Annotation:Editor's Thanks to Mr. Nathaniel Gow (The)
EDITOR'S THANKS TO MR. NATHANIEL GOW, THE. AKA - "Mile taing an Ughdair." Scottish, Strathspey. E Flat Major. Standard tuning. AAB. This tune "is an effort of the editor's to express his thanks for an aid to this work, which he cannot duly appreciate. It makes an excellent medley with No. 182 ('Novelty (The)')" {Fraser}. wikipedia:Nathaniel Gow (1763-1831) was a renowned composer of Scottish fiddle tunes and a leading music publisher in Edinburgh. According to Mary Ann Alburger, Gow may have provided the harmonizations for some of Fraser's settings[1]. If so, he did them no service for they have been criticized, beginning with the antiquarian Stenhouse in 1838:
In Captain Fraser's Gaelic Airs, lately published, a set of this tune ['An Gilleadh dubh'] appears in two strains, loaded with frills, crescendos, diminuendos, cadences ad libitum, and other modem Italian graces. This gentleman professes, however, to give the airs in their ancient and native purity, but ex uno disce omnes![2]
Alburger notes:
...the florid decorations which Fraser used and Stenhouse so disliked were already rather old-fashioned. Fraser (or his arranger) also often tried to force basic pentatonic or 'double tonic' melodies into classical, harmonically correct, major or minor keys to which they were unsuited, which lead to the off-putting, unmusical, harmonisations found in some of the settings.[3]
