Recorded period music

[Fast71]

Re: Recorded period music

Howdy all,

Some of you may know me as the perpetually out of tune Confederate solo gut -string fiddler from events like Ritch Mtn., Paynes Farm, Chickamauga et al. :wink_smil

Like all of you, I’m always hunting for primary sources to improve what I play and how I play. I’m sure that everyone who has posted on this thread has experienced the same difficulties in finding information on rural fiddling traditions in the 1860s.

We can track down what was being performed in parlors in Boston or sold as sheet music in Baltimore but when I try to discover what fiddlers were really doing in Romney or Moorefield (W)VA prior to the 1880s and 90s I hit a sold wall real fast. Yes, I have a copy of Howe's Jigs and Reels but I still wonder if my version of Swallowtail Jig would have ever been heard in an 1863 southern camp. Did farm raised boys in camp and far from home for the first time really want to hear “Camptown Races” or was that the period equivalent of someone asking you to play “Freebird” or “Devil Went Down to Georgia”?

One other thing I learned very quickly carrying an authentically set-up instrument outdoors over a bedroll for an entire weekend is that parlor music and camp music are two very different creatures when it comes to tuning.

Eric, thank you very much for listing those period written transcriptions. I’ll have to track a few of them down. Now I just need to find their rural Virginia equivalents. I’d love to hear some of your playing.

[Fiddlebum]

Re: Recorded period music

"We can track down what was being performed in parlors in Boston or sold as sheet music in Baltimore but when I try to discover what fiddlers were really doing in Romney or Moorefield (W)VA prior to the 1880s and 90s I hit a sold wall real fast. "

I think this is where we run into the Print Tradition vs. the Folk Tradition. Tunes that were passed on & learned by ear rather than by print are harder to trace. Same with folk ballads and other songs.

Here's a theory I heard from Dean Shostak, a fiddler out of Williamsburg, VA: some tunes were printed in keys that allowed the printers to use less upper and lower ledger lines on the page, thus preserving space and allowing more music to be printed on a page. He didn't know if that was a fact or not, but was just passing along the theory.


Kim Caudell

[33rdaladrummer]

Re: Recorded period music

Jeff,

You definitely need to check this one out.

http://www.lib.unc.edu/music/eam/viewer.html?all=true&Vol=5&mus=ns5_42

George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels and Fiddling in the Antebellum South by Alan Jabbour and Chris Goertzen:

"American fiddle tunes, while primarily an orally transmitted repertoire, have also had a modest but unbroken history of publication in the United States since the 1790s. But in the course of the nineteenth century, while fiddling in oral tradition remained important (particularly in the South), the published repertoire reflected actual practice less and less. Reels, strathspeys, and hornpipes of British parentage and of both British and American sustenance were pushed towards the backs of even-larger collections by pieces in newly fashionable dance tune genres (polkas, mazurkas, and so on) and were usually drawn without change from earlier publications. Of the few pieces of instrumental folk music that continued to find their way into print, most reflected northern tradition, simply because the North dominated the publishing industry throughout the century.
One publication does not fit the above generalizations. In 1839 the Baltimore publisher George Willig, Jr., issued a small collection of sheer music entitled Virginia Reels, Selected and Arranged for the Piano Forte by G. P. Knauff. Although containing only thirty-five tunes, the four pamphlets that make up this collection comprise the only substantial extant compilation of nineteenth-century southern fiddle tunes...."

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0734-4392(198722)5%3A2%3C121%3AGPKVRA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q

[eric marten]

