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The North East Scotland Session Tunes Project 9: March, Strathspey and Reel

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FluteFling NE Tunebook Project: 09 Pipe Major Jim Christie of Wick/ The Rose Amang the Heather/ Bonnie Kate o’ Aberdeen

A session at the Dalriada at Edinburgh FluteFling 2019. L-R Munro Gauld, Harry Mayers, Malcolm Reavell, Melanie Simpson, Orin Simpson (c) Gordon Turnbull

This ninth video in the series features three tune types – a march, strathspey and reel.

For background to the project of 10 sets of tunes being recorded over 10 weeks, and to see the first video, start here. Alternatively, go straight to the videos on my Youtube channel.

You can download the free PDF of the sheet music here:
FluteFling Aberdeen 2019 NE Scotland Tunes

Wick to Aberdeen Over the Heather

FluteFling NE Tunebook Project: Pipe Major Jim Christie of Wick/ The Rose Amang the Heather/ Bonnie Kate o’ Aberdeen

This ninth video in the series features a march, strathspey and reel, all associated with the North and North East of Scotland. These are from the FluteFling NE Tunebook of Scottish session tunes for flute and whistle and I play these on my Rudall and Rose 8-keyed flute in D.

Pipe Major Jim Christie of Wick

Pipe Major Jim Christie of Wick was written by Wick fiddler Addie Harper. Apparently one of Addie Harper’s earlier compositions, it sits neatly in the bagpipe scale and suits flutes and whistles well too. I find the structure encourages a pulse of breath that makes it flow along readily. Look out for variations in the deployment of snaps in the melody.

The Cape Breton fiddler Buddy McMaster helped to popularise this tune in Canada and The Traditional Tune archive has some background information on the composition.

For more background on Jim Christie, who founded a girls’ pipe band during WW2, there’s a good account of his life here.

The role of Pipe Major is explained in this Wikipedia entry.

Update: Munro Gauld (pictured, above) was in touch about this tune, with helpful information on different versions and background. In particular, he points out that the version in the NE tunebook is not a common one in Scotland and is usually played in 2/4 time with 4 parts. He said,

It’s a tune I know well as it was a staple of the Plockton session when I lived up north 20 years ago, here in Dunkeld it’s also played most weeks at the session and wherever there is a session with a Borders / lowland / cauld wind piper, it usually gets an airing. But it also makes a great fiddle tune. And once you’ve got the hang of articulating the Strathspey-like dotted notes and octave jumps, it’s great fun to play on the flute.

But looking at the NE Tune book version –  I’ve never seen it / heard it played as a 4/4. Any time that I have ever heard it played (or played it myself) it is always as a 4-part 2/4 pipe march (as written for the pipes).

Munro illustrated this by sharing a Pipe band version:

Additionally, here’s a session-like version played by a young fiddler in Wick, Addie Harper’s home town.

Munro continues:

It would seem that the version in the NE Tunes book is taken from the playing of Buddy MacMaster (as found on the Trad Tune Archive). Obviously when it travelled with him over the Atlantic it got smoothened out from its 2/4 Pipe March roots to more like a 4/4 reel. Having said that, I couldn’t find a recording of Buddy MacMaster playing it online, so I may be wrong. I did find this fiddle version from Gus Longaphie from (I think) Prince Edward Island which might give an indication of how Buddy MacMaster plays it.

I’d suggest that perhaps, in a Scottish context, the Cape Breton version of the tune is an outlier – and not one that would be commonly played in Scottish sessions. In your Blog it might be worth mentioning this and if you can easily find it, put in a link to music for the 4-part 2/4 Pipe March version.

Munro adds,

Note that the third and fourth parts are both quite tricky – but lovely to play on the flute.

PM Jim Christie of Wick as published in Ceol na Fidhle, published by Taigh na Teud Music Publishers.

This is a good reminder of how things are often not straightforward in traditional music, with different versions and origins often sitting side by side. This is true, even when the composer is known and the music is published, and my thanks to Munro for drawing attention to this.

From my own perspective, I was surprised that the pipe march only had 2 parts, when 4 is more common. Now I know why.

Munro illustrated the 4 part version with a photo (opposite) from the excellent Ceol na Fidhle music book series published by Taigh na Teud Music Publishers based in the Isle of Skye, edited by fiddler Christine Martin. It can be found in the combined Book 3 and 4 edition and I can recommend these and the related books. To see a list of some publications that have been helpful to us in FluteFling, check out the Resources page.

