Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th Century. A Music Collection and Historical Study

Abstract

When it first appeared in 1984, Scottish Fiddle Music in the Eighteenth Century was a trail-blazing book, exploring 100 years of completely unknown fiddle music leading up to the Perthshire maestro Niel Gow. Two decades later, the book is still essential reading for everyone concerned with Scots fiddling and its history - the influences on it of Corelli, Highland pipers, army trumpeters, the Church of Scotland, Purcell, the 1707 Act of Union - the tangled way it has been transmitted, both aurally and through written texts. For players, the book includes 90 pieces of music, scrupulously edited from eighteenth-century sources. These range from short dances to fiddle pibrochs and sonatas on Scots tunes, and include pieces by McGibbon, Munro, Oswald, McLean, Dow, Mackintosh, and Neil and Nathaniel Gow.