Introduction
from The Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island
(Mel
Bay Publications)
by
Ken Perlman
|
. . . from eFolkMusic: " . . an active folklorist, Ken has spent over a decade collecting tunes and oral histories from traditional fiddle players on Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada. In both 1997 and '98, he received awards from the Prince Edward Island Heritage Foundation for helping to "preserve, interpret, and disseminate our province's fiddling heritage." Ken has a web site at www.kenperlman.com/ |
Prince Edward Island is one of
Canada's Maritime Provinces. It lies
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence about 10 miles from the mainland, sheltered within
a "crook" formed by the neighboring provinces of New Brunswick and
Nova Scotia. It is home to about 130,000 people -- almost all of whom are of
Scottish, Irish or Acadian French origin. The Island is divided into three
counties, which are named (going from East to West) Kings, Queens, and Prince. Kings County is most Scottish in terms
of ethnicity and culture, Prince County has most of the Island's
French-speaking Acadian enclaves (such as the Evangeline Coast region), while Queens County has the provincial
capital Charlottetown and much of the tourism.
Prince Edward Island is also home to
one of the oldest, strongest, and most vibrant traditional fiddling cultures in
North America. Despite the fact that the fiddling population has been declining
since 1970, this small Island (it is roughly 150 miles long by 40 miles at its
widest) still hosts at least two to
three hundred fiddle players of a quality sufficient to warrant being
commercially recorded. Moreover, there are easily another two or three thousand
Islanders who can play the instrument
well enough to accompany a dance. This is fully two percent of the population!
Despite this wealth of talent, the fiddling scene on P.E.I. (as locals call it) is virtually unknown to outsiders. In
fact the Island is far better known
for its beaches and its connection to Lucy Maud Montgomery's famous novel Anne of Green Gables than it is for its
fiddling.
Little did I know when I first set
foot on Prince Edward Island in the summer of 1989 that I would spend the next
several years deeply immersed in its music. All that immediately struck me
about P.E.I. was that it was very beautiful. Everywhere I looked were fields of
flowers. Intensely green foliage contrasted favorably with a deep rust-colored
soil. Even more striking were the brilliant red bluffs that lined the shore
along the Gulf of St. Lawrence, not two hundred yards from my host Dan Gillis'
front door. And although my host had led me to believe that I might meet a few
fiddlers during my stay, it didn't seem that this corner of the Island --
Northeastern Kings Co. near the town of Souris (pronounced SOO-ree) -- had a
lot going on. There were just a few houses clustered together every so often
along the road, a few farms, a couple of fishing villages, and lots of
new-growth spruce.
A
series of events over the next several days quickly altered this last
assessment. A visit to a local town-day called the "Monticello Tea
Party," produced a meeting with several fiddlers, one of whom -- George
MacPhee -- was to provide me an introduction to the fiddling scene along the
"North Side" of Kings Co. A chance inquiry at a Souris gas station
produced my first contact with the Chaisson brothers -- Kenny, Peter and Kevin
-- who turned out to be the best known proponents of traditional fiddle music
on P.E.I. Then things began to really move fast. A musical evening organized by
my host was attended by Mr. MacPhee and several local fiddlers. A day-long
movable jam session with Mr. MacPhee enabled me to meet several of his fiddle
playing sisters. A weekly meeting of the Northeast Kings Co. branch of the
P.E.I. Fiddlers' Association brought me into contact with still more
top-quality players.
I had just met more expert fiddlers in the last five days, than I
had encountered on my travels in the States in the last five years!
"Why" I kept asking myself on my way back to Boston, "have these
people never been recorded?" I vowed to do everything in my power to
rectify this situation.
In
the summers of 1991-2 -- with much assistance in terms of funding and volunteer
labor from the Earthwatch Organization of Watertown, Mass. -- I was able to
record on both audio and video tape close to one hundred high quality fiddlers
from dozens of Island communities. Most of these musicians were taped in their
own kitchens with their families and favorite accompanists in attendance. I
came away from this experience with the feeling that these artists were every
bit as unique and musically intriguing as any folk-instrumentalist I had ever heard
on an old 78.
