A collection of tunes

 The Fiddler's Companion is constructed to grant what the title implies: a friendly, clear and useful resource for a fiddler, musician, researcher or other interested party to help in finding descriptive information on that musical genre, whatever its origins, vaguely but popularly known as 'fiddle tunes'. This descriptive index helps fill a longstanding need for a comprehensive indexing of the recorded body of British Isles and North American music for fiddle music, by far the most popular genres for the folk violin in the world, a need which has been recognized not only by me but by others who have recently bent their efforts to produce such indexes. Heretofore, however, individuals attempting such indexing projects have largely limited themselves to one national or regional genre or another, such as "Scottish Fiddle Music" or "Cajun Melodies," while the present volume is one of the first comprehensive works on the broad scope of Anglo-Gaelic-North American and related folk fiddle music.

Why is there a need for indexing this large mass of music, and for combining so many distinct genres together in one volume? For one, preservation purposes, lest these pieces tumble into oblivion as have so many unknown folk melodies (which presumably have passed from living memory in what has largely been--and is still, though to a much lesser extent--an aural/oral tradition). For another, there has been and is currently a growing international library of new and old source books and musical manuscripts that have become available as music literacy has increased in the general population over the past century and a half, and as fiddle music collections have again become commercially viable on a small scale. This means there are frequently several printed versions of any one particularly popular fiddle tune extent, each showing regional or personal performance variations of interest to the folk musician or researcher. Similarly, there is a century's worth of recorded sources available of folk fiddle music, particularly from the period of the late 1920's through the mid-1930's, and from the last several decades. In fact, a small but steady spate has been produced since the early 1960's "folk-song boom," or "folk revival," in the United States and the British Isles, which includes the production of record labels largely devoted to traditional music. This recorded music is perhaps even more valuable than printed music notation for preservation purposes, for it directly captures the nuances of the musician's performance that can never be reduced to a printed medium.

I feel it is essential to preserve not only the existence of a fiddle tune, as have a few researchers who have compiled regional tune-lists, or even to preserve the more famous tune collections (such as O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland), but to preserve as much as possible those interpretations of a given tune which provide traditional performance with its richness and variety. Therefore, I have sought to include as many different source references as possible, though doubtless I have missed many that were not available to me.

Although I am not a trained musicologist, and make no pretense to the profession, I have tried to apply such professional rigors to the Fiddler’s Companion as I have internalized through my own formal and informal education. This demands the gathering of as much information as possible about folk fiddle pieces to attempt to trace tune families, determine origins, influences and patterns of aural/oral transmittal, and to study individual and regional styles of performance. Many musicians, like myself, are simply curious about titles, origins, sources and anecdotes regarding the music they play. Who, for example, can resist the urge to know where the title Blowzabella came from or what it means, or speculating on the motivations for naming a perfectly respectable tune Bloody Oul' Hag, is it Tay Ye Want? Knowing the history of the melody I play, or at least to have a sense of its historical and social context, makes the tune 'present' in the here and now, and enhances my rendering of it.

If I have justified the concept of indexing this body of music, it is then necessary to define its scope. What comprises this body of music called 'fiddle tunes'? What can be included, what excluded, and what are the criteria? It seems much like trying to define what makes a person a New Zealander or an Argentinean; there are broad identifying and defining characteristics, but incredible variation within those parameters. All of this music, however, is obviously unified by the fact of being pieces performed on the folk violin, or fiddle, much like an identifying characteristic of a New Zealander, for example, is citizenship; this leads to the main criteria for inclusion of any one melody in this index: the piece must have documented evidence of having been routinely performed in a traditional manner by folk performers on the violin. In other words, it must demonstrably have been embedded in a traditional genre in Anglo-Celtic-North American cultures. Many tunes in this index fit this criteria wonderfully, clearly originating in folk culture and fortuitously having been the recipients of collectors' or musicologists' attentions for documentation or preservation--the modal melodies of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, fiddler Edden Hammons come to mind, for example, or the pieces of Shetland fiddler Fredemann Stickle. Many other melodies I have chosen to include fit my criteria with something less than stringency, and the reader will find tin-pan-alley melodies, various pieces composed for the stage, an occasional opera or classical melody, early-music pieces, old pop ditties, and assorted other oddities, all of which I have deemed qualified because there was some evidence they were assimilated into folk culture and routinely played by fiddlers as part and parcel of their repertoire.

Individual melodies used for both instrumental and vocal traditional music have also been included when I believed there was enough evidence of a tune's having sustained a life of its own in instrumental tradition apart from its marriage to specific words. For example, many English airs, such as Greensleeves or Country Courtship, were used for innumerable ditties over the years, as were, similarly, Irish airs such as The Cuckoo's Nest and The Boyne Water, and many of the famous traditional Scots melodies Robert Burns set his lyrics to. Often these melodies had concurrent life in instrumental as well as vocal tradition, and just as frequently many have survived until today only as instrumental airs, having been shorn of their words which have been abraded by the centuries (or, in some cases, even the decades). It is a truism that lyrics suffer much more severely than does music as a song ages, and sometimes only a clue set in a title or perhaps even a general 'lilting' character in a melody will betray its original use as a vehicle for words. As with those 'gray areas' of instrumental genres, however, if I thought a vocal melody had some entrée into traditional fiddle repertoire, then it was included; also as with instrumental genres, I erred toward inclusion of doubtful 'fiddle tradition' melodies, striving for completeness.The Fiddler's Companion is constructed to grant what the title implies: a friendly, clear and useful resource for a fiddler, musician, researcher or other interested party to help in finding descriptive information on that musical genre, whatever its origins, vaguely but popularly known as 'fiddle tunes'. This descriptive index helps fill a longstanding need for a comprehensive indexing of the recorded body of British Isles and North American music for fiddle music, by far the most popular genres for the folk violin in the world, a need which has been recognized not only by me but by others who have recently bent their efforts to produce such indexes. Heretofore, however, individuals attempting such indexing projects have largely limited themselves to one national or regional genre or another, such as "Scottish Fiddle Music" or "Cajun Melodies," while the present volume is one of the first comprehensive works on the broad scope of Anglo-Gaelic-North American and related folk fiddle music.

