Annotation:Duke of York's March (The)

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 DUKE OF YORK'S MARCH, THE. English, March (4/4 time). England; Yorkshire, Shropshire. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB (Ashman): AABBCCDD (Merryweather & Seattle). Gordon Ashman (1991) maintains that the melody was composed in 1805, soon after the Duke of York became Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and notes it is still in use today as a regimental slow-march. James Merryweather (1988, 1994), however, researched the melody and found it was composed by John Gamidge in 1789, to be played by the York Waits. Another tune called "The Duke of York's March" was cited by Linscott as having been a popular British army march of the American Revolutionary War period. This is perhaps the "Duke of York" in Samuel Holyoke's Instrumental Assistant (pp. 50-51), Printed in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1800 (although the original for this was Playford in 1665). One of the oddest appearances of the tune is on the barrel organ from the polar expedition of Admiral Parry of 1810. In place of a ship's fiddler (common in those days), Parry introduced a mechanical barrel organ on board ship to provide entertainment and a vehicle to which the men could exercise (i.e. by dancing). "Duke of York's March" was one of eight tunes on barrel no. 4.  Source for notated version: a c. 1837-1840 MS by Shropshire musician John Moore [Ashman]; an MS collection by fiddler Lawrence Leadley, 1827-1897 (Helperby, Yorkshire) [Merryweather & Seattle]; the 1823-26 music mss of papermaker and musician Joshua Gibbons (1778-1871, of Tealby, near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire Wolds) [Sumner]-.  Printed sources: Ashman (The Ironbridge Hornpipe), 1991; No. 17, p. 3. Merryweather & Seattle (The Fiddler of Helperby), 1994; No. 105, p. 59. Sumner (Lincolnshire Collections, vol. 1: The Joshua Gibbons Manuscript), 1997; p. 74.  Recorded sources: Saydisc SDL 234, Parry's Barrel Organ (vol. 11 in the Golden Age of Mechanical Music).

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