Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall (Henry Purcell)

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 03 Jul 11 - 07:00 AM

Matt's a master; we shared a stage with him for our Border Ballad concert at The Morpeth Gathering this year: A Border Tapestry with pipe tunes and ballads interwoven into one glorious whole - at 4pm on a glorious Spring Saturday afternoon and we were packing them in - paying too! And it clashed with the Ballad Competitions... The audience were so with us I felt we could have gone on forever - we finished with a rollicking Earl Brand and everyone was singing the chorus with gusto. Perfect ballad joy!

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 03 Jul 11 - 05:55 AM

Bryan Creer (TheSnail) and I are very honoured that Mr. Happy has chosen our rendition as an illustration, as we're well aware that it's far from perfect. We aren't playing as if for dancing, but just at the pace the tune itself and Matt Seattle's beautiful arrangement suggested to us.

I thoroughly recommend Matt's three books of arrangements of traditional tunes: Airs for Pairs, More Airs for Pairs and Scottish Airs for Pairs.

Valmai (Lewes)

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 02 Jul 11 - 03:01 PM

Curious to when / where it acquired the name. I know it as simply as Abdelazer Hornpipe

It was added to Playford's Dancing Master, in the second supplement to the 9th edition, published in 1698, as 'Hole In The Wall'. In B flat, incidentally.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: ripov
Date: 02 Jul 11 - 01:05 PM

Traditionally tuned, that is

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: ripov
Date: 02 Jul 11 - 01:02 PM

Northumbrian pipes. You just have to play in 1/2 position or retune. Great to hear them, and a repertoire completely different to Southern English. No good with melodeons though.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: Jack Campin
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 07:47 PM

According to this article

Opera Now, 18 June 2009

the right pitch for Purcell's "Fairy Queen" was A=405. That's a few years later than "Abdelazer", and the standard pitch might have been a bit lower earlier. You can buy A=405 recorders (there is a surviving English one at that pitch) and A=392 is reasonably common. The same presumably goes for oboes.

I haven't yet seen anybody walk into a pub session with an instrument tuned to A=405 expecting everybody to join in. Maybe it happens at some early music festivals, with people sitting round the bar in pitch order having their preferred pitch and temperament system printed on their T-shirts.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: Jack Campin
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 07:27 PM

I was assuming the tempo was like what Alistair Anderson uses for triple-time hornpipes. Dunno what kind of dance he's expecting.

Bb is the way Purcell printed it. It's common for Baroque string music, and Abdelazer was for strings and harpsichord as far as I know, so brass doesn't come into it. G minor (or G dorian) is even more common, and stayed that way into the middle of the 18th century. I've never figured out why. It's easy enough on the recorder but a bit of a bugger on most other instruments of the time, and the recorder wasn't a big enough deal to decide the choice of key very often.

I suspect the string groups you've heard doing it in A are actually doing it in Bb at A=415.

Looking the score for the complete suite, the key sequence is pretty logical: Dmin, Dmin, Dmaj, Gmaj, Gmaj, Gmin, Gmin, Bbmaj, Bbmaj/Gmin. And there are only 3 notes out of first position on the fiddle in the whole score, so maybe it's not that hard after all.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: ripov
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 06:59 PM

Seems a bit fast to me too. The second one's very nice, worth learning, but sounds a bit out of tune; maybe piano in ET. I hate playing fiddle to piano concertos.
That Petrucci site has a lot of stuff, could spend ages there!

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: ripov
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 06:50 PM

the Oxford Companion offers for The tudor period;
Domestic keyboard pitch 3 semitones below modern concert pitch
Secular Vocal pitch same as modern
Church Organ pitch a tone higher.
And re Bach;
in some cantatas ... the voice string and organ parts in A or Bb and the woodwind in C .. the exact pitch might depend on the organ where the work was performed.

So some flexibility there then!

