Nancy Dawson and the Rights of Man

18 August 20264 September 2026 Cary KarpLeave a comment

This post’s banner image shows a tune in the third volume of the collection, Caledonian Country Dances, published in London by John Walsh circa 1740. The copy from which it was taken was given to Queen Charlotte of England on her birthday in 1773. In preparation, someone apparently felt it prudent to alter the first letter of the tune’s name (where ſs = ss).

The same tune appears in a Welsh manuscript collection of fiddle tunes from 1752. Its title can be traced back to a compilation of English proverbs from 1678, where it is preceded by, “He that’s afraid of every nettle, must not…”

Several texts have been set to this melody. I learned it as the children’s tune, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, likely not long from when a musical instrument was first placed in my hands (an autoharp, when I was five). Whatever label it bears, comparing successive versions provides useful clues about how the ornamentation of such tunes evolved from the middle of the 18th century. This ones simplicity also makes it a good starting point for testing how traditional Irish ornaments might be played on instruments where there are no established approaches to their use.

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Musical Instruments

Irish music on double-strung instruments

7 July 202628 August 2026 Cary KarpLeave a comment

A recent four-part series produced by the Irish national television channel TG4, Blas Bluegrass, documents the popularity there of American old-time and bluegrass music. A scene in the first episode (starting at 17m 55s) is devoted to the late Chris Twomey, an Irish singer and multi-instrumentalist who became a noteworthy exponent of the autoharp. The clip shows one such of his instruments in a display case at The Corner House pub in Cork City.

The series is presented by Enda Scahill, one of the country’s leading tenor banjo and mandolin players. I’m as interested in those instruments as in the autoharp, all of which appear in the series. An earlier post discusses a crackpot combined autoharp-banjo patented in the US in 1892. The preceding three posts (aggregated here) deal with a widely manufactured hybrid banjo mandolin rooted in a US patent issued in August 1882 — just three months after the US patent for the autoharp. The present text takes a look at the musical proximity of the autoharp and mandolin, segueing into its discussion with a few additional background details.

This post’s banner image shows a large chromatically tuned autoharp with 21 bars, built in Sweden circa 1898 (Photo: Scenkonstmuseet, cat. no. M4011 — under my curatorial care at the precursor Swedish National Music Museum for over 20 years). The upper 66 of its 73 strings are tuned as unison pairs, also termed double-strung courses. The distance between the strings in each pair is smaller than the distance separating adjacent courses. In zither parlance this is termed mandolin-style stringing.

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Musical Instruments

Articulation on diverse pipes

12 December 202330 March 2026 Cary KarpLeave a comment

The preceding two posts examine instruction manuals for woodwind instruments and compilations of popular dance tunes published in the 17th and 18th centuries, looking for evidence of continuity between the way such music was ornamented in earlier periods and present-day practice. The collections include tunes that originated in Ireland and remain part of the traditional repertoire there, providing a useful basis for tracing the development of the battery of ornaments associated with that genre. The investigation continues in the present post but considers an expressive technique not covered by the title of the previous installments (Turns and Rolls — Part 1 and Part 2).

In a demonstration of Sligo-style flute playing here, Seamus Tansey says of ornamentation that “it all came from the pipes.” Players of other instruments have made similar statements. Such claims are as likely to trigger debate as avert it but uilleann pipes do have a particularly rich repertoire of ornaments, including pretty much all those used on other traditional Irish instruments.

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Musical Instruments

Turns and rolls — Part 2

7 November 202320 July 2026 Cary KarpLeave a comment

The first part of this series presented a few 17th-century instruction books for the flageolet and recorder. It illustrated continuity in ornamentation practice as the first of them ceded its position in urban amateur music making to the second. The present post moves that discussion into the 18th century and brings reed instruments into it. An instruction book for the Baroque oboe — “hautboy” — comparable to those for the flageolet and recorder was published in London in 1695, titled The Sprightly Companion.

The tunes can be played comfortably on all the explicitly named instruments. (Unqualified reference to a “flute” at that date meant a Baroque recorder; in this case one in C.) Ornamentation is clarified with tablature as in the books examined last time. The Ɔ sign that indicates both a “beat” and a “shake” in them, is used in this one exclusively for a shake executed downward from the note to which it is applied. Here is the first line of the explanatory table with a concluding remark in this post’s banner image.

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Musical Instruments

Turns and rolls — Part 1

10 October 202320 July 2026 Cary KarpLeave a comment

This post examines historical descriptions of a musical ornament that appears in several genres. In Western classical music it is referred to by the Italian name gruppetto (small group) or a native designation in the language of discourse, such as the English “turn.” Its manifestation in Irish traditional music is called a “roll.” Tutorial presentations in that context frequently mention its resemblance to the classical ornament but caution against confusing the two. Each has its own range of variants and differ in the rhythmic attributes of their performance, but share a basic five-note configuration — note; note above; note; note below; note.

An ornament called a gruppo appears in a treatise on improvised embellishment and ornamentation in vocal performance by Giulio Caccini titled Le Nuove Musiche (The New Music), published in 1601. The five-note figure now called a gruppetto is a diminutive of it in both grammatical and structural senses, formed by the final 32nd notes of a long trill. The execution of the eponymous trillo is similarly apparent. It is the single-note ornament now referred to as a tremolo. As written, both labeled ornaments accelerate over the first several notes.

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