Just a sideline on the 3 editions of the Fenwick tutors. All were, it seems, produced "in a hurry" to satisfy immediate needs perceived at the time.
I have not researched - nor do I have time to at present - JW Fenwick. He was the only player on a considerable committee of the C19 society; I suspect therefore that he was a gentlemen amateur who was from the classical music tradition by training. Some of the musical theory included does seem on the irrelevant side - the choice to illustrate a scale of C minor, for example. It is now believed that the worthy gentlemen who formed the majority of the NSPS had little contact with the traditional players - an analogy with the cricketing world of the time, and possibly other areas of endeavour. The N. Minstrelsy is another well intentioned effort which needs consideration rather than absorption. The 1895 tutor is reported to the 1894 AGM as "much needed", and is in print the following year. In 1931 the fledgling NPS was 3 years old, and found it needed a tutor to assist new members. Cocks & Askew revised the 1895 tutor: Cocks consulted Tom Clough extensively, but few of the suggested changes, including removing the shakes & mordents (the latter described by Tom Clough as "a grievous error in smallpipe playing"), were implemented. Again haste seems to have the overriding consideration. By 1974 the NPS was expanding rapidly due to increased exposure of the pipes on radio & television, and with the availability of recordings. Colin Ross, who did the foreword, has said in other places that around this time he did not have the time to put books together. Again this edition may have been a "quick fix" on the grounds that something was better than nothing. So I postulate that the Fenwick tutor has perhaps overstayed its relevance, simply by being the only one. The three editions should not be followed blindly, but rather studied in the context of their times, and of the piping world in which they appeared. They are "stopgaps" - all of them. Julia To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
