London Hornpipe

Comment by Al Smitley on December 2, 2011 at 5:19am

Very nice!  Glad you could find something in the Leadley Collection to your liking......and geez, it was the first one in the book.  Hope there are more to come!

Comment by Tim Twiss on December 2, 2011 at 8:06am

Thanks Al. I think I'll skip through sections instead of playing all the hornpipes etc...jump to the jigs and other sections and try those. You can burn out with all of one style...start to seem the same. Agh.

Comment by Al Smitley on December 2, 2011 at 8:15am

That makes sense.  It's a good tune, though.  I learned it on the fiddle after hearing you play it.

I just need to clean up my playing quite a bit!

Comment by Tim Twiss on December 2, 2011 at 8:19am

I'm gonna go try that first jig. Goes WAY high...big skips of a 6th too.

Comment by Carl Anderton on December 2, 2011 at 9:17am

Perhaps I missed something...but what is the Leadley Collection?

Comment by Silas Tackitt on December 2, 2011 at 4:21pm

Carl, here's some info I found online :

Lawrence Leadley

Leadley’s life and music have been researched by James Merryweather and Matt Seattle, ‘Lawrence Leadley, The Fiddler of Helperby’, Dragonfly Music, 1994.

Lawrence Leadley (1827-1897) grew up in the village of Helperby, North Yorkshire, in a locally well-established family, the youngest son of a joiner. During his teens and early twenties he played fiddle in the Helperby village band, both at the Primitive Methodist Chapel and for local dances. The band consisted in the 1830s of ‘flute, concertina, keyed bugle and bassoon (evidence from book 1)’, thinks Merryweather, and later, ‘up until 1850 or so, when Leadley went off to Bradford, violin and other instruments, perhaps including cornet.’

Seven books of music constitute the Leadley collection. The earliest, probably compiled by a member of the Helperby band in the 1820s or 1830s, before Leadley’s time, is ‘bound in painted card with a canvas spine, 24 x 15.5cm’, and has a ‘blackened, worn cover’, with ‘lettering on the front which has proved to be almost illegible, even with the aid of... ultra violet light.’ (Perhaps ‘Flute...’?) The tunes, suggests Merryweather, were written down without titles, merely numbered. The titles we see now were added later, in a youthful hand of  ‘decreasing naiveté’, by the young Lawrence, as he learned to play the tunes himself. Leadley was inspired to compile the second book, which, as well as ‘Billy Pitt’, includes many widely popular tunes, albeit with corrupt titles, such as the New-Rigged Ship (‘The New Right Shift’). Other tunes in Leadley’s collection ‘have titles of a local flavour and probably originated in the region.’ Besides the dance tunes, there are two books of hymn tunes and psalm chants, including, in one entitled ‘Methodist Tunes’, some three-part, and four-part, hymn arrangements.

About 1850 Leadley left the village of Helperby as a journeyman carpenter. He moved to West Yorkshire, where he prospered in his building career. By the age of 47 he was practicing as a freelance architect in Bradford, and teaching construction at Bradford Mechanics’ Institute (motto: ‘Knowledge is Power’). Although Leadley appears to have given up fiddle playing altogether in his life as a respectable Victorian architect, he preserved his collection of the Helperby tunebooks until his death.

Source : http://www.petecooper.com/eftnotes2.htm#lawrenceleadley

Some additional information about this book : http://www.merryweathers.org.uk/merryweather/helperby.html

As someone who sticks to music of the 1860's or before, I'm really interested in this. 

Oh, TIm, great tune and well played. 

Comment by Silas Tackitt on December 2, 2011 at 4:31pm

Another link which includes ten tunes in abc and png format : http://www2.redhawk.org:8080/irish/RRTuneBk/Helperby/Helperby.name.... 

Comment by Tim Twiss on December 2, 2011 at 4:34pm

Silas...that's the book.

Thanks.

Comment by Al Smitley on December 2, 2011 at 5:54pm

Of course, as you reported, Silas, this is not minstrel music but from the manuscripts of someone who spent his life and learned tunes in the British Isles.  They are still of interest to me but, depending on the focus of others, they might not be.....though with Tim's renditions, it would seem difficult not to find them interesting.

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