Re: Recorded period music

The private manuscript collection of William Sidney Mount (1807-1868 ) I believe is one of the best sources of real everyday fiddle tunes, mostly from the rich solo fiddle tradition. Mount, besides being a fiddler, teacher, and dance instructor, was an eminent painter and inventor (See, for example, his beautiful "The Banjo Player") . His manuscripts represent primarily tunes collected from the 1830's through the 1860's, versions played by himself, his family, and neighbors in the Stony Brook area of Long Island, (a very rural area at the time), and also New York City, where he lived for a short while. Again, primarily hand written manuscripts, not published. (Alas, still not published, except for a collection of 30 tunes finally published in 1995, by my good friend Alan Buechner, shortly before he died).
These were all tunes played in everyday situations by everyday fiddlers, including many Southern tunes mailed to him by his brother, Robert Nelson Mount in Georgia.
The collection includes: 28 cotillions, 9 galops, 34 hornpipes, 13 jigs, 3 mazurkas, 23 polkas, 1 polonaise, 3 quadrilles, 44 reels, 7 schottisches, 15 strathspeys, 1 varsoviana, 34 waltzes, 10 marches, 14 "minstrelsy" tunes, 6 Negro tunes, 6 Neil Gow tunes, 5 patriotic melodies, 10 quicksteps, 2 Scordatura tunes (cross tuned - EAEA), 10 secondo parts (often with the primo missing), 4 "solos" including his own composition "In the Cars of the Long Island Railroad" composed in 1850, 17 technical studies, including scales in all keys, 36 songs, arias and choruses arranged for violin, (including a very interesting "Old Sussannah (sic) Don't you Cry For Me, inscribed :"From Mr. Titus in the Spring of 1848", the same year as Foster's composition), 16 songs and keyboard pieces copied by Elizabeth Mount, (1826), 2 violin collections, including Septimus Winner's Collection of Music for the Violin, which in itself included 75 marches, waltzes, polkas, cotillions, hornpipes, reels, jigs, fancy dances, mazourkas, schotttisches, "polka quadrilles", and other fashionable airs - published 1853, and 18 parlor songs.
Of course, there is much overlap among the categories. It represents such a wonderful cross-section and variety of tunes played by real fiddlers, in key signatures up to 4 flats and 4 sharps. He remained active as a collector, performer, (on fiddle and flute) and teacher up to his death in 1868.

[Danny]

Re: Recorded period music

... But the traditional musicians of the civil war era do not fall into this (hillbilly) category. The early 20th century musicians I am trying to point folks toward do not fall into this (hillbilly) category...

Terre -

You're attempting to make 'traditional' a pure category of it's own representing music that hasn't changed since from before the Civil War -- 'Ancient' in origin to use your adjective. Well, the early string bands, and yes the 'hillbilly' bands, came from that same tradition so we needn't make too much of the difference.

I hope we've made the points that even if 'traditional' and 'ancient' songs and tunes, the string pitches varied and gut strings were the norm for fiddles, banjos and guitars in the CW time. Can you concede there's a case that the 20th century recordings do not SOUND much like CW? (In the CW Pitches were typically set to whatever relative pitch was available, the town church organ if that was available).

We've challenged your case that 20th century recordings are proper primary sources for CW, and your theory that tunes began slowly and ended in a fade during CW times like the 20th century recordings do. We appreciate discussing the possibilities, but I for one think you've projected late 19th century musical practices onto much earlier antebellum and CW period.

Again, what the recordings can give us is a few mannerisms of performance, and of course the lyrics. Here's a few from Nancy Rollin, aka Nancy Rowland (which I can't actually find any source for before 1900 but take your word for it that it was a CW era tune):

Had a little dog, his name was Rover,
When he died, he died all over.

I had a wife and she was a quaker,
She wouldn’t work and I wouldn’t make her.

I had a wife and she was a weaver,
She wouldn’t work, so I had to leave her...

- Dan Wykes

"Forum - Civil War Music: Discussions of lyrics, musical instruments, popular songs and other topics, relating to the period 1861-1865 and before.

[Bob Steele]

Re: Recorded period music

I highly recommend the recorded music of Jim Taylor, who does traditional Southern fiddle tunes. Jim has done his research on the music of the period, especially in period western North Carolina.

Bob Steele
Recruit

[Fast71]

Re: Recorded period music

Thanks to everyone for the ideas on where to seek out more period transcriptions.

Well, as long as we have the attention of so many "Authentic Fiddlers"...

I don't know how many of you are familiar with George Wunderlich's Annual Early Banjo Gathering Event in Sharpsburg MD. I didn't make it to the event this year but was made welcome at last year's event with my fiddle. If George wouldn't mind, it might be great if a few of us fiddling folk could attend the next event in Sept. 2008...

