The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #110781 Message #2328796
Posted By: Bonnie Shaljean
29-Apr-08 - 01:14 PM
Thread Name: Miss Austen Reels
Subject: RE: Miss Austen Reels
OK, have just watched the tape. As has already been pointed out, the reel in the ballroom scene is indeed Drowsy Maggie - anyone catch sight of the lid being lifted on a modern piano keyboard? And a harpsichord sound coming out of it?
In fact, Irish reels would have been familiar to dancers in those regions. I have a (photocopy of) a handwritten manuscript of tunes noted by a fiddler and dancing-master who travelled in Kent and Sussex, bearing the date 1799. There are a huge number of Irish tunes in it - jigs, reels, hornpipes - some with different names, but many are unchanged from those we play in sessions today. Drowsy Maggie wasn't in my manuscript or in the Gow Collection, but Michael Raven has included it under "Country Dances in 2/4, 2/2 and 4/4 Time" in his superb book One Thousand English Country Dance Tunes. In view of his extensive knowledge, I would guess that this is probably authentic usage. (Wooops, re-reading the thread just before posting this, I see that Greg Stephens beat me to it, the killjoy. Anyway, having dug out my books and looked it up, I'm leaving it in. So there.)
I think this must be the "solo violin (performed by Dermot Crehan) and harpsichord" mentioned in the blurb, described as a highland fling and titled as a jig. I played with Dermot on a film soundtrack once - he's a truly amazing musician, nephew of Junior Crehan. He was also the fiddler in The Irish R.M. title and closing-credit sequences. At least one of his violins was already over a century old at the time Jane Austen lived, but I don't know if he was playing it here or not.
Anybody besides me get irritated with that soppy silly little Fanny? She just reminded me of one of JA's caricatures, though I doubt this was intentional. I can only hope the real Fanny Knight was made of stronger stuff. And, apart from a brief mention of his name, where was Tom Lefroy? (And was it customary for brides to dress in white in those days?)
Apart from the uncredited-onscreen Dermot, I dunno who played the music, but the gaffer was Otto Stenov.