About This Book
Once I had the recordings in hand I
set to work with my trusty Marantz tape recorder and its helpful half-speed
feature. Tunes from about sixty fiddlers -- ranging in age from 13 to nearly
ninety -- were selected to be transcribed
(written down). Each selection was transcribed from tape as that fiddler played it, with as much precision as I could
muster. When the transcriptions were completed, I transferred them to computer
via a program called Finale.
The 427 tunes included in this
collection represent a large proportion of the current Island repertoire. Well
over one hundred of these tunes have to the best of my knowledge never seen
print before, and perhaps a like number have appeared only in privately printed
books of relatively limited circulation. Even those tunes that have appeared in
many previous collections often feature new and intriguing details.
Because each tune is a transcription of a specific performance
by an individual player, many subtleties of style -- such as ornamentation,
double stops, and slurs -- are included (see "The Prince Edward Island
Playing Style"). Also included are each player's melodic idiosyncrasies --
called twists in local parlance (see
"Regional and Individual Styles"). You won't find, therefore,
"definitive" versions of fiddle tunes in this book. You will find
living, breathing versions of tunes filled with the vitality of a people whose
great love for their music is expressed in every bow-stroke.
In essence then, The Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island
is a collection of about 425 fiddle arrangements or settings. Each setting is a record of the musical techniques and
nuances put into play by an individual fiddler on a given day. Because these
techniques and nuances are derived from a common pool of experience, these
settings taken together give a fairly clear picture of traditional fiddling on
P.E.I. as it exists today.
I am well aware that most tune books
offer merely a basic version of a tune
-- what might be called a tune skeleton.
In other words they offer a melody line with little in the way of musical
nuance. The advantage of this skeletal
approach is clarity -- the tune is right there in front of the player
without any distraction or encumbrance. This is only an advantage, however, provided that he or she knows the tradition
well enough to put in the kind of subtleties and elaborations that make the
tune come alive.
In fact, to a bred-to-the-tradition
musician, a "tune-skeleton" is more than sufficient. They don't need
the subtleties put in, since they already have their instincts to guide them.
In fact, they would rather avoid the distraction of someone else's subtleties
in order to fully concentrate on putting in their own. Those not bred to (or
not conversant with) such a tradition, however, sometimes have a tendency to
treat a tune-skeleton as if it were the whole story. This can result in a
rendition that lacks vitality.
This book serves a number of
functions. First, as stated above, it aspires to create a relatively complete
picture of the contemporary P.E.I. playing style. Second, it serves as a guide
to those who wish to emulate that style. Third it can easily be adapted to
serve as a conventional tunebook -- both for those musicians who are already
conversant with the style, and for those who are merely interested in the
Island's melodies for their own sake.
Because "clarity" is such
an important issue in a tune book, every effort was made when setting these
tunes on computer to come up with a format which allowed for a clearly visible
melody line. To this end, all melody notes are left full-sized, while notes that form the non-melody part of a
"double stop" are presented in substantially reduced size (see
"Special Symbols"). The eye can easily scan any transcription and
come up with its tune-skeleton. Moreover, those merely interested in a
"skeletal" melody line can also without difficulty ignore
ornamentation, slurs, and other playing directions.
Six of the tunes transcribed here
were not recorded during the 1991-2 taping program. First, the tunes played by
Lem Jay -- "Lem Jay's Fancy*," and "Kitty at the Well" --
came from privately made 78-RPM recordings in the possession of his son Roland
Jay. The tunes composed by Kevin Chaisson -- "Karen Chaisson's Reel,"
and "Bear River Jig" were recorded on piano in August 1993. Finally,
the strathspey "King George IV," and the reel "The
Honeymoon" were recorded respectively by Peter Chaisson, Jr. and Archie
Stewart in August 1994.