Why is there a need for indexing this large mass of music, and for combining so many distinct genres together in one volume? For one, preservation purposes, lest these pieces tumble into oblivion as have so many unknown folk melodies (which presumably have passed from living memory in what has largely been--and is still, though to a much lesser extent--an aural/oral tradition). For another, there has been and is currently a growing international library of new and old source books and musical manuscripts that have become available as music literacy has increased in the general population over the past century and a half, and as fiddle music collections have again become commercially viable on a small scale. This means there are frequently several printed versions of any one particularly popular fiddle tune extent, each showing regional or personal performance variations of interest to the folk musician or researcher. Similarly, there is a century's worth of recorded sources available of folk fiddle music, particularly from the period of the late 1920's through the mid-1930's, and from the last several decades. In fact, a small but steady spate has been produced since the early 1960's "folk-song boom," or "folk revival," in the United States and the British Isles, which includes the production of record labels largely devoted to traditional music. This recorded music is perhaps even more valuable than printed music notation for preservation purposes, for it directly captures the nuances of the musician's performance that can never be reduced to a printed medium.

I feel it is essential to preserve not only the existence of a fiddle tune, as have a few researchers who have compiled regional tune-lists, or even to preserve the more famous tune collections (such as O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland), but to preserve as much as possible those interpretations of a given tune which provide traditional performance with its richness and variety. Therefore, I have sought to include as many different source references as possible, though doubtless I have missed many that were not available to me.

Although I am not a trained musicologist, and make no pretense to the profession, I have tried to apply such professional rigors to the Fiddler’s Companion as I have internalized through my own formal and informal education. This demands the gathering of as much information as possible about folk fiddle pieces to attempt to trace tune families, determine origins, influences and patterns of aural/oral transmittal, and to study individual and regional styles of performance. Many musicians, like myself, are simply curious about titles, origins, sources and anecdotes regarding the music they play. Who, for example, can resist the urge to know where the title Blowzabella came from or what it means, or speculating on the motivations for naming a perfectly respectable tune Bloody Oul' Hag, is it Tay Ye Want? Knowing the history of the melody I play, or at least to have a sense of its historical and social context, makes the tune 'present' in the here and now, and enhances my rendering of it.

If I have justified the concept of indexing this body of music, it is then necessary to define its scope. What comprises this body of music called 'fiddle tunes'? What can be included, what excluded, and what are the criteria? It seems much like trying to define what makes a person a New Zealander or an Argentinean; there are broad identifying and defining characteristics, but incredible variation within those parameters. All of this music, however, is obviously unified by the fact of being pieces performed on the folk violin, or fiddle, much like an identifying characteristic of a New Zealander, for example, is citizenship; this leads to the main criteria for inclusion of any one melody in this index: the piece must have documented evidence of having been routinely performed in a traditional manner by folk performers on the violin. In other words, it must demonstrably have been embedded in a traditional genre in Anglo-Celtic-North American cultures. Many tunes in this index fit this criteria wonderfully, clearly originating in folk culture and fortuitously having been the recipients of collectors' or musicologists' attentions for documentation or preservation--the modal melodies of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, fiddler Edden Hammons come to mind, for example, or the pieces of Shetland fiddler Fredemann Stickle. Many other melodies I have chosen to include fit my criteria with something less than stringency, and the reader will find tin-pan-alley melodies, various pieces composed for the stage, an occasional opera or classical melody, early-music pieces, old pop ditties, and assorted other oddities, all of which I have deemed qualified because there was some evidence they were assimilated into folk culture and routinely played by fiddlers as part and parcel of their repertoire.

Individual melodies used for both instrumental and vocal traditional music have also been included when I believed there was enough evidence of a tune's having sustained a life of its own in instrumental tradition apart from its marriage to specific words. For example, many English airs, such as Greensleeves or Country Courtship, were used for innumerable ditties over the years, as were, similarly, Irish airs such as The Cuckoo's Nest and The Boyne Water, and many of the famous traditional Scots melodies Robert Burns set his lyrics to. Often these melodies had concurrent life in instrumental as well as vocal tradition, and just as frequently many have survived until today only as instrumental airs, having been shorn of their words which have been abraded by the centuries (or, in some cases, even the decades). It is a truism that lyrics suffer much more severely than does music as a song ages, and sometimes only a clue set in a title or perhaps even a general 'lilting' character in a melody will betray its original use as a vehicle for words. As with those 'gray areas' of instrumental genres, however, if I thought a vocal melody had some entrée into traditional fiddle repertoire, then it was included; also as with instrumental genres, I erred toward inclusion of doubtful 'fiddle tradition' melodies, striving for completeness.