efn Reviews

"Hampshire Dance Tunes Country dance tunes from the Pyle family manuscript 1822"
CD - various artists - Wildgoose WGS325CD
Book - Bob Shatwell and Paul Sartin (Eds) - Hobgoblin Books - ISBN 0-9554082-0-2

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The collections come from the tune book of Richard Pyle of Nether Wallop, which is held in the Winchester Records Library. Paul Sartin and Bob Shatwell have done a superb job to bring 74 wonderful tunes to us (or 32 if you can’t read the dots and are depending on the CD!)

While Pyle himself appears to have played an instrument such as the flute or clarinet the tunes themselves have been edited to adapt them to modern playing practices. Repeats have been altered to give 32 or 48 bar tunes and grace notes have been removed. Some have been transposed into more fashionable keys, but I am sure that many one-row players in Essex and Suffolk will happily transpose them back into C!

Both book and CD have notes on the origins of each tune and the book is enhanced with some nice period illustrations.

In the recording the performers all have excellent pedigrees in southern English music with solos and duets from Paul Sartin and Saul Rose, duets from Tim Laycock and Colin Thompson, Mat Green and Andy Turner and Will Duke and Dan Quinn plus an augmented Bursledon Village Band.

Some of the tunes are standards, such as The Triumph although the arrangement may be sufficiently different from the usual session version to trip up the unwary. Others will be new to most of us, although maybe with obvious borrowings and again Pyle’s titles are not always those that are used today.

I haven’t counted how many times tunes are played through in the CD so I can’t vouch for suitability for dance club use but all the tracks “feel” right.