirely in keeping with the pragmatic spirit of music making of past centuries to treat the inherited material in this way. Melodies are musical ideas whose spirits may move from one instrument to another, from one executant to another, undergoing a myriad of subtle transformations, without losing their essential identities.
Peter Stacey
Stingo
Bobbing Joe
Picking of Sticks
The Whim
All in a Garden Green
Chanter 25
Goddesses
Red House
Chanter
Grimstock
Washington’s March
Chanter
Half Hankin
Old Rigadoon
Nonesuch
A la mode de France
An Italian Rant
Jenny Pluck Pears
A Brief Introduction to Playford’s Dancing Master
Jeremy Barlow in his recent edition of the 430 tunes published by John Playford and his successors as The Dancing Master, or in the case of the first edition The English Dancing Master, states in his preface that the tunes collectively ‘constitute the most important source of popular instrumental tunes to be found in England during the period’ (i.e. 1651-1728).1 Indeed, the tunes have been of interest as such since the eighteenth century. William Chappell in his monumental Popular Music of the Olden Times (1859) was the first to draw on the Dancing Master as a musical source for popular vocal music, especially as regards broadside ballads.2 The often topical broadside ballads of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not normally printed with music, but only with a reference to the possible popular tunes that would fit the verses. Chappell saw that Playford in his Dancing Master often provided the tunes that were lost.
Cecil Sharp early this century investigated Playford’s collection with an eye to using the books as sources for the revival of folk dancing. In doing so he drew attention to the changes in fashion apparent in the successive editions as regards dances in the period 1651-1728. In particular he noted with disapproval the decline of what he saw as the ‘older forms of dance’, the ‘Rounds’, ‘Squares’, ‘Langs for fours’, etc., in preference for types of ‘Langways for as many as will’.3
Sharp’s work was supplemented in the 1930’s by Evelyn K. Wells and Anne G. Gilchrist both of whom published articles in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society which investigated the origins of Playford’s tunes on an individual basis and in the case of Gilchrist pointed to similarities with Continental folk dance and song traditions.4 However, it was not until the 1950’s that a scholarly study was made of the Dancing Master by Margaret Dean-Smith who published Playford’s original book as A Facsimile Reprint with an Introduction, Bibliography and Notes (1957),5 as well as articles on the Playford family and work on the origins of Playford’s tunes.
Dean-Smith’s work is significant for showing not only how Playford’s published tunes and dances were known to all classes in the seventeenth century both high and low but that Playford intended his books primarily for the middle and gentry classes and not for the common folk. Indeed, the first edition was addressed particularly to the gentlemen of the Innes of Court ‘whose sweet and avry Activity has crowned their Grand Solemnities with Admiration to all Spectators’ and was dedicated to the son of the Master of the Temple, Sir Peter Bell.6
Playford and his successors cast a wide net when looking for suitable dance tunes for his books, drawing not only on well established country dance tunes like ‘Trenchmore’ and ‘Nonesuch’ which we know were danced in Elizabethan times7 but also on Court masque dances such as ‘Aye me or The Symphony’ and ‘Gravy’s Inn Mask’ which were composed for specific Court masques.8 Increasingly the Dancing Master editions, like Playford’s instrumental publications (especially Musick Recreation of the Lyra-Viol 1652-1682) and Apollo’s Banquet (1670-1701) drew on Scots tunes as they increasingly became the fashion in the later
Something wrong or missing from this page? Let us know!