Fiddling on Prince Edward Island
Once you learn where to look for it,
"old-time fiddling" (as the
locals call it) is nowadays very much in evidence on P.E.I., especially during
the summer. The Rollo Bay Scottish Fiddle Festival, held the third weekend in
July in Northeast Kings County draws crowds of over 5,000. The Atlantic
Jamboree and the Acadian Exposition (held in Abram-Village, Prince County the
first weekends of August and September respectively), draw several thousand
people each to the fiddle concert portion of their programs. The Queens County
and Prince County Branches of the Prince Edward Island Fiddlers' Association --
whose performances feature ensemble playing of fiddle music -- are in constant
demand. Town days, benefit concerts, ceilidhs,
(pronounced KAY-lies: Gaelic for "musical evenings") and smaller
festivals dot the Island. In addition, there are a number of venues where
old-time square dancing takes place on a regular basis.
Island fiddling is a lively blend of Scottish, Irish and
Acadian-French elements. Local tradition has it that the first boat-loads of
Scottish immigrants landing at Tracadie Bay on the northeast shore of Queens Co. in the late eighteenth
century had fiddlers among them, and some families can trace their musical
pedigrees back to that time. The Irish appeared in substantial numbers perhaps
a generation later, and added their tunes and playing style to the mix. The
Acadians are almost all descended from the thirty-odd families allowed to
remain on the Island when most of their countrymen were expelled by the British
following the Seven-Years War (1756-63). They have adopted the tunes and
overall approach to fiddling of their Celtic neighbors, but many --
particularly those who grew up in western P.E.I. -- have their own notion of
style and sense of rhythmic nuance.
The Island fiddle repertoire these
days is a hodge-podge of tunes from a variety of national and regional
traditions. Its core is Scottish and -- to a lesser extent -- Irish, but it
also includes tunes from Cape Breton, mainland Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
Quebec, Ontario, New England and the Southern United States. In addition, there
are many tunes composed on the Island, and versions or variants of tunes "from away" that have evolved among
Island fiddlers over the generations. (see "The Island Repertoire").
What is unique about old time
fiddling on P.E.I. is not so much the repertoire -- much of it as we have seen
is shared with other fiddling traditions -- but rather the manner in which that
repertoire is played. And, although there are several distinct regional playing
styles on the Island -- and the argument has often been locally made that each
Island fiddler is a style unto himself -- there is nevertheless a distinctive
"sound" that is characteristic of nearly all Island players. There
are also a number of playing devices and techniques that are virtually
universal.
The Island fiddle sound reflects
directly the subtle rhythmic nuances of square and step dancing (see
"Dancing to the Old-Time Fiddle"). In fact, the playing of a "good
fiddler" is said to convey a rhythm so infectious that anyone within
listening range will want to get up and dance. Island fiddlers tend to have a
full, strong yet sweet tone. To this writer, listening to the rolling sound of
an Island fiddle is like watching the clouds go by on a summer's day -- the
music rises above the cares of everyday life and offers a sense of freedom. For
more on these subjects, see "Regional and Individual Styles," and
"The Prince Edward Island Playing Style."
Fiddling in the Old Days
It is no accident that there are
hundreds of top-quality fiddlers on P.E.I. Because of a variety of historical
factors -- not the least of which was a
long term policy by the Canadian Federal Government that promoted growth in the
center and west of the country while ignoring the east -- P.E.I. was long an
economic and cultural backwater. In fact, many technological advances that
urban North Americans take for granted -- such as electricity, paved roads, and
automobile travel -- were not a part of rural Island life until the 1950s.
Prior to this time, people rarely travelled more than a few miles (a
comfortable wagon or sleigh ride), and communities were responsible -- not only
for maintaining their own livelihood, but for organizing and conducting their
own entertainment.
