Month: October 2019

The Grand Hornpipe

Here is the post for Monday 21st October tune, The Grand Hornpipe, also known as Henry Stables’ Grand Hornpipe, The Devonshire Lads and known in Wales as Mympwy Portheinon.  It seems to have been revived from a Cumbrian collection of tunes from the late nineteenth century, and is popular in England and Wales.  Here’s the video:

 

And here are the dotes (PDF available here), with some of the rhythmic variations we tried out on the night.  The quavers are swung, and the bowings/slurs are a slighly simplified version of what I tend to do in hornpipes to avoid running out of bow!

 

The Grand Hornpipe

Lemmie Brazil’s no.2

Lemmie Brazil (short for Lementina which seems to be spelled variously as Lemmy or Lemmie, and Brazil is pronounced Brazzle) was a melodeon player and singer from a large Gypsy family who travelled throughout England and Ireland.  You can read more about her here and she can be heard playing melodeon here:

 

Here is the video from Monday 14th October:

 

And here are the dots, also available as a PDF here:

 

Lemmy Brazil's no 2

Fair Jenny’s

Here is the tune from Monday 30th’s session, with apologies for the late posting.  This is a tune by Peter Barnes, it can be found in the book “The Portland Collection: Contra Dance Music in the Pacific Northwest”.  Peter says of this tune: “I actually wrote this tune on the fiddle when I was trying to teach myself that instrument in the mid ‘70’s. I made it easy to play on the violin, which may account for its totally unexpected popularity.  Since then it’s been recorded eleven times (usually without my permission!) and has had two dances choreographed to go with it.” 

 

Fair Jenny

 

Here is the PDF file.