Here's mine - some overlap with Cynthia's: 1. The Macfarlan Manuscript 2. The Scots Musical Museum 3. David Glen's collection 4. G.F. Graham's The Popular Songs and Melodies of Scotland 5. Kerr's Merry Melodies 6. Nathaniel Gow's Vocal Melodies of Scotland 7. Gall and Inglis, Select Songs of Scotland 8. Gow & Sons Complete Repository 9. The Fiddlecase Books reprint of almost all of William Marshall 10. B.H. Bronson's The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads
> I went through my bookcase, and I found one collection I've never even > opened: The Morrison Collection of Airs and Qucksteps. Has anyone on the > list got that one? Any treasures in there? (Save me the time sightreading > through it.) There's a piece from it (albeit an atypical one) on my CD-ROM. I didn't transcribe anything else from it, will have another look when I get the chance. McKay's collection of the same period is on the whole more interesting as a source for early Highland music free of Simon Fraser's attempts to edit it into Italian opera: the less-familiar-from-elsewhere bits are on my website. (Also, neither McKay nor Morrison indulge in the "Pale Fire"-style editorial notes that Fraser did, thank god). Where did you come by a copy? It must be fairly rare. > the Harp and Claymore eludes me. What gems are in there that I'm not > seeing? (Go easy on me...it's been a long time since I went through it, > and perhaps I'm also more hopeful than I should be, given it's name.) It's mainly interesting to a fiddler, as the notation is very explicit about what Skinner wanted, and reprints leave a lot of that out. The tunes are *mostly* available elsewhere. I don't think Skinner had any idea how to write for the harp, or even pretended to have. It's a killer coffee-table book, gorgeous piece of Victorian Gothic design. Somebody really oughta do a collected Skinner. His later music (after WW1) was never published except in small folios, and there are a lot of popular tunes there: The Spey in Spate, The Weeping Birches etc. Ted Hastings' list comes near to being my hitlist of books best donated to a primary school art class for a papier-mache project. I have never had much time for the Balnain House approach of gratuitous rewrites of pipe tunes for the fiddle, shifting mode and range, with no indication of what they've done; this > 5. The Fiddle Music of Scotland (James Hunter) would get my nomination as the dullest compilation of Scottish music ever printed; and this > In addition, Toby's list doesn't have anything from Niel Gow, so I'd > include: > 8. The Gow Collection of Scottish Dance Music despite the title, has very little to do with the Gows. The tunes are not often given in forms they'd have recognized or necessarily liked. If you want to find out about the Gows' music the way they created and played it, there's still no alternative to the original sources that gives you any idea at all. =================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> =================== Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
