"The impression I get, from all the tune collections that have recently been discovered, is that some individuals - often fiddlers created their own tune books containing the tunes they would play at dances or whatever.

What we don't seem to have is much information on the bands that played the tunes.

L in C# "

I've seen a number of tune books from this period which were from militia bands. Many towns and villages in England in the early 1800s had a militia (the French were coming).

Two particular books that I've transposed contain the notation for dances in the margin and the tunes are a mixture of dance tunes and miitary tunes. Some of the tunes are copied from publications of the same period, in fact a couple of "Country Dances for the year XXXX" were with the manuscrips along with a tutor book and some of these tunes appear in the manuscripts.

The tunes are transcribed for Clarinet (the tutor was for this instrument) but also mention fife and bugle. Perhaps Keyed bugle from the notes required of it.

Mitch