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28 Jul 17 - 06:00 AM (#3868793) Subject: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST,matt milton Having come to playing English tunes after having played Irish tunes for quite a while, I find many aspects of them are bit confusing. In Irish music - probably because it has always been played by so many thousands of people - categorisation of tunes and the formats of tune-types is pretty clear-cut, with little ambiguity. Not so in English music, I find. One thing I find a bit obscure is the playing of reels. I've read at least one very knowledgable source suggest that the reel in English music doesn't exactly exist as a tune-type as such, only as a dance. So you can play a polka or a hornpipe to accompany the dance known as a reel. Is this true? Often when I hear players of English traditional music playing what they call a reel, it doesn't sound much different to when they are playing a polka. Or even a hornpipe (though less so in that instance, depending on how dotted they play it). So what are the main differences in terms of playing (and/or tempo?) between a reel and a polka in English music? Are there defining characteristics of the English reel? Does it even exist as a musical form distinct from its dance? |
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28 Jul 17 - 11:49 AM (#3868838) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: RTim The title of England's Old Swan Band's first album, released in 1976, was their manifesto – "No Reels". Tim Radford |
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28 Jul 17 - 02:23 PM (#3868867) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: The Sandman yes, reels exist in northumbrian music and that is part of England. |
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29 Jul 17 - 05:11 AM (#3868942) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST,Jerry Crossley Yes, reels are in great profusion in Ireland, Scotland, USA, and Canada, etc. In lowland England though we seem to just speed up hornpipes or polkas when we need fast tunes, apart from Northumberland. I suspect it's more to with the spread of couple dances from across the English Channel in the Eighteenth Century, (waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, etc), since you can't argue that there are no bagpipes in England or tradition of clog step dancing that might be reliant on faster tunes. Somebody out there must have done a thesis on this surely? |
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29 Jul 17 - 05:35 AM (#3868946) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST Thanks so much Jerry "In lowland England though we seem to just speed up hornpipes or polkas when we need fast tunes" That's exactly what prompted me to post this thread: I wanted to be sure I wasn't missed something, as that's exactly the impression I'd got! "Somebody out there must have done a thesis on this surely?" Well, never underestimate how little information/discussion/analysis is out there regarding English tunes! I find it a constant source of bewilderment, and quite frustrating! Regarding Northumberland... I play quite a few tunes I've picked up from the Great Northern Tunebook (Vickers' manuscript) and also from recordings of Cut & Dry Band, Ned Pearson and Adam Gray. But even with Northumbrian tunes, I'm never sure whether the 4/4 tune I'm playing is in fact a reel or not... ...Take a tune like 'Holmes Fancy'. There's lots of tunes with a similar rhythm to that, I love playing it, but I've no idea what type of tune it is. Is that a reel? Or what? It certainly is nothing like the Irish reel. Same goes for tunes like 'Jack O Lattin' or 'Lucy's Delight', a very distinctive family of tunes with a definite rhythm in common: but are those reels? |
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29 Jul 17 - 06:34 AM (#3868952) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST,another In Irish music - probably because it has always been played by so many thousands of people - categorisation of tunes and the formats of tune-types is pretty clear-cut, with little ambiguity. Not so in English music, I find. (the OP) I wonder if the Irish dance tradition, and maybe competition tradition, has led to Irish tunes being more strongly categorised and maybe even the styles converging into the categories. Particulary in the north there seem to be a lot of different ways of playing 2/4 and 4/4 tunes that, to me, begins to sound more like the variety in English tunes. I remember reading somewhere that the 18th an 19th century English musician was take a melody and fit it to the needs of a particular dance. |
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29 Jul 17 - 06:35 AM (#3868953) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST,Jim Martin I wondered whether this record might help in your quest: https://www.discogs.com/Various-English-Fiddle-Players/release/5569613 |
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29 Jul 17 - 08:28 AM (#3868958) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: The Sandman why do you not checkj the Hardy manuscripts? |
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29 Jul 17 - 08:32 AM (#3868960) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: The Sandman A considerable number of reels are scottish in origin, miss ncleods springs to mind, so it is not unreasonable to presume that in the northern counties of england, they were more prevalent |
