Some idle musings on music and research - from the viewpoint of one whose interest is more in melodies than songs. (Nothing against the old songs, but I only sing one or two of them myself and prefer my narratives in other formats).

Me and my mate Ian were having one of our weekly or fortnightly afternoon jams - coffee, guitars, fiddles, viola, mandolin - just busking through this and that. We were running in a jazzy way through a Bach gavotte in Am - probably from one of the lute suites, but I can't remember which for the moment - and, when we stopped for coffee, we remarked on the resemblance of the implied chords to stuff like St. James' Infirmary. Which got us speculating - in the light of our joint view that, as far as chord progressions are concerned, Bach has been there, done it and printed the T-shirt - how far composers like Bach, Purcell, etc., had both drawn from and contributed to the traditional music of their day and afterwards. How much had filtered back and forth along the chain, particularly where fiddle tunes were concerned. How Gay's "Beggar's Opera" had drawn on popular tunes, etc., etc - just chewing the fat.

A fascinating topic, and one which we may well spend some time on investigating further from scores and tune books - and a topic which has probably been well researched already, for all I know.

How, in the name of the sainted J.S.B., how can synergy like that, and knowledge of synergy like that be detrimental to me playing the music and some other bugger listening to it, Glueman? You might laugh at my ignorance, but I only found out, from the Senior Member at a recent Surrey session, that Michael Turner was a local man. (His violin apparently hung in a local museum). Now, I've played "Michael Turner's Waltz" many, many times without knowing that. "What does it matter?" I hear you say. Well, knowing that, I won't attempt to play it with grace notes, phrasing and other techniques which are taken from an Irish or a Scottish, or even a Northumbrian tradition.

It's only a trivial example, but knowing more about the roots and springs from which music flows can only be beneficial, perhaps at a level of which we're not immediately aware.