The NE session sets tune book was compiled by John Crawford from existing session material to be found around Aberdeen music groups. The 2-part version allows us to also play with Cape Breton musicians and there is now an opportunity to broaden the repertoire by adding in the additional parts so that we can play with others. I’ll be adding a bonus video of the 4 part version at the end of this project.

Uncertainty about origins and versions is a big theme for this set of tunes and illustrates the folk process in action.

The Rose Amang the Heather

The Rose Amang the Heather is a traditional strathspey in D. It is known by various titles and was taught by Tom Oakes in 2021 as a Northumbrian tune, The Kielder Schottische. I learned it as The Laddie wi’ the Plaidie and it is a good example of a tune that happily exists in different traditions (link to The Session).

The Traditional Tune Archive gives a different, but related, 2-part tune for The Rose Amang the Heather, from The Middleton Collection of 1870.

However, a search for The Lad wi’ the Plaidie reveals a 2-part version from 1910 and a more elaborate 5-part strathspey, 3 of which are the same as our version.

For comparison, here is The Kielder Schottiche from The Session.

And here’s a recording of Tom Clough (Northumbrian pipes), Billy Ballantyne (piccolo) and Ned Pearson (fiddle): https://youtu.be/rrQaMMjCczA

I suspect that it is Scottish in origin and originally in two parts, but completely take on board Tom’s assertion that it is Northumbrian. Many tunes are common to both Northumbrian and Scottish traditions as each repertoire leaches over the Border.

In addition, the running triplets in the third part are a strong feature of hornpipes beloved of Northumbrian pipers and others. Harvest Home and The Belfast Hornpipe are two notable and well-known tunes that feature this. However, triplets and quadruplets are also common in strathspeys, which are often played at a hornpipe tempo.

I’ll leave it there with regards to this tune, but in my opinion, Northumbrian pipers’ tune books are generally a rich resource for flute and whistle players exploring different settings of Scottish material. Cross-Border hybridisation is clearly a long and noble tradition and there are many threads to the heritage of this lovely tune.

The three part version is the one I have come across the most and it certainly fits the flute and whistle well. Be sure not to let the triplets run away, find a space in the music to breathe and keep it steady.

Bonnie Kate o’ Aberdeen

Bonnie Kate o’ Aberdeen is a reel in Em and has its own questions regarding origins. A tune and a country dance by that name were published in 1771 by Thomson, but the melody, also known as Bonnie Kate, is different. After a bit of hunting around with little success, I tried playing the tune into the Tunepal app.

Mobile phone screenshots of the Tunepal logo, music score and letter notation in ABC format.

Tunepal is a cloud-powered app developed for traditional musicians by Bryan Duggan and his team. It is available for Android and Apple phones, as well as online. After playing a 12 second clip into the app, it will search the free online databases and suggest matches with different degrees of confidence. For any musician trying to identify a tune from a fragment, maybe heard or recorded in a session, it’s a really valuable tool.

Tunepal suggested an Irish reel, called The Mountain Lark, which I have heard but don’t play. A search on The Session reveals that there are two tunes with that name, both in the same key, but distinctly different from each other. One of those is our version and lesser known.

The tune also has a couple of alternative Scottish titles – The Rakish Highlander and Bonnie Kate o’ Aberdeen. Additionally, the annotation to The Rakish Highlander in The Traditional Tune Archive discusses the interest in Scottish repertoire to Irish fiddlers.

On The Session page linked above, FluteFling’s own Sharon Creasey, aka The Archivist and a specialist in Fermanagh music and older manuscripts, writes:

This tune is in the Gunn Book (Fermanagh 1865) as Boney (sic) Kate of Aberdeen.
What a great tune!

The Gunn Book predates Ryan’s Collection (1883) by almost 20 years and strengthens a Scottish claim.

Sharon herself reintroduced the to Aberdeen, teaching it in her workshops, and hence into this PDF. I’m not aware that the tune is otherwise known in Scotland currently.

From Scotland to Ireland and back again with this reel, a Northumbrian schottische or a Scottish strathspey for another tune, from Caithness to Cape Breton and back for our march. Whichever way you look at it, the connections and cross fertilisation of people, culture and music makes the world a richer place.

Ten weeks of videos

Over a 10 week or so period, I am recording and uploading to YouTube a set of tunes from the PDF roughly once a week. The aim is to introduce the tunes, point out some techniques along the way and then play them as a set as I might play them in a session.

As I go along, I’ll take in suggestions to improve the sound and presentation and get back into the way of teaching again. There is an in-built slow down function in YouTube and the PDF is available to everyone, so why not join me on the journey?

Look out for some more tunes in this project. In the meantime, enjoy learning and playing the tunes!