In them days virtually every community had its own stock of fiddlers,
who supplied the music for the dances that served as the primary form of
recreation. The most common venue for these dances was the informal house party. Word would go out that the
event was in the offing, a kitchen would be cleared, the fiddler would set
himself up in the corner, and the neighbors would gather together for an
evening of square sets (as the local
variant of square dancing was called) interspersed with episodes of a solo
dance form known as step-dancing (similar to Southern
clogging and Irish stepdancing, but closer to the floor than the latter and
with less upper body movement than the former). As Archie Stewart of Milltown
Cross, Kings Co. recalls:
"Back
then...there was no radios, there was no television, and that was the only
entertainment we had -- in the wintertime probably once a week somebody'd have
a house party. And ... everbody'd bring a pound of sugar and they'd make fudge
and we'd have fudge and then they'd clear all the stuff out of the kitchen and
I'd get the fiddle out and away they'd go and they'd dance 'till 12 or 1 o'clock and that was an evening's
entertainment. There was nothing else! And it was good pastime."
Not only did fiddling and dance
provide "entertainment," but they also served other important
functions within the community. When money had to be raised for the up-keep of
the local school house, the community held a fiddle-dance. When the local
church needed support, it scheduled dances as part of a tea party or parish picnic.
When a wedding was decided upon, virtually the first act of the families
involved was to line up the fiddler.
"Jigging" the Tunes
Making music in old Island districts (communities) was not just the
province of the fiddler. Most residents knew at least the more common tunes by
heart, and a fair percentage excelled at an activity known as tuning or jigging -- singing dance tunes with full rhythmic nuance using
abstract vocables or nonsense lyrics. In fact, many Islanders jigged in full
voice as they went about their daily chores. School children in many
communities would spend their lunch recess jigging tunes and step-dancing to
jigged accompaniment; they would also make a game out of imitating the jigging
styles of community adults. What's more, when no fiddlers were available, tuners were sometimes called upon to
provide music for square dancing.
Learning Tunes
Tunes were passed down between the
generations for the most part by ear within the family and community. Many
fiddlers report that they learned their first tunes by listening to the jigging
of family members. Other opportunities to hear tunes included older relatives
who played fiddle, community dances, and -- by the 1930s -- radio (powered in
the days before electrification by storage batteries akin to those found today
in automobiles). By the time most youngsters were old enough to manipulate a
fiddle, they had already committed to memory a large portion of the local
repertoire.
Learning
new tunes often had to be done on the fly. A couple of hearings at a dance or
on the radio might be all the exposure to a particular tune you might ever get.
Fiddlers developed the ability to absorb the essence of a tune in a couple of
hearings. According to most accounts, retrieving a new tune from memory was
often an unconscious process. A fiddler would awaken in the middle of the
night, be lying abed in the morning, be at work in the fields or on a fishing
boat and a recently heard tune would
appear to him in its entirety. If a fiddle could then be immediately got
hold of, the tune could be picked out and retained in memory. Otherwise it was
lost.
Passing
On the Art
There was no formal instruction in
fiddle technique. What little instruction occurred was devoted to teaching the
notes of particular tunes. Most established fiddlers felt that since they
couldn't read music, they had no guidance to offer a novice. For the most part,
fiddlers learned their playing techniques through imitation of other players in
the family and community.
Perhaps the best place to learn the
fiddlers' art in those days was from the heart of one of the numerous fiddling
families that dotted the Island. In such families, at least one parent and a
large percentage of the numerous children in residence played fiddle,
accompaniment instruments, or step-danced. Not only was music making and dance
continual on evenings and Sundays in these households, but community members
could precipitate a house party merely by dropping in.
Women and Fiddling
In the old days, most of the
Island's few active female fiddlers came from these large fiddling families.
Fiddling was considered by and large to be a man's calling, and those women who
were musically inclined were encouraged to take up the pump organ or piano.