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: terrier
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 05:43 PM

I agree, it doesn't really matter what key you play the tune in just as long as you are comfortable with it, but I've often wondered why the key of Bb was adopted by Playford, not a usual 'folk' key, maybe as a measure to acommodate brass instruments? The Academy of Ancient Music and other string ensembles seem to favour the key of A. Whilst creating a 'thinner' sound, this is I feel more in keeping with the musical period.
Jack, if I played this tune for dancers as fast as you suggest, I would get some very black looks ( and probably some twisted ankles,LOL).

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: Jack Campin
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 12:59 PM

Purcell would have expected some sort of meantone.

This an attempt at a HIP version, though at near A=440:

Purcell Quartet

That's the speed I'd do it at, or maybe a bit faster. Works okay in B flat on a descant recorder (doing it in A would get nearer to the original pitch, though Purcell would more likely have expected something like A=390, or roughly A flat). There are lots of slower versions on the web - the Jane Austen industry seems to prefer their hornpipes soporific. The concertina players on YouTube are all over the map in their tempi.

IMSLP scores - Loris Gerber's is maybe the most useful.

A bit of grubbling around YouTube came up with another Purcell hornpipe I like better, with some interesting syncopations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRXtkc8y394
Score: Hornpipe in E Minor from The Old Bachelor, Z. T685

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: ripov
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 11:59 AM

I too thought "trite", but a little perusal finds art and craft intertwined in a very pretty, if insubstantial piece.
Surely it's quite danceable, and gracefully, at the speed the (terriers) clip shows. It does sound nice played slowly, maybe on a laid back sunny afternoon, but the clip with the dancing is the more usually played hornpipe speed, the written crotchets in 3/4 normally being written as minims in 3/2. (and around the speed of the other hornpipe in your last clip, Suibhne, at 4m35)
Key of course doesn't matter unless you have a fixed-tuned instrument in other than equal temperament. But I don't know which temperament(s) Purcell would have used. Any idea anyone? And on this subject, did string players use these temperaments strictly, based on the (whatever pitch they used) A, or did they use mode 1 of the temperament but based on the key-note; or what? Maybe old threads on this,will have to search.
Suibhne, I love your Idea about the common state of music. I believe that "folk" music (undefined, no rows please) is the musical "mainstream" (even though it may be in an underground watercourse), and that all other musics are offshoots.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 11:30 AM

Curious to when / where it acquired the name. I know it as simply as Abdelazer Hornpipe - and not all takes on it are swift! I love the old Academy of Ancient Music recording... and this is perfect too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdOUbe4Ew0Y

Starts around 1.19. Not too fast is it? Not far off Valmai & Bryans anyway... love those concertinas!

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: terrier
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 10:41 AM

Slow and gracefull? These dancers don't seem to be in too much of a hurry.
THITW

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: Mr Happy
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 07:49 AM

GUEST,leeneia,

Agreed, that soundbite you posted above does sound trite, but perhaps its the particular synths used make it sound that way.

Here's some info on the composer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purcell

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 06:25 PM

Could someone explain what 'folk processed' actually means? Or is it a Holy Mystery like transubstantiation? Because, look as I will, it just ain't there - so it must be a matter of faith.

Purcell is one of the priciple loves of my life and it's lovely hearing people playing this stuff, fast, slow, whatever. But Folk Process? No way, just people working with music, as people do.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: Mo the caller
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 05:00 PM

Yes, I enjoy dancing Hole in the Wall now. slow and graceful.
But I remember our surprise when we first met it, we were more used to dancing vigorous dances like Cumberland Square and Nottingham Swing.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 04:41 PM

Since Purcell was probably dead by the time the piece was folk processed, I believe it's fair to refer to him as passive.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 03:14 PM

leeneia, Purcell did not create that MIDI file of an arrangement for recorders. The page says it is "incidental music [for the tragedy] Abdelazer originally for strings". I do not see why it could not be played in a graceful and danceable way, or even "folky", without changeing a single note written by Purcell.

"Folk" arrangements that consist only of the melody and "chords" definitely wrong Purcell and his music, which relies on the counterpoint parts. (We had this discussion with other composers' music before.) In Purcell's days, a "folk" dance musician was required to know more about counterpoint than most present-day "classical" musicians.

Whoever adapts a piece from one style to another should be quite sure to understand them both.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 12:50 PM

he was merely the passive object of it

To think of the creative genius of Purcell being passive in any sense is as absurd as the whole concept of 'the folk process' - by which all such genius must indeed be passive, or yet Anonymous. I'd say the 'Folk Process' is, like God, a matter of first interpretation and second, illusion. All music is the consequence of creative traditional flux, and yet this 'folk process' is considered (by folkies) to be somehow unique to folk. Or is the 'folk process' merely the way Folkies take things and make them 'folk' by slowing them down, as is the case here - or speeding them up, as is (invariably) the case with (say) Music for a Found Harmonium?

For sure, we are free to do anything we like with whatever we like; it's simply a matter of interpretation, which gives rise to convention, there's nothing passive about any of it - on the contrary, from the creative of the piece in the first place (whatever Purcell's source might have been) to to individual musicians who play the thing today. You can see the same thing happening BTW with Frank Zappa's Black Page on YouTube - methinks it's bound to end up as a session tune one of these days, slowed down of course!

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 11:24 AM

Is/was Purcell part of the "folk process" ?

No, it's the other way around. Here's a page where you can hear this hornpipe the way Purcell wrote it. Well, either wrote it or stole it.

third one down


I would describe it as trivial, irritating, or shallow. It rattles past the ears and is barely noticeable.

In later centuries, others less notable than Purcell slowed it down and made it graceful, danceable, and beloved. Last year I attended a play where the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra played it the folky way. It was one of the most beautiful moments in the production.

So Purcell didn't participate in the folk process, he was merely the passive object of it.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 11:09 AM

Is/was Purcell part of the "folk process" ?

This "folk process" you speak of is the common state that ALL music exists in, and certainly Purcell was engaged with Musical Tradition on all levels - but in terms of the microcosms of folk - well, he supplied the original tune to Mad Tom of Bedlam in Pills To Purge Melancholy (possibly) now all but rejected in favour of a more - er - folky one. He had a hand in all sorts of other stuff from Scots Airs to Folkish Themes (Lillibulero / Rigadoon / Harvest Home (Your Hay it is Mowed) which I often hear sung in folk clubs...) and referenced the vernacular & popular genres commonly in his work. He was truly a master, youthful, vigorous, prolific, opening new ground as passionately as he ploughed over the old. His equivilent in today's world (present era = my lifetime & yours) would maybe be Frank Zappa...

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: Mr Happy
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 10:27 AM

'course, we don't do it in Bb - usu G

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: ripov
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 10:25 AM

Is/was Purcell part of the "folk process" ? (but it is a lovely tune, we've played it here for years).

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: Mr Happy
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 10:18 AM

a little flute??

piccolo?

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: terrier
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 10:08 AM

Not to be known as 'Lady Greshams Ball' ;)
Looking at the music dots on UTube, it's written out in Eb(Cm), might add a little flute to it if I get time in near future. Anyone else fancy a go?

Subject: RE: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 10:04 AM

Thanks. It's a lovely piece.

Subject: Tune Add: The Hole in the Wall: Henry Purcell
From: Mr Happy
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 09:57 AM

Another fine renaissance piece becoming popular at seshes in our area, here to share:


X: 1
T:Hole in the Wall [1]
M:3/2
L:1/8
K:Bb
|:d3e de f2c2f2|B3 c Bc d2A2d2|G3 A GA B2F2d2|B6 A2 B4:|
||b3 a ga b2 a2 g2|^f3 g fg a2d2a2|b3 a ga b2a2g2|g6 ^f2 g4|
G3 A GA B2 AB c2|B3c Bc d2 cd e2|d3e de f2F2f2|d6 cd B4||

&

some familiar folk on YTube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AapS3_X6Jhg