 

FluteFling Online December 2020 Roundup

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FluteFling Online December 2020 Roundup

It was wonderful to see such a great turn-out for our first ever FluteFling Online event.

Claire Mann took us through some fine tunes over four workshops on two consecutive Saturdays and there is a group recording of everyone playing together to look forward to as well.

Claire herself was in Newton Stewart in Dumfries and Galloway, Pete Saunders did a great job controlling the technology from Aberdeenshire, while Sharon Creasey in Dumbarton, John Crawford in Aberdeen and myself in Edinburgh were also on hand to support. We had much of the country covered and then people attended live from Canada (a 5.30 am start!), USA, Germany, Sweden, France, Ireland, England, the Netherlands, Spain — apologies if I have missed anywhere — and more people accessing it through recordings afterwards, including one person from Japan.

We are already thinking of when we will do our next one, so make sure you are signed up to the newsletter to hear about it first.

Event Resources

The Event Resources archive, including recordings of the workshops themselves, will remain accessible to all ticket holders until 9 January, which is also the date for submitting videos for the group video. Once this is edited it will become available in January.

Most questions were answered either in the workshop or by chat in the messages, which have also been archived in the Event Resources.

Someone new to Scottish traditional music asked for some useful tune collections. It’s something we should maybe address more fully, but here are a few, plus some others:

 

Tunes, lyrics, Hogg and Burns: a late January update

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The January workshop couldn’t have taken place without a nod to Robert Burns and it turned out that much of the music we covered had lyrics or associations with words.

Gordon demonstrates how to engage the diaphragm while playing the flute. Photo (c) Oonagh O’Brien

We also tried out some different flutes and whistles and explored learning to use the diaphragm.

When playing while lying down, the diaphragm has to be engaged. The sensation is then recreated when resuming a vertical position in order to better support the breath.

Other technique covered included rolls, cuts and strikes and longer phrasing.

Leaving Lismore

We began with Leaving Lismore as a slower piece to warm up. A retreat march in D by Mrs. Martin Hardie (of which nothing seems to be known), there is a harmony for fiddle by Christine Martin from Breakish, Isle of Skye that I have adapted for flutes and whistle. There are some good opportunities for simple decoration and space to concentrate on tone and breath support.

Once we had the slow waltz feel down, we tried introducing the harmonies to good effect, with the whistles adding to the range of sound. While I have taught this tune before, it was new to the group and is one of a few pieces that might be suitable for working on as an ensemble.

Kye Comes Hame

A strathspey I have never heard others play but is undoubtedly related to When the Kye Comes Hame, a song written with James Hogg (“The Ettrick Shepherd”) and first published in 1822 in his novel The Three Perils of Man. There’s a good historical overview of the song at the National Library of Scotland web site which suggests that the tune may have already been well known.

I learned my version many years ago via Kerr’s Merrie Melodies and I think it was the lyricism of the tune that appealed to me at the time, although I was unaware of the song at that point. Being aware of the lyrics can often help with phrasing and is often recommended for slow airs that derive from songs. However, without the words, the opportunity opens to emphasise the rhythm and bounce of the tune.

In D, this tune goes well with Leaving Lismore.

Here are the Tannahill Weavers with their version of the song:

Green Grow the Rashes

Green Grow the Rashes O is a poem of 1787 by Robert Burns with a very long and detailed history. Some information here from the Scottish Country Dancing perspective and also some lyrics analysis from this website, which says there were three other pre-existing versions that Burns took as inspiration.

However the Traditional Tune Archive has more on the melody that can be traced back to 17th Century lute collections and became known in a different format as Grant’s Rant. As the Grants were traditionally in the Rothiemurcus area, this might suggest it is from the heart of strathspey country.

I had thought that the version we learned is based on one from Donegal, but listening back to my sources which have some of the Scotch snaps shaved off, I think that other influences may have overridden it. Our version is more like a Highland or west coast strathspey, in its bounce and punch and certainly not at all like Dougie McLean’s wistful version of the song, which shows how versatile a melody it is.

Our version is in G and sits on flutes and whistles nicely, with opportunities for typically Scottish short rolls on the G in particular. This tune goes well after Kye Comes Hame.

Flutes at this afternoon’s workshop. @tribeporty

A post shared by Gordon Turnbull (@gordontheflow) on

Och Is Duine Truagh Mi

While looking through some teaching material that Rebecca Knorr gave to me a few years ago, I came across the west coast pipe reel/ port a beul Och Is Duine Truagh Mi (Alas I am a forlorn man). It’s a lovely tune that was recorded by the influential Ossian a good few years back, with Iain McDonald on pipes, flute and whistles.