Part of this was simply an extension of other "division of labor"
attitudes that had men running the plows, mowers, and binders, and women
learning to spin, weave and cook. But there was also a general feeling that fiddling
at dance events was no "proper" activity for a woman. As a result,
most Island women who fiddled plied their art primarily in the privacy of their
homes. There was one notable exception to this state of affairs. Since the
1930s, when Zélie-Anne Poirier and her sisters established themselves as lively
dance fiddlers against initial community opposition, women have played
regularly for dances in the Evangeline Coast region of Prince Co.
The Dark Side of Fiddling
Having the gift of fiddling was sometimes
a mixed blessing. Along with the joy of playing came the strongly felt
obligation to share your gift with the community, regardless of how you felt
about it at the time. In fact, fiddlers were expected to offer their services
gratis at house parties, community fund raisers, and (for the most part)
weddings. Some community fiddlers were called upon to play several nights a
week, despite the fact that they were also working from dawn to dusk at farming
or fishing. After many years of this routine, it's perhaps noteworthy that only
a relatively few broke under the strain.
Fiddlers did have the reputation in
some communities, however, of spending too much of their time fiddling and not
enough of it working. Stories abound to this effect. There is, for example a
former settlement in Kings County that is said to now be abandoned because it
once sported so many good fiddlers that no one did any work. And then there's the story they tell about a
well-known Prince Co. fiddler whose long-suffering wife was dismayed one day to
see him head off with his instrument to a house party while several weeks'
backlog of chores were piling up. "How can you leave when there's not a
stick of wood about the place," said she. "Woman, I'm taking the
fiddle, not the axe," said he.
Fiddle Contests
Fiddle contests were once held all
over the Island in the warm months. While people still talk about the Great
Fiddle Contest of 1926 -- when P.E.I. champion Neil Cheverie of Elmira (Kings
Co.) was sent to compete against North America's finest at a competition in
Boston -- most fiddle contests on the Island were modest affairs. Prizes
generally were small, but the prestige of winning was so great that hard
feelings often arose among fiddlers and even among the families of fiddlers.
What's more, these feelings of hostility sometimes persisted for decades. As a
result, the 1970s saw a general movement-- spearheaded by the Prince Edward
Island Fiddlers' Association -- to ban fiddle contests on the Island.
Decline and Resurgence
The mid-1950s through the early
1970s saw great changes come to the Island -- rural electrification, mass
communications, improved roads, widespread automobile usage, mechanized
agriculture, and school consolidation. It was now possible to seek work and entertainment
outside the community in which you lived. For the first time, the focus moved
away from community music and dance to entertainment provided by mass
communications. Hundreds of community fiddlers -- products of a tradition that
had provided dance accompaniment for generations -- were still in place, but
their talents were no longer in constant demand. As the importance and
visibility of fiddling declined, the art no longer drew youngsters to its fold.
By the mid-1970s Island fiddlers were an aging population with few members even
as young as 30.
By the late 1970s some fiddlers on
the Island became sufficiently alarmed by this state of affairs to do something
about it. Under the leadership of a priest from Little Pond named Faber
MacDonald (then posted in the Charlottetown area and now a Bishop in
Newfoundland), Joe Pete Chaisson of Bear River, and several others, the Prince
Edward Island Fiddlers' Association was formed -- in part to address the issue
of passing the art on to the young. Eventually, branches were organized for
each county. The Prince Co. branch -- run for most of its existence by John
Gauthier -- was based in Summerside, the Queens Co. branch -- currently under
the direction of Fr. Charles Cheverie was based in Charlottetown, and the
Northeast Kings Co. branch -- under the direction first of Joe Pete Chaisson,
and later under that of his sons Peter, Kenny, and Kevin -- was based in
Souris.
Perhaps the most important activity
of the Fiddlers' Association has been its support for group fiddle lessons
aimed primarily at youngsters. Using proceeds from the Rollo Bay Fiddle
Festival, for example, the Kings Co. branch has sponsored free fiddle classes
every Monday night for the last fifteen years at the Rollo Bay Consolidated
School. These efforts have just begun to bear fruit and a new generation of
players trained at Rollo Bay is just now coming into its own.
