TTA

Welcome to the Traditional Tune Archive The Semantic Index of North American, British and Irish traditional instrumental music with annotations, formerly known as The Fiddler's Companion.	55,829 Tunes by title

Featured tune(s)

Haste to the Wedding

This version was sometimes known as the Manx tune and was printed by the Percy Society in 1846, but it appears as well in numerous songsters of the late 18th and 19th centuries, including The Jovial Songster (1800), The Nightingale (1802) and Charles Wilson's The Myrtle and Vine; or, Complete Vocal Library (1803).

It is the basis of the Manx ballad, 'The Capture of Carrickfergusby,' written by Thurot in 1760 (Linscott, 1939). Samuel Bayard (1944, 1981) comments on the popularity of the air over the past two centuries as well as the tenacity of the main title to stick with the tune. When Chappell printed his well-known set in National English Airs (1840, I, No. 163; notes, II, 129; reprinted in JEFDSS, III, 210), he traced the tune to the year 1767, when it was used in pantomime, to a song beginning 'Come, haste to the wedding, ye friends and ye neighbors!'

This version of the air, continues Bayard, is still the earliest known, and it may be that the popularity of the song occasioned the fixed quality of the title. In his 1944 work Bayard poses the question as to whether the words were included in the original pantomime as a result of its associations, or whether the later uses of the tune secured it.

However, the tune's appearance under the title "Small Pin Cushion (The)" in cellist-composer James Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion, Book 10 (London, 1760), and the Manx "Capture of Carrickferusby" both predate the pantomime.

At best, the provenance of the tune is yet to be discovered although it would appear to have Gaelic origins, and it may even be that it was Oswald's composition.

...more at: Haste to the Wedding - full Score(s) and Annotations

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Who Builds the TTA

Although we are not trained musicologists and make no pretense to the profession, we have tried to apply such professional rigors to this Semantic Abc Web as we have internalized through our own formal and informal education.
This demands the gathering of as much information as possible about folk 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 ourselves, 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 we 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 our rendering of it.
Andrew Kuntz & Valerio Pelliccioni

Please register as a user to make the most of the many functions of the TTA, and enjoy the many ways that information about traditional tunes can be elicited and combined, from simple to complex situations. Users may make contributions, which, when reviewed by an editor, become part of this community project. Serious user/contributors may become editors through the TTA's autopromotion process, in which quantity and quality of entries allows increased levels of permission to edit and review the entire index.
Above all, the developers wish you joy in the use of the TTA.

Getting started

Navigation: Registered users can navigate the Traditional Tune Archive for information in a number of ways.

Search. The Search function is located at the top right, and can be used to search the entire index for any key word. See Search help pages
Alphabetically by tune title. Under “The Archive” on the SideBar on the left is “The Index”. Click on it to open up the list of tune titles in the TTA arranged in alphabetical order, 200 titles to a page. At the top of the page is an alphabetical breakdown that serves as a shortcut to pages. Clicking on any title will bring one to the music and tune fields. Once the tune appears, clicking “Tune Discussion” at the bottom of the page (below the notation) will open up the narrative information on the tune.
Query the Archive. The “Query the Archive” function under “The Archive” in the sidebar can be used to draw down reports from the TTA in either in single items or in a number of combinations. One might, for example, use a single item query to run a report in the TTA for a particular composer/core source. Clicking on the arrow at the right of the bar draws down a list of composer/core sources, or one may be typed in. For example, clicking on “Bill Pigg” and then the “Run Query” tab at the bottom left will result in a list of all compositions listed in the TTA that the Northumbrian piper either composed or is the core source for. Reports may also be run in combinations, as, for example, by selecting “William Marshall” as a composer/core source, “Three Flats” for the number of accidentals, and “Major” for the Key/Mode. This will result in a report of all Eb Major compositions of Scottish fiddler/composer William Marshall that are indexed in the TTA.
Tune Books/Magazines in the TTA can be accessed under “Publications” in the left side bar. These are reproductions of publications for which access has been granted to the TTA by the copyright holder, under the Creative Commons license.