{"id":170,"date":"2016-03-01T23:19:23","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T23:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.village-music-project.org.uk\/?page_id=170"},"modified":"2016-03-02T19:53:18","modified_gmt":"2016-03-02T19:53:18","slug":"anon-staffs-info","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.village-music-project.org.uk\/?page_id=170","title":{"rendered":"STAFFS Anon ms INFO"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANONYMOUS MANUSCRIPT<\/strong>
\nreportedly from Staffordshire.
\nC1820
\nVillage Music Project Code ST
\n41 tunes in the file, other tunes variously illegible or not
\nphotocopied.
\nProbably Early 19th C., because of absence of Polkas, Quadrilles,
\nthough someone with knowledge of the songs may be able to enlarge
\non this date. Meg Merrilies was the old gipsy woman in Scott’s
\nGuy Mannering, published in 1815, so the MS is later than this.
\nMy opinion would place it at c1820.
\nOur Photocopy of this MS came from Paul Roberts who was given it
\nin about 1980 by Vic Ellis. He thinks Vic Ellis may be the owner
\nof the MS.
\n14 of the 41 pieces are parlour song airs, giving a slightly unfamiliar
\nfeel to the MS, nevertheless the remaining 27 pieces are normal dance
\ntunes of the early 19th C., most of which are well enough known.
\nWe do not know what was in the rest of the MS or how large it was\/is.
\nThe handwriting is neat and legible (in the original), and the music
\nnotation is competent as copying but sometimes wrong when authoring.
\nGiven the complexity of some of the airs it is evident that perhaps
\nthe majority of the tunes have been copied from print.
\nTop D is reached in 2 tunes and Top C in another 2 tunes, and not just
\nin the song airs. This might be taken as an indication that the
\ninstrument implied was not a fiddle, or it might mean the writer couldn’t
\nplay all the tunes properly!
\nChris Partington.<\/p>\n

Tim Willets coded the MS into abc for the Village Music Project, and here is what he writes:
\nThe source for these tunes is a photocopy of part of the original
\nmanuscript. Either the ms. or the photocopy (maybe both!) are
\nincomplete and some of what there is, is not legible.
\nMany of the tunes are Parlour Song airs or “art” pieces, and the usual
\ndance music formula of four or eight bar repeated sections is noticeably
\nabsent, as is the usual repertoire of the 18th and early 19th centuries
\nto be found in many manuscripts. Many of the titles appear unique to
\nthis ms.
\nIt is possible that the ms. was not for the most part a collection
\nof tunes used for dancing and\/or the writer of the ms. knew what he\/she
\nintended and noted the tunes in a way that was perfectly clear to them
\nif not to those trying to decipher the MS almost two centuries after
\nit was written. It is also possible that the musician only noted
\ndown tunes they wanted to learn\/found it difficult to remember and
\nthat the vast bulk of their repertoire was not represented in their
\nms.
\nThe MS contains a large number of bars of lengths that are at odds
\nwith the time signatures indicated and some accidentals that are
\nmusically “surprising”. I have not “corrected” any of these “errors”
\nas to do so requires significant editorial decisions to be made. The
\nmaterial is therefore presented “as is”, to the extent that the abc
\nsystem allows. Many of the tunes have Italian “classical” tempo and
\nother indications and a great deal of slurring, staccato, accents
\nand grace notes are indicated. This perhaps suggests that at least
\nthose tunes were copied from a printed source.
\nNote regarding transcription.
\nThe abc was transcribed in accordance with the 1.6 abc standard and
\nchecked for compatibility with abc2ps (under Linux) and abc2win2.1.
\nSome of the markings defined within the abc standard (e.g. staccato)
\nare supported by abc2ps but not abc2win2.1. As abc2win handles the
\ncoding it does not recognise by simply ignoring it I have left the
\ncoding in the abc for the benefit of those with alternatives to
\nabc2win available.
\nTim Willets<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANONYMOUS MANUSCRIPT reportedly from Staffordshire. C1820 Village Music Project Code ST 41 tunes in the file, other tunes variously illegible or not photocopied. Probably Early 19th C., because of absence of Polkas, Quadrilles, though someone with knowledge of the songs may be able to enlarge on this date. Meg Merrilies was the old gipsy woman … Continue reading STAFFS Anon ms INFO<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-170","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.village-music-project.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.village-music-project.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.village-music-project.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.village-music-project.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.village-music-project.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.village-music-project.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232,"href":"https:\/\/www.village-music-project.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/170\/revisions\/232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.village-music-project.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}