Interestingly,
neither the Fiddlers' Association nor the Rollo Bay teaching program has
maintained the old Island prejudice against females playing fiddle. Both Queens
County and Prince county branches have substantial numbers of women playing the
instrument in their performing ensembles. Similarly, females of all ages have
been welcome at the Rollo Bay program since its inception. As a result, there
are fine young woman fiddlers cropping up not only in Kings County, but in
other areas of the Island as well.
Since the early days of its
operation, the work of the P.E.I. Fiddlers' Association has been helped along
considerably by a wave of nostalgia for a rapidly receding past. In many Island
communities, this has led to a revival of such fiddle-oriented community events
as tea parties, ceilidhs, and old-time dances. Another aspect of this phenomenon
was a widespread demand for formal step-dance instruction, as parents around
the Island suddenly felt the need to have their young girls learn the art (see
"Dancing to the Old-Time Fiddle.")
The Future
Although there is reason for
optimism, the survival of old-time fiddling on P.E.I. is far from assured. Most
active fiddlers on the Island are past sixty, and most of them grew up in
traditional settings where formal music teaching was not a part of life. They
are not well equipped to instruct the generation "coming up," even
when there are members of that generation who are eager to learn. And, despite
the great success of the Rollo Bay teaching program, there is still not enough
fiddle instruction available elsewhere on the Island. The great diversity of
the styles and tune versions that form Island fiddling today may yet become a
thing of the past.
Dancing to the Old-Time Fiddle
Fiddling on the Island has always
been associated with social dancing. For most of the Island's history, these
dances were done in what might be termed standard square-dance or square-set formation, with four couples
lined up at right angles. The oldest fiddlers remember dances called breakdowns -- the Scotch reel, the
four-hand reel, and the 8-hand reel --
in which participants actually step-danced through most maneuvers. In
the 1920s or so these dances apparently gave way to others -- like the lancers,
the quadrille, and local variants of the above like the "Souris set"
-- where most maneuvers could be walked through. Thereafter, step-dancing took
the form of spontaneous "exhibitions" by solo dancers between square
dances at house parties and other local dance events.
All these square dances were divided
into distinct segments called "figures." Each figure had different
steps, each was accompanied by a different kind of tune, and each was followed
by a distinct pause that offered everyone a chance to take a breather. Most
fiddlers I spoke to remember that the square dances in their respective
communities had four figures. As time went on, each community evolved its own
version of square dancing which varied from that of its neighbors in terms of
the number of figures, the order of figures, the actual steps done, and the
kinds of tunes played for them.
With the coming of the
"modern" era, the nature of the set-dances changed. Islanders could
now travel greater distances, which allowed dancers from several communities to
gather at a single centralized hall. Since Islanders refused to resort to the
expedient of using a caller (that institution had for the most part been
abandoned by the 1920s), there was no trend toward standardization of figure
order and step-sequence. As a result, hall dances to this day require
negotiation on these matters, and the overall trend has been toward both a
simplification of dance steps and a decrease in their number. In addition, the
pressures of dealing with large numbers of dancers in relatively small spaces
led to the development of what might be termed a circle-formation set dance.
In the circle formation dance --
which is more or less all you see in the current era -- each couple around the
circle forms what amounts to a small square with the neighboring couple. Each
"square" of two couples then goes through the steps of a given
figure. Then the couple on the right passes clockwise through its original
neighbors and forms a square with the next neighboring couple on the circle.
The couple on the left passes counterclockwise and forms a new square with its
new neighbors. Then both new squares go through the steps of the figure.
Although waltzes have been part of
the Celtic fiddle repertoire since the 1800s, there apparently wasn't much
waltzing done in rural Island communities until the Second World War. Because
couples orient themselves in a large circle -- each spinning on their own axis
as the circle describes an "orbit" around the room's mid-point --
waltzes are sometimes referred to as round
dances.
