Album: Playford's Scotch-Tunes, 1700

Album Summary: Henry Playford's Collection of Original Scotch-Tunes (1700) is the earliest printed collection of Scottish fiddle music, consisting of 39 dances, airs and variation sets in unaccompanied arrangements. Although it was soon reprinted in a 2nd edition (1701), both are now incredibly rare books. Nonetheless, it is with Playford's Scotch-Tunes that modern knowledge of Scottish fiddle music emerges from the obscurities of the seventeenth century aural and manuscript traditions. Today, it is a key text for students of both Scots fiddle and song genres. This ScotMus.com album faithfully reproduces the historic 1st edition of 1700.

Edition Notes: Although Playford's Original Collection of Scotch-Tunes is known to exist in two editions (1700; 1701), you won't exactly find a lot of copies knocking about these days. In fact, so far as anyone seems to know, only 1 copy from each edition has survived at all — respectively, in the National Library of Scotland (1700), and the British Library (1701). And so far as I know, my ScotMus.com album is the first complete modern edition of either (2009). It's a literal transcription of the National Library's 1st edition, although I began by consulting a pretty good old photostat of their copy in the Edinburgh Central Music Library. I'd like to thank the staff of all three libraries for their generous assistance while I researched and prepared my edition for publication — particularly the ECML and NLS music staff.

One reason why I opted for a literal, rather than fully-diplomatic edition here is that the original isn't what most folks these days would consider a completely polished score. For example, back in 1700, it was common for bar-lines to be split across systems, which modern readers find irritating. So, for one thing, I've regularised the layout into my basic 4-bars-per-system default. Equally, many early scores didn't always bother including time-signatures, so I've editorially added them as and when required, in square brackets, as in: [C].

However, be warned — there is one weird-looking early notational quirk that I've transcribed absolutely-literally throughout my edition, and that's the apparently-"incorrect" bar-lengths that you occasionally used to get at section ends. To the modern reader, such things can look like basic arithmetical "mistakes"; but, of course, they're not (they're just an archaic convention). One reason I've left them as Playford printed them is that, at least in theory, there's often more than one possible way of "correcting" them in performance. Where this is the case, though, there's generally only one best logical solution, and that's normally the simplest — this starts to become clear when you realise that a fair few of them relate to the ends of repeated sections and can just be a way of not having to bother printing a "1st time / 2nd time" device (and in the earliest scores, they avoid using that device because it hasn't actually been invented yet!). So, as a basic rule-of-thumb, you can play the duration as written one time round, but tweak its length on the other. Of course, that's not always the solution — apart from anything else, it depends on whether or not you're dealing with the end of a repeated A-section or B-section, and if it's an A-section, whether the start of the B-section has an anacrusis bar or not. For example, depending on the given context, instead of just altering the durational value of a note, it might just sound better if you "insert" an "extra" passing-note on one round (if so, though, I'd suggest that you create your extra passing-note by mimicing others in similar positions elsewhere in the original). Or, in other situations, you might have to "remove" a printed passing-note on one round. It all depends on context, but once you get used to these quirks, you soon realise that a little mentally-musical logic supplies the required sanity.

And, talking of section repeats, you'll quickly spot another (even more common) early notational quirk in Playford — an apparent lack of actual repeat-signs at a section's closing double barline. You soon realise that a blank double barline in fact sometimes has to mean a repeat (although not always!). Again, this generally isn't a printing-error, and again, I've transcribed them as written. And yet again-again, there's often more than one possible logical solution in performance. One default rule-of-thumb is that when an A-section is half the length of a B-section, you can repeat the A-section to make both add up "symmetrically" to an equal number of bars — eg. 4[+4] + 8 (apart from anything else, a fair few of Playford's tunes are given exactly that kind of treatment by other, later publishers who do use clear repeat-signs). Of course, this solution doesn't work universally, and I know that opinions will differ from mine on specific cases.

Yet another, perhaps even stranger early notational quirk you'll find in Playford, is that although he does actually sometimes use one type of repeat-sign per se — :S: — he can use it in the middle of a bar, rather than over the barline itself. This isn't always as easy to figure out, but again, basic arithmetical logic normally sorts out the available solution(s).

Overall, though, one advantage of doing a multimedia edition that I've made use of here is that although I'm not offering written editorial solutions at moments like these, my accompanying audio realisations of them actually have to offer practical solutions (otherwise, they just don't work!). So although what you hear might seem to depart from the score, such divergence is only apparent, once you get used to the quirky conventions involved. Even so, the fact that I'm leaving such quirks in the score allows you to make your own decisions about how to realise them in performance — and also allows you the option of totally ignoring my audio recommendations if you want to! :-)