Rebecca’s version is in G to sit on the whistle more readily, which is how we did it, but I also provided music and a recording of it in A, which is how it would normally be played. The version in G features long G rolls and follows nicely out of Green Grow the Rashes, keeping the key but changing the rhythm.

It’s a really useful skill to know a tune in more than one key, particularly if you know it well. It’s like seeing someone in different clothes in that it brings out different parts of the personality. However, it also builds up technical skills in terms of fingering and anticipation. Neither the A version nor the G version are particularly difficult on flute or whistle, but if you try it out you will have to think of different fingering and phrasing transitions which is useful.

Niall Kenny on The Session says he got this from Allan McDonald (Iain’s brother, who with Dr Angus McDonald make up the three piping brothers of Glenuig ) and that it may originally hail from Scalpay.

There are some lyrics to the reel and I have found a couple of intriguing versions, one with pipe variations. This first one has a slightly different title, but features whistles as well as pipes played by Seoanaidh MacIntyre with Ross B. Wilson on keyboards. There are two variations on each part, effectively making it a six part tune. The video includes the sheet music:

The second version is by fiddle and harp duo Jenna Moynihan & Mairi Chaimbeul:

Dhomhnuill a Dhomhnuill

Dhomhnuill a Dhomhnuill is a piece of mouth music (port a beul) from the isle of Skye that I learned from Gaelic singer Michel Byrne. This was part of the repertoire for The Big Squeeze Ceilidh Band for many years when we both played in it together. We didn’t spend much time with it, but it would go well after Och Is Duine Truagh Mi in either key. I taught this reel a couple of years ago and at the time wrote about it here.

February workshop

The next workshop will take place on Saturday 24th February and will be taken by Sharon Creasey. It’s a rare chance to spend some time with Sharon, who plays Boehm system flute as well as whistle.

February workshop: some Winter Merry Melodies

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We looked at two tunes, both of which can be found in Kerr’s Merry Melodies for the Violin. Published in the 1870s, they have proved to be an enduring a source for a variety of Scottish, Irish and other tunes common at the time — including popular airs from opera. These tunes would have been an important part of the repertoire of most performing musicians when they were published.

Repertoire

Our tunes were the Schottische/ barndance A Winter’s Night Schottische and the strathspey Gloomy Winter. I also included a reel, Feargan and one of my own compositions, The Slipway.

Recordings of the tunes are below and can be downloaded. I encourage you to listen to them and other versions of the tunes as much as possible to help internalise them.

Update 3 March: A PDF of the tunes has now been uploaded after the server errors were been ironed out. There was some discussion about ABC music notation, an open source music notation system for traditional instruments and repertoire. An ABC version of our tunes has also been uploaded as a .TXT file that ABC apps can read. If you click on the link you should see it in your browser. Find out more about ABC notation here.

A Winter’s Night Schottische I first came across and learned as a barndance from Hammy Hamilton’s recording Moneymusk, where he duetted with a young Paul McGrattan. Hammy Hamilton is a flute player and maker from Northern Ireland, now long resident in Co. Cork. His flutes are excellent but can take some filling and he has both written a guide to the Irish flute and runs Cruinniú na bhFliúit (Flutemeet) every April (some spaces still available at time of writing). Flutemeet was one of the inspirations for our annual FluteFling Scottish flute weekends.

Flute session in Sandy Bell's, Edinburgh

Flute session in Sandy Bell’s, Edinburgh, November 2016: Cathal McConnell, Sharon Creasey, Rebecca Knorr, John Crawford and Kenny Hadden. (c) Gordon Turnbull

The repertoire or Northern Ireland has many examples of Scottish links and there are a host of strathspeys, for example, that are played as Highlands or barndances. A Winter’s Night Schottische is known in Ireland as Eddie Duffy’s Barndance, Eddie Duffy being a fiddle player from County Fermanagh, honoured in the annual Derrygonnely Festival. I was reminded of this tune after the November workshop when it was played in Sandy Bell’s by Sharon Creasey and Cathal McConnell. Sharon worked with Cathal on the Hidden Fermanagh project and it was Cathal who helped to spread the music of Fermanagh into the wider world. A version of the tune appears in Kerr’s with our title.

For a history of the schottische, a dance once popular throughout Europe, Wikipedia has an overview of its complex history.

The tune has a heavily dotted but regular rhythm, very much akin to a hornpipe and similar to a barndance. There is a fluidity to some of the definitions of these tune types but the dances for them are distinct. Using glottal stops to pulse the breath and push the beat along, there are opportunities to decorate sparsely in the main, but with some variation possible too. We focused on the phrasing to help bring out the overarching structure of the tune.