Again, the 1970s saw a dramatic
growth in the demand for formalized step-dance instruction (see "Decline
and Resurgence). As instructor and provincial legislator Libby Hubley of
Kensington (Prince Co.) describes it, most of the first crop of step-dance
instructors had previously been teachers of tap, ballroom dancing or highland
dancing. Few had grown up in households where step dancing was a part of daily
life. Since progress had to be shown to parents, and pupils had a need to work
toward specific goals, step-dancing became performance oriented. Routines were
worked out, steps were formalized, costumes were designed, and (through
association with tap-dance) metal "taps" were adopted for most
step-dance performances. There are now about 600 step dance students on the
Island at any given time.
On Fiddle Tunes
Fiddle
tunes are the traditional dance music of the Celtic peoples of the world.
While it is unclear just how far they go back, we do know that these tunes had
certainly achieved a relatively "modern" sound and general method of
presentation by the late seventeenth century. Beginning at that time and culminating
about a century later, collectors scoured the byways of Scotland searching for
traditional tunes, and printed them in extensive collections. Once the older
tunes had for the most part been published, a new breed of dedicated
tune-composers sprang up -- like Niel [ed: sic] Gow (1727-1807) and William
Marshall (1748-1833). Most of these composers were in the employ of Scottish
noble houses, and were asked to compose tunes for special occasions. The last
great Scottish tune composer of this tradition, James Scott Skinner
(1843-1927), earned his living as a music hall virtuoso. Over the years,these
composed tunes were added to the stock of older tunes. They are themselves now
considered "traditional" by all but those few who frequent the pages
of old tune collections.
Most fiddle tunes have two sections
-- one part that stays around the low or mid-range strings of the fiddle
(called the low turn on P.E.I.), and
one that moves up onto the upper strings of the instrument (called the high turn on P.E.I.). The low turn is
usually played first, but there are certain tunes where the high turn comes
first. Plus, there are certain regions (like P.E.I.'s Prince Co.) where
fiddlers seem to like starting many of their tunes on the high turn.
For the purposes of this book I will
generally follow common American practice and refer to the first part of each
transcription (usually the low turn) as Part
A, the second part as Part B, the
third part (if any) as Part C, and so
on. Similarly, a variation on the A part is referred to as Part A', a variation on the B part is called Part B', and so on.
Virtually all fiddle tunes have
four, eight or sixteen measures per part. Generally, each part is played twice
through before proceeding to the next part.
Tune Categories
Fiddle tunes are divided into a
number of sharply defined tuned categories. Let's start with tunes used on the
Island for set-dancing -- jigs, reels and set tunes. All three genres have two beats per measure.
Moreover, all three are played at about the same speed -- at a rate consistent
with a metronome setting of one beat equals about "120."
Jigs
are in 6/8 time (each beat is the equivalent of a dotted quarter note).
Generally, they consist of two repeated eight-bar parts, two non-repeated
sixteen bar parts, or a mixture of the two formats. On P.E.I., a distinction is
made between Scotch Jigs (those which
have sharply defined phrases or consist largely of quarter - eighth note
combinations), and Irish Jigs (those
which are composed largely of streams of eighth notes). Some "Scotch"
jigs included in this collection are "Tea Gardens Jig," "Come
Under My Plaidie" and "Goldenrod Jig." Some "Irish"
jigs include "The Irish Washerwoman," "Larry O'Gaff," and
"The Land of Sweet Erin."
Reels
-- called just fast tunes in many parts of the Island -- are in 2/2 or cut time (each beat is the equivalent of
a half note). They are made up primarily of streams of eighth notes, and it
often takes great skill on the part of the fiddler to "shape" these
notes at speed into a listenable melody. Most reels have two repeated
eight-measure parts, but some of the older Scottish reels (and newer tunes that
emulate them) are made up of one repeated four-measure low turn and a
non-repeated eight measure high turn. Some reels have just two repeated four
measure parts.