What do you think George?

[stannie1950]

Re: Recorded period music

You might want to try this website. It is part of the Library of Congress, and in addition to FREE recordings they also have original scores. Enjoy.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwmhtml/cwmconcert.html

David Green

[Fiddlebum]

Re: Recorded period music

Another vote for Jim Taylor, and for his sometime recording partner, Bruce Greene: http://www.brucegreene.net/recordings.php .

It's all Bruce Greene's fault I ended up playing the fiddle anyway. ;)


Kim Caudell

[amity]

Re: Recorded period music

We've challenged your case that 20th century recordings are proper primary sources for CW

Not ALL, Dan, just a relative few. But that means there are hundreds of good recorded sources out there for CW era fiddling, songs, etc. Just like every fiddle being played in 1920 was not a NEW fiddle, also not all tunes recorded were reworked to suit 1920s tastes. There is a body of hundreds that were not.

...and your theory that tunes began slowly and ended in a fade during CW times like the 20th century recordings do. We appreciate discussing the possibilities, but I for one think you've projected late 19th century musical practices onto much earlier antebellum and CW period.

Perhaps, but like I said scholarly sources have also made the same point.

Reasons why printed sheet music is not a reliable guide to how a piece was played...

Kim, in partial answer to your question about whether tunes were skipped around the staff to avoid using ledger lines, the answer as far as many hymns is a resounding YES! Tunes that are pitched by ear can be sung (or played) in any key, called a key of convenience. It was more important to have them readable than to have them accurate. The printed key signature makes little or no difference in how it is sung/ played.

Another point is that a tune might be printed in an arbitrarily chosen minor key (arbitrary to fit it on the staff), but sung in dorian mode, i.e. with raised sixths. People who were raised in the "folk" tradition are unconscious of the fact that they do this. Even today if you ask a traditional singer to sing a minor scale, they will sing it with a raised sixth, i.e. dorian mode. Here is some documentation of this as applied to folk song, but I feel pretty confident myself that this would also apply to any attempt to decipher written folk tunes:

http://www.shapenote.net/dorian-aeolian.htm

to quote a bit from that page:

"Many of the melodies in the Sacred Harp are also found in ballads, dance tunes, and other songs in the oral tradition of the United States and the British Isles; many other melodies resemble folk tunes in their melodic contour, scales, and phrase structure. "

"I don't know how the Dorian came to be favored over Aeolian mode among bearers of the oral song and ballad tradition, but it seems to me that we must have imported Dorian folk tunes into The Sacred Harp. The original arrangers of these tunes put them into two-, three-, or four-part settings and followed what they perceived as a rule - every tune is major (Ionian) or minor (Aeolian). Since the Dorian tunes were minor they were noted as Aeolian. This didn't bother anyone because everyone knew how they really went.
Now, 150 to 200 years later, not all people *do* know how the tunes really go, so they take the scores literally. I have no problem with this. If these folks sing to themselves, they can do it however they want and no one will care. If they come to traditional southern singings, they will soon learn how the tunes really go. It all works out."

What is written on the page is not necessarily the way a tune was sung/played at all. Printed sharps and flats are ignored when sung, but when sung/played are introduced to places where they are not printed at all. If harmony parts are printed, one part might be "adjusted" upward or downward a whole gamut or octave to fit it on the staff.

[eric marten]

Re: Recorded period music

The keys of C and F still use all the open strings, and the key of B flat uses three of the open strings. These keys were quite common in the 19th century, before the era of "old - timey" and 20th century country music.

[Fiddlebum]

Re: Recorded period music

There's no need to compete for the last word, Mr. Marten. Although I will tell you that Captain George Bush's notebook from the 18th century has only one tune in F and a couple in C or A minor. Guess what keys all the other tunes are in? And yes, the modern edition is transcribed in the keys he copied down himself. According to the editor, they have not been transposed.