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29 Jul 17 - 08:44 AM (#3868961) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST,Some bloke Many Northumbrian, Cumbrian and generic border reels. I suppose from an epidemiological perspective, this points to Scottish origins but the form of a reel is so simple, melodic and lacking in rules that it could have multiple origins in a similar style. |
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29 Jul 17 - 08:48 AM (#3868962) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST,Jerry Crossley I'm not familiar with the tunes mentioned above, but would normally regard reels as in 4/4 time and with 8 notes to the bar (ignoring rests and ornamentions). Hornpipes and Strathspeys also tend to have 8 to the bar, but with a slower accented rhythm. The record mentioned above does include some reels, but I suspect they are imported into the English tradition. I see that Stephen Baldwin's 1954 record 'The English Fiddler' also has the odd reel, but is largely polkas, hornpipes and jigs. Michael Raven's book '1000 English Country Dance Tunes' has a lot of tunes in 4/4, but again most are not 8 notes to the bar, and those that do are either imports from Celtic neighbours to my mind, or are English style hornpipes. |
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29 Jul 17 - 10:12 AM (#3868969) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: Vic Smith The English reel does exist though clearly is not as common as reels are in Scotland and Ireland. All dance music is functional and only makes its mark and survives when it can fulfill that function. So the reason that they are much less common is because English dances did not call for reels. Dance tunes in 2/4 or 4/4 time were called 'measures' up until the introduction of the polka. The first reference to the polka in England was in 1829 and it certainly became hugely popular from around 1840. Only the dance was new; the tunes that were 'measures' gradually became called 'polkas'. One really convincing body of evidence for the reel in England are some of the tunes that are found in the hand-written manuscripts (1823) of Richard Hughes of Ash, near Whitchurch, Shropshire. This manuscript was one of four C19 manuscripts from the same family. Neil Brookes has conducted a lot of research on these and has done much to popularise them. Listen to track 14 of the CD The Whitchurch Hornpipe (Wildgoose WGS350CD 2008) by Neil Brookes & Tony Weatherall and you will hear three superb reels - The Woolsack, Oh! What A Row and a third one that is simply called Reel all clearly reels but very English in their melodic construction. It is one of my very favourite albums of English dance music. |
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29 Jul 17 - 12:56 PM (#3868989) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST,matt milton I'll check out that CD. I should make it clear, if my opening post didn't, that I'm not asking whether English players play reels (i.e. reels from Ireland or Scotland) - they undoubtedly do - but whether there's such a thing as an audibly distinct, recognisable stylistic form as an English reel. As someone pointed out above, loads of reels are Scottish in origin, but that didn't stop Ireland taking on the reel and making something that is unmistakably an Irish reel. This clearly hasn't happened in England on the same scale... but has it happened at all? As others have pointed out above, the Northumbrian tradition is probably the most fruitful place to look. When I go on to YouTube, I can find several videos of musicians playing what Northumbrian reels. Here's one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byEgZhPm1Sw While I don't know or play that specific tune, I play several very like it. So it seems I play plenty of Northumbrian reels already (which I kind of suspected might be the case). Tunes like this, played this way, wouldn't (I'd have said) be regarded as reels in Irish music; they strike me as closer to an Irish polka or Irish march than an Irish reel. |
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29 Jul 17 - 12:57 PM (#3868990) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST,matt milton typo above... "When I go on to YouTube, I can find several videos of musicians playing what they call Northumbrian reels" |
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29 Jul 17 - 01:38 PM (#3868997) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST,ripov |
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29 Jul 17 - 05:39 PM (#3869007) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: Big Al Whittle i thought everyone started withe Dorset Four Hand Reel. The strange thing is the two hand reel and the eight hand reel, have become sadly neglected - dwarfed by their more successful variant. |
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30 Jul 17 - 04:55 AM (#3869049) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: BobL In English - as opposed to Irish or Scottish - country dancing, the word "reel" came to mean two different things, a lively tune in 4/4 (reel time) or the dance figure also known as a straight hey (as in reel of three). Hardly surprising when you consider how ECD absorbed dance moves, traditions and terminology from different sources over the course of time. Also, some tunes can be quite flexible as regards speed, with a fast reel being slowed down to a polka for example. The sleeve notes on Oyster Band's 20 Golden Tie-Slackeners mention "A border march and a Northumbrian reel, played here as schottisches (1-2-3-hop) and applied furthermore to a straight hopstep dance (Oh yes you can!)" Anyway, I checked my dance database for dances titled [Whatever] Reel, and found: - None in Dancing Master (Playford & Co.), - Six from the 1700s, - 150, mainly American contras, from 20th-century sources. Of the C18 ones, half had Scottish-sounding titles, and five had tunes in reel time, the exception being Wright's "Border Reel" c.1740, in 6/8. Make of it what you will. |