I came across Gloomy Winter in Kerr’s while looking for a companion piece for the schottische. It’s actually a strathspey setting of Robert Tannahill’s 1808 song Gloomy Winter’s Noo Awa’, but should perhaps be more accurately called Lord Balgonie’s Favourite, since that was the original tune that the words were set to. The excellent Sangstories web site has an account of the story behind it. The old tune books have many examples of song airs put to dance tunes.

Robert Tannahill was a poet, weaver and flute player from Paisley and the inspiration behind the Tannahill Weaver’s name. More about him from the Robert Tannahill Federation.

There are a few settings and titles for this tune, which featured in Michael Nyman’s score for The Piano:

An attraction about the Kerr’s setting in A minor is in the challenges is presents to the flute and whistle. It doesn’t sit neatly under the fingers, drops below the range of the instruments, both holds and pulses on the weaker c’ that also requires tricky articulation. However, this can be used to bring out a sense of vulnerability in the melody, something that Dougie MacLean does with the downward inflections in the phrasing of his version of the song and served as a model for thinking about the phrasing on the flute:

And finally, here’s The Tannahill Weavers playing the song, with Phil Smillie on flute and Lorne MacDougall on whistle:

We also looked at a couple of ways of articulating C natural in particular, leading to a digression that included demonstrations of The Bibble (as played by Ruairidh Morrison and also Munro Gauld) and The Wipe (as played by Phil Smillie and Malcolm Reavell on the whistle)

While looking for final tune to go with these tunes, I came across Feargan (a pet name for Fearghus), a simple but hypnotic reel with a sense of port-a-beul about it. I can’t find much about it at all. As well as being in Kerr’s (1870s), it’s also in the Athole Collection of 1884. Something about the structure of it and the possible meaning of the name makes me think it may be a west coast or Highlands tune originally.

Feargan could go well out of Gloomy Winter as they share the same key. Consider playing it at a slower than usual pace for a reel or possibly even as a strathspey first, then as a reel.

Finally, a bonus tune that we didn’t look at is The Slipway, a kind of slip jig I wrote while playing about with rhythms. I hope you have fun with it.

The next workshop will take place on Saturday 18th March.

 

Port a beul from Islay

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This week’s tune is a piece of mouth music that celebrates the Isle of Islay in the Inner Hebrides, famous for many things, including malt whisky. Sometimes described as a children’s song, ‘S ann an Ilè is a strathspey that shares some of the melody with The Marquis of Huntly’s Highland Fling.

I first heard this sung by Dun Creagan, a Scots-Irish band from America. Their singer Tom McKean studied Gaelic in Edinburgh and now teaches in Aberdeen. They made one CD, mostly recorded live and it is now available on Soundcloud (see the link above). Here’s the song:

I met Tom when he lived in Edinburgh and he took some of the Edinburgh session tunes back to the US where the band incorporated some of them into their repertoire. I was surprised a few years later when Rick Gagné, their whistle and banjo player was in touch in the early days of the internet to say they had recorded a composition of mine (Jane Craggs, which is also on their Soundcloud page). This was the start of a long-distance friendship in which we exchanged tunes, recordings, anecdotes and news.

Rick is wearing glasses in the Dun Creagan picture. He was a stunning whistler, equally adept on banjo and other stringed instruments as well as being a prolific composer of distinctive tunes. He was admired throughout the traditional music scene, not just for his music, but also his openness, positivity and encouragement to others. I had hoped that one day we might meet for a tune, but he sadly died earlier this year after a short illness. I have some of his compositions that he sent me and and will see if we can take a look at them in the class sometime.

Here’s another version, sung by Christina Stewart, with lyrics and translation. Our version can be found on the resources page. For a decent version of The Marquis of Huntly’s Highland Fling, see Nigel Gatherer’s version on Folk Tune Finder or within Volume 1 of his Joy of Sets series. Published in various older collections, The Fiddler’s Companion web site puts the composition of the Marquis of Huntly’s Highland Fling as possibly pre-1806 and it has a rich history, that is worth checking out. Composed by George Jenkins, it has a different B part to ‘S ann an Ìle and the Marquis’ B part became part of an Irish slide (12/8 tune).

Tunes based on Gaelic song sometimes have a long history and fiddle composers (and poets) sometimes borrowed or amended existing traditional tunes before added their names as composer to the “improved” versions. There’s no evidence that Jenkins did this, but Flings are thought to be quite old (see the Fiddler’s Companion discussion) and I wouldn’t be surprised that a tune with a simple structure such as this one turned out to have origins older than late 18thC.

Photo: Colours and Casks by Jens Mayer, some rights reserved.