Album Summary: "Niel Gow's" A Collection of Strathspey Reels With a Bass for the Violoncello or Harpsichord (1784) is the first major imprint of the Gow family's brand-name (ie. "Niel"). It contains 78 Strathspeys, Reels, Jigs and Variation Sets, all with un-figured bass, most probably arranged by Niel's entrepreneurial son, Nathaniel. It was an instant hit in the ball-rooms, clubs and parlours of the leisured classes, and was soon followed by several expanded editions. In fact, it launched a minor publishing empire whose collections defined Scottish fiddle and dance music for several generations. This ScotMus.com album is a full reprint of the legendary first edition of 1784.

Track Notes: There's obviously something weird about this tune that doesn't exactly conform to the standard Gow format — aside from the angular melodic shapes that we often find in Strathspey and "Fiddle Pibroch" genres (but in this case, more angular than most Gow examples), strain 1 line 1 has an irregular 5-bar phrasing that throws the otherwise standard 4-bar period very seriously off-kilter (giving an overall asymmetrical structure of 9+8 bars). Equally, the presentation neglects to stupilate any sequence of repeats, again departing from the Gow norm (although not in itself entirely exceptional). So what's going on?

Usefully, the tune reappears later in slightly (but significantly) re-edited form in the Gows' Complete Repository (1799 I:15), this time specifically labelled "Strathspey", with a key-signature of two sharps rather than one (although still in modal E), with the 5-bar line 1 reduced to the expected 4-bar length (specifically, the anacrusis and bar 1 of the 1784 edition being ommitted), and with strain 1 line 2 entirely deleted so that line 1 is repeated verbatim (giving an overall and now-symmetrical standard structure of 4r+8 bars). Perhaps most tellingly, though, the 1799 revision is printed with the following editorial comment:

N.B. This Tune is in my first Collection but is not the proper dancing Sett. (1799 I:15)

But, intriguingly, the more you read this with a nit-picking eye, the less clear its meaning becomes — what exactly does "not the proper dancing Sett" really mean? It could mean that the 1784 version was also intended as a dance-tune, but was printed with errors, including the ommission of the label "Strathspey". Alternatively, it could mean that it wasn't originally printed as a dance-tune, wasn't printed with errors, but that now, in 1799, we have an alternative version that is for dancing. So, which is it?

In theory at least, there's certainly a wealth of precedents for tunes that are in circulation in both dance and non-dance versions (whether as instrumentals or songs, or even both). In such cases, especially where sound editorial policies are being applied, we can routinely expect to find differences in the details between versions, not least in slight or significant differences in the melodic line as a result of differences in the technical capacities of the instruments (or voices) that each printed version has in mind. In this case, we're dealing with two instrumental defaults — (ostensibly) violin in 1784, and (specifically) pedal-harp in 1799. But the important differences between these two Gow versions of "Delven Side" aren't fully explained by the different technical capacities of these two instruments. And, most tellingly of all, there are significant differences in the overall structure of the two printed versions that suggest the first print did indeed contain errors. So, it does seem at least feasible to hypothesise that Nathaniel Gow's normally-sound editorial policy temporarily lapsed in this instance in 1784, but that he corrected the problems for the 1799 version. Even so, I'd suggest that we can't be absolutely-100% certain about this. The 1784 version could in fact be a curious anomaly rather than a complete mistake (although I do doubt this, mostly).

We might, of course, suspect a printer's error rather than an editorial one. But the score-"sculptor" in 1784 was none other than James Johnson himself (cf. Title Page), who we might reasonably expect to know what he's doing. On the other hand, perhaps Johnson had a new apprentice on the day that the plate for "Delven Side" was set — an apprentice who got a fair skelp and a temporary loss of lunch privileges as a result? Who knows?

Anyhow, one way or another, my audio track is currently, I freely admit, a total hack to try and make at least some semi-musical sense of the score. I've retained the probably-"spurious" bar 1, but added a "Fiddle Pibroch"-ish repeat-structure to at least try and vaguely turn that bar's irregularity into a sort of point of interest rather than a completely ludicrous rhythmic hiccup. However, after I've got the 1799 collection online (and I've already stared working on it), I'll re-jig the audio illustration for the 1784 version to just give the tune exactly as printed — then, you'll be able to compare both versions more accurately (and without having to read notation), and make you own mind up without being prompted by my debatable theories. :-)