Ted Hastings wrote: > Jack Campin wrote:
> > ...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; > Despite the fact that my list doesn't include a single book published > by Balnain House... What Jack meant, I'm sure, was Taigh na Teud (who published half of your selections), and I have sympathy for both his opinion and yours. TnT happened to produce collections of Scottish-biased tunes at a time when people wanted such collections, and they managed to fulfil that need successfully and at the right time. (It was once my intention to do the same thing, so bear in mind I'm speaking from more than a little jealousy here.) I own several of these books, and indeed use them at times, but they frustrate me. They almost never give sources for the tunes they use and no background information is given. The keys they sometimes use baffle me. Their collections of fiddle tunes appear to be made up of an awful lot of pipe tunes. Their use of Gaelic puzzles me. Occasionally their choices are dubious (The River Cree is the name of the dance. The tune is "Humours of Donnybrook") The lack of a good index annoys me, and damn it all, they just didn't make AS GOOD A JOB OF IT AS I WOULD HAVE!!!!! Having said that, they actually went ahead and did it, and have provided tunes in their collections which would be difficult to get elsewhere, and, most importantly of all, their books are popular and widely available. -- Nigel Gatherer, Crieff, Scotland [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/gatherer/ Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