I'm not sure I understand your argument about tunes being moved to different keys to accommodate other instruments, considering a guitar can be played in any key by even a reasonably accomplished musician --- especially in the 20th century with the use of that handy gadget, the capo.


Kim Caudell

[Danny]

Re: Recorded period music

...field recordings of actual period musicians... These were made in the early 1900s through the depression, some made by the WPA in the 1930s...some of the musicians learned to play during the civil war or shortly after...Terre Schill

...Apparently the coherent abrupt beginnings and endings were developed at the end of the 19th century as part of what was called the Galax sound and were a post-civil war phenomenon...Terre Schill

Terre -

You started with such statements as these (!) as fact, so I think we've come a long way. In any event it's all good because it's lead to an even more helpful and detailed discussion on period fiddle, well worth a thread of it's own.

- Dan Wykes

[amity]

Re: Recorded period music

Kim, even the key signature used by a composer does not necessarily signify the same key to him that it does to us. It very probably did not, because the scales in the composer's head itself were likely very different.

Dan, I hope it was pretty clear I was speaking of traditional tunes. If not, forgive me and let's move on.

[eric marten]

Re: Recorded period music

No need to try to compete for any last word. I don't think I could do that. We're all on the same side, aren't we? I simply would like to share some of the information about the solo fiddle literature and performance I've been able to accumulate in the last 25 years -, editing, compiling, cataloging, and recording the solo fiddle transcriptions and collections of William Sidney Mount, and Isaac Homan, transcribed from the 1830's to the 1860's (not 18th century, not 20th century),. and I will try to continue to do so, as quickly as I can, due to rapidly failing health concerns. My friend and editor/musicologist Alan Buechner had begun this work, but has since passed on. Several postings back is a complete category listing of the William Sidney Mount manuscript collection (over 500 tunes) of actual fiddlers, mostly by name and exact date of performance/transcription. and includes exact transcriptions of dozens of fiddlers in the Long Island areas as well as some from his brother in Georgia, many with quite high levels of competency. William Sidney Mount, besides being a fiddler, music teacher, flautist, and dance instructor, was a prominent genre- painter. His most well-known paintings are "The Banjo Player", and "Catching The Tune" depicting musicians with their instruments, as well as about 20 other music-related subject paintings. He also wrote extensively about technique, including tone production and dynamics. Also, he "invented" a new version of the fiddle, which was called the cradle of harmony, with somewhat increased volume, but this never caught on. Out of the over 1,500 available tunes (transcribed by Mount, Homan, and some others) available, there are so many styles, keys, etc, that one can certainly pick and choose which ones to specialize in. No one has to play the hundreds of tunes in flat keys, stick to the easier sharp keys if you wish, but nor should one deny that the hundreds of tunes in the keys of C, A minor (so many Irish tunes), F, B flat, G minor, E flat, etc., existed and were played (the instruction tutors, and written aids to technique by Mount and others bear this out). But simply enjoy it all, play what pleases you (hopefully on period instruments with gut strings, real tailgut, period pitch, etc. Outside of this hobby, I certainly enjoy playing at "old timey" jam sessions, on modern instruments, steel strings, in settings of 20th century appalachian musicians in limited keys, but I don't encourage this with living historians or civil war re-enactors.) There is so much enjoyment to be had, so much learning of the times and culture that go with it - I will continue to share what I can, what I have been fortunate enough as a music historian and performer for well over a quarter century to learn, and I hope some people can get something out of it. Come visit us at Old Bethpage Village Resoration, listen to our 5 historic fiddlers on actual restored fiddles, with the proper strings and bows playing actual transcriptions of mid-19th century fiddle music, in a wide variety of keys, as well as our 11 piece period brass band, melodian, 1863 Chickering square grand piano, wooden transverse flute (c 1850).etc. There are rare times when all 5 fiddlers (students of mine) perform together. with occasionally a fretless gut string banjo, and other instruments. Come visit and I will be happy to show you some of the transcriptions collections, and some of the correspondence of Mount and others pertaining to fiddle performance. But, most of all, enjoy and try to bring some of this enjoyment to others. (If I knew how to, I would try to put a smiley face here).
Best regards,
Eric