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30 Jul 17 - 04:55 AM (#3869050) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST,Jerry Crossley I think we have come to the conclusion that the reel does exist in England, but has tended not to be used much, because our folk dances work better with more accented rhythms; most morris dance tunes are also either single jigs or polkas, with some sides adapting hornpipes and the like. Yes, the Dorset Four Hand Reel is an interesting example, but it is usually played as a polka here, ignoring the third and fourth parts found in some tunebooks. The Yarmouth Reel (Galopede) and Kings Head Reel (Soldiers Joy) are also nearly always played as polkas in English sessions, although I suspect that might also be due to the the usurping of the fiddle as the lead instrument by melodeons in recent years - if that's not the start of another thread, I don't know what is. |
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30 Jul 17 - 05:22 AM (#3869053) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: Vic Smith Actually, Al indirectly raises an important question:- Is the Dorset Four Hand Reel actually a reel in the sense that Matt means or in the way that reels are played in Ireland and Scotland? My answer would be - no, it isn't. It is more of a polka (or measure). But then take two of the tunes that our band, The Sussex Pistols, played at a dance last night; The Glakey Hornpipe is actually a superb English jig, The Bluebell Polka, at least played in the manner of the famed Jimmy Shand recording is much closer to a steppy Scottische than a gallopy polka. But then as Shakespeare didn't say in Romeo & Juliet - What's in a name? |
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30 Jul 17 - 05:00 PM (#3869121) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: CupOfTea I would be quite interested to see the results of this question. I've only an American viewpoint, and have been flummoxed by bands having tunes even TITLED "- -so and so-- Polka " be written out as 4/4. Hornpipes "played as a reel" with the lilt smoothed out, reels played as schottishes, slowed down with a lilt added... It gets confusing in categorization. I've danced and played the music for English (Playford to modern) and contradance, and played lots of Irish and Scottish Ceili dance tunes. The idea of Irish dancing competition formalizing the playing of sorts of tunes makes sense to me. In American dancing, while a jig or a reel works for most contra dances, a square dance must be a reel. From what I hear here, the 4/4 polka/ reel/ hornpipe/ schottishes continuum gets differentiated by where the emphasis is placed. I hope someone more well schooled than I can be more specific. Joanne in Cleveland |
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30 Jul 17 - 06:12 PM (#3869127) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: meself I've just started poking through a somewhat-related MA thesis; it might be a bit more, or less, than you're looking for: Pendlebury, Celia (2015) Jigs, Reels and Hornpipes: A History of "Traditional" D. In a nutshell, her thesis seems to be that a lot of people have uttered a lot of nonsense over the years, so just play the music and have fun with it. (That's her saying that, not me - I'll continue to have fun uttering lots of nonsense). |
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30 Jul 17 - 06:47 PM (#3869138) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST,matt milton Thanks for sharing that Meself. Doesn't look like it'd answer my kind of questions, judging by the introduction. "My proposal is that the distinctive melodic structure of these dance tunes should not be associated with any particular socio-economic class, but instead acknowledged to have been simply inherently connected with social dancing over history." Looks to me like it's doing an "Imagined Village" for dance tunes. I'm more interested in how a reel or jig or hornpipe is actually played (because that is what makes them what they are, ultimately). Looking at the contents list, it looks like her thesis is mostly about provenance and publication and dissemination of tunes. It doesn't look like there's much (if anything) in there about style and practice – the nuts and bolts about how the material of the tunes is physically realised by thinking, creative human beings. It's funny how little discussion of actual music there is in books about music! |
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31 Jul 17 - 02:47 AM (#3869164) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: BobL They're played however you like! The borders between them are fuzzy and without customs (pun intended) barriers. |
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31 Jul 17 - 03:46 AM (#3869167) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: The Sandman The Dorset four hand reel is it traditional? or was it an addition or a composition by the EFDSS from the 1950s? |
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31 Jul 17 - 03:57 AM (#3869170) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: Will Fly There's another track from The Whitchurch Hornpipe album by Brookes and Weatherall which is worth a listen - "Lady Nelson's; Lady Mongomery's Reel; Reel" - Track 7. Contrast this with the Boat Band's "Cumberland Reel" from their CD "A Trip To The Lakes" - quite a different feel to it. Tony Weatherall plays melodeon on both CDs, by the way. |
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31 Jul 17 - 04:27 AM (#3869175) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: Big Al Whittle i suppose it depends on how you see titles to pieces of music. Are they there for the whimsy of the composer and listener - or part of some classification system - a bit like all those K numbers and Mozart? would Mozart have been happy about how all his bits and pieces have been classified? Not sure where that leaves Guy Clark's Virginia Reel.... sorry to add to the confusion. |
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31 Jul 17 - 05:41 AM (#3869182) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: The Sandman there are different styles of playing reels in Ireland too, some play them undotted some play them a bit swingy, depends to a certain extent on location or origin of player or taste |
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31 Jul 17 - 06:12 AM (#3869185) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: Will Fly I suppose many tunes will have started out as tunes for specific dances such as reels, hornpipes, jigs and polkas, etc., but time and variations over time have affected that relationship. Consider the hornpipe and the difference, for example, between The Gloucester Hornpipe as played by the Old Swan Band, and the Newcastle-style hornpipes pioneered by James Hill. Quite different in feel yet still "hornpipes". As for Wolfgang Amadeus, I don't think he'd have cared a fig what anyone did with K numbers - they're for our convenience, not his. |
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31 Jul 17 - 07:42 AM (#3869199) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: Vic Smith Several people in this very interesting thread have mentioned the importance of competition dancing in formulating the way reels are played in Ireland. Clearly, this was one major influence but the prime influence was the work of the Gaelic League and their attempts of impose (or re-impose) regional styles in Ireland. It was they who decided that there were groups of dances danced to different rhythms which they called the "Clare Set", "Kerry Set" and so on. Most of this was clearly nonsense: largely the romanticised invention of the prominent League members rather than based on historical research. In spite of this, the work of the Gaelic League became central to the way dance came to be regarded in Ireland. If you want that short story about this have a look at this article in the Irish Traditional Music Archive and the ones that it links to:- https://www.itma.ie/features/printed-collections/ceili-dancing-the-gaelic-league If you want the long story then set aside a lot of time to read the 1000+ pages of Reg Hall's utterly fascinating and outstanding book A Few Tunes Of Good Music especially the early chapters. It is available as a computer flip-book at http://www.topicrecords.co.uk/a-few-good-tunes/ I didn't want to be stuck at my desktop to read this huge book so I took the Topic website's offer of having it as a free download. Firstly, I downloaded it on to my Kindle. I found it almost impossible to read in this format - tiny print with the facility to increase the size of the font blocked, so I would not advise it. Then I downloaded it in the format to be read on my Samsung Galaxy tablet and that I found much more satisfactory. The ITMA articles present an historical account of the GL's influence. Dr. Reg Hall allows his opinions alongside his thorough and meticulous research. Anyone who knows Reg will soon get to know his strong opinions on all aspects of the tradition, but to my mind his approach to the music is one of the healthiest that I know. |
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31 Jul 17 - 02:13 PM (#3869274) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST "The Dorset four hand reel is it traditional? or was it an addition or a composition by the EFDSS from the 1950s? " IIRC the Country Dance Manual version is adapted from the collected dance. The use of a rant step certainly isn't traditional. |
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01 Aug 17 - 04:55 AM (#3869369) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: Mr Red Players who play for dancing will tend to play in their familiar way. Because the human body is the same. Irish dancing requires smaller faster steps, in English we leap. The Irish hornpipe is recognisably a hornpipe but the steps are still quite small cf ECeilidh where we step. FWIW I have been told the "Sir Roger de Coverley" (aka Roger of Coverley) is the only dance/tune in ECeilidh that is a slipjig. Traditionally it is quite distinctive. |
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01 Aug 17 - 05:36 AM (#3869371) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST "I have been told the "Sir Roger de Coverley" (aka Roger of Coverley) is the only dance/tune in ECeilidh that is a slipjig. Traditionally it is quite distinctive" That's very interesting to me, because I had been wondering if the opposite were true – that slip jigs were actually more common in the English repertoire than in the Irish (and/or Scottish? I don't know much about Scottish repertoire) I actually seen more slip jigs in English tune books than I have in Irish ones. I can certainly think of plenty of slip jigs that I've never heard played by Irish players (Jack Upon the Green, Old Dolly My Comical Bride, Cuddle Me Cuddy, Valentine Jigg, The Grinders). I've seen (on YouTube) people playing slip jigs at English ceilidhs, but I have no idea whether they easily fit into the sort of dances one does at English ceilidhs. Matt Cranitch, an Irish fiddler and scholar who I consider to be a bit of a guru in terms of Irish tunes and how they should be played, has stated regarding slip jigs in Irish music: "This type is not at all as widely played as most of the others, with noticeably fewer slip jigs featuring in the overall repertoire of Irish traditional music". I was actually wondering recently whether perhaps the slip jig was initially an English development – perhaps evolving out of the old 9/4 hornpipes that you find in the older tune collections (e.g. Marsden, Playford, Daniel Wright). I was pondering whether perhaps those old 9/4 English hornpipes got sped-up and 'jiggified' over the years, turning into slip jigs... |
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01 Aug 17 - 06:52 AM (#3869381) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: Vic Smith Mr. Red - FWIW I have been told the "Sir Roger de Coverley" (aka Roger of Coverley) is the only dance/tune in ECeilidh that is a slipjig. Traditionally it is quite distinctive First of all. let's say that "ECeilidh" is not a satisfactorily defined term. It seems to have been developed by a range of dance promoters and dance bands to make the more old-fashioned sounding "barn dance" seem more up-to-date and trend setting. It has no repertoire of dances or tunes that are unique to it or make it distinct from other branches of English country dancing, though it does have its own core of popular callers and bands. If Mr. Red was implying that Roger de Coverley may be unique as a English slipjig (and I admit this may not be implied in the post that I have quoted. It is not really clear) then the first book of dance tunes that I reached for of the hundreds on my shelves was The Charlton Memorial Tune Book (1956 Northumbrian Pipers Society) where I find the following tunes in 9/8 on :- Page 1 - Boring With The Gimlet Page 5 - I Hae A Wife Of My Ain Page 6 - New Drops Of Bramdy Page 17 - Andrew Carey Page 19 - Jockey In The Hayloft .... and so on. That should do for starters. |
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01 Aug 17 - 07:07 AM (#3869382) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: GUEST,matt milton I always thought 'Boring with the Gimlet' was one of the best tune titles ever. Makes me think of having to talk to someone very tedious, drinking a gin-and-lime. |
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01 Aug 17 - 07:07 AM (#3869383) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: Vic Smith Guest (01 Aug 17 - 05:36 AM ) wrote:- I was actually wondering recently whether perhaps the slip jig was initially an English development – perhaps evolving out of the old 9/4 hornpipes that you find in the older tune collections (e.g. Marsden, Playford, Daniel Wright). I was pondering whether perhaps those old 9/4 English hornpipes got sped-up and 'jiggified' over the years, turning into slip jigs... A very interesting and entirely plausible thought. Dance tunes are often have their rhythms altered to suit different functions as dance tunes. ....or session tunes. Decades ago when Vic Gammon used to live in Sussex and we often played in folk clubs and sessions together and one of his favourites was to play Hunt The Squirrel first as a schottishe, then a polka, then a jig as a set. Not all tunes are as adaptable but that one is. Actually, at one of those sessions I started to play it as a waltz, but people just laughed so I stopped! |
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01 Aug 17 - 07:14 AM (#3869384) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: Vic Smith Matt Milton wrote - drinking a gin-and-lime. or even a "Bramdy" - my typo in the post above yours. |
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01 Aug 17 - 09:16 AM (#3869399) Subject: RE: Does the English reel exist? From: Mr Red We often schottishe to a hornpipe. More than being 4/4 it is usually the right speed. Or, given the right circumstances, we do a bouncy polka to them. Often you see schottishes to Andro/Hanter dro (I never know which is called which) tunes. On the 3/4 front we mazurka to a waltz, even a Mamou Waltz. As I said, a tune for dancing fits the human physiology or the band aren't dancers - they are session/concert musos. And I have danced to a few of them in my time. It is a maxim we try to follow when choosing bands for Stroud Ceilidhs "Good dancers make good dance music". As for Mr Coverley - I can't recall dancing to that tune except for Old Roger. And more - I don't recall that rhythm for other dances - but maybe I don't think. My feet do! 5 time & 8 time waltzes - scramble dancers' brains. Masochists revel in 11 and 17. I don't go to those kind of events! Outside of dance there is little constraint on rhythm, other than to give others a chance to play it. |