On 31 May 2006, Gibbons, John wrote: > One gets the impression that if Clough had had more (any?) input into > the NPS tunebook, it would have looked very different.
Unfortunately not. I think he was asked for input, as he was on the earlier 1931 Fenwick tutor reissue, but the politics of the situation were such that many of his opinions were ignored for both publications. Although a polite and considerate man, even by the standards of his time, Clough held definite and well-thought out views on many piping matters. When he found himself in disagreement with the first organisers of the NPS, he declined to become a vice-president in order to avoid awkward situations with those who at the time would have been regarded as "his betters". Arguably these people thought they knew better. He may not have > been that happy with what was produced, either. He noted in his copy that some tunes were "good ones" (mainly the ones that you would expect!) > The sets of variations on graph paper you can see on FARNE must have > been prepared with publication in mind. The graph paper sets (of which there are far more than are on FARNE) are certainly some of his later work, and I surmise they were possibly produced around the time of the NPS tunebook. I don't have all my field notes to hand so can't remember exactly what the status was. Clough was certainly intermittently employed from the General Strike in 1926 and through the depression years, so may have had more time to write things out. With his father Henry very elderly, it would be nice to think of the two of them collating versions which Tom then copied out as tidily as he could. (It is probable that Henry only learnt to read & write as an adult) The other possibility is that they were produced for or with Mr Kennedy North, who might have been in a position to publish them. They are certainly some of the more considered versions, but are not always easy to read, because of the way he notated them. I found the graph paper didn't help, either, for some of them, though the scans on FARNE are fair representations of the originals. Hope this helps Julia To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