All hornpipes have eight bars per part, and they have exactly the same
structure as reels with eight-bar parts. In the Scottish and Irish traditions,
however, hornpipes are performed quite differently from reels. To begin with,
hornpipes in these traditions are played at a much slower tempo than are reels
(that is, at a metronome setting of about one beat per click set at 96).
Second, they are almost always played with swing
eighth notes (see "Playing Directions"), while reels can be played
with straight, dotted, or swing eighth notes.
On P.E.I. and the rest of the Maritimes, however, hornpipes are
usually played at the same tempo and with the same style of note production as
are reels. They have therefore been lumped together with reels into a single
section. Those tunes that were performed in true hornpipe style on the field recordings -- like "Fay's
Hornpipe" and "Bonaparte Crossing the Alps" -- are so marked.
Set-tunes
are cut-time tunes played for set or square dancing that are not considered by Islanders to be reels.
In many parts of P.E.I. these tunes -- which generally contain fewer notes per
beat than reels, and which tend to be bowed quite differently -- are called slow tunes. In the set-tune category can
be found polka-like tunes like "Crooked Stovepipe" and "Let's
Have a Ceilidh," along with simplified reel or hornpipe melodies like
"The Road to India." Also present are versions of popular and
traditional song melodies from various eras that have been converted into cut time dance tunes. Some examples of such conversions are "Darlin' Nellie
Grey," "Silver and Gold," and "Home Sweet Home." Set-tunes can have eight or sixteen bars per
section. Eight-bar parts are always repeated; sixteen bar parts are sometimes repeated.
Waltzes
are tunes for slow couple dancing in 3/4 time.
It is interesting to note that the number of waltzes in circulation has
been increased by converting a number
of slow airs in 3/4 or 6/8 time -- like " The Rosebud of Allenvale"
and "The Massacre at Glen Coe," into dance tunes. In addition, a
number of 3/4 time songs from various eras -- like "The Four Marys,"
and "Little Old Log Cabin For Sale" -- have also been so converted.
Most waltzes have two repeated sixteen bar parts.
Marches
are cut time tunes played at walking tempo (about one beat per metronome click
set at 96). In the Scottish tradition, marches have two distinct formats -- the
pipe march and the fiddle march. The pipe march has four
repeated eight-bar parts. The third part (A') is always an elaboration of the
first part (A), while the fourth part (B') is always an elaboration of the
second part (B). To complete the picture, B' has a four-measure-long second
ending which recalls the last four measures of A. In a fiddle march, on the other hand, there are just two eight-measure parts. The second part
(B) of a fiddle march now has the four-measure-long second ending.
On P.E.I., marches are not used for
dancing. Instead, they are played primarily as opening tunes for Scottish sets (see "Medleys").
In many parts of the Island, therefore, march melodies have been converted into reels and pressed into
service for dance accompaniment. Examples here (in the reels section) are
"Johnny Cope," and "Inverness Gathering `Reel.'" Most of
the tunes played in "march-style" on the Island are fiddle marches.
True pipe marches in circulation tend to be "condensed" (lacking at
least one part) or even pared down to fiddle-march format.
Strathspeys
are difficult to define. They are rhythmically complex tunes in 4/4 time played
in a wide variety of tempos. A strathspey of average tempo would have one beat
(that is, one-fourth of the measure) equal to a metronome click set somewhere
between 100 and 120. They originated in the Strathspey (Spey River Valley)
region of Scotland in the early eighteenth century and were first known as strathspey reels. On P.E.I. and nearby
Cape Breton Island (see "The Island Repertoire") strathspeys are used
primarily to accompany step-dancing. They have essentially the same structure
as reels, although the most common form is a four-bar repeated low turn,
followed by a eight-bar unrepeated high turn. In the Maritimes tradition, it is
customary to follow a strathspey with one or more musically compatible reels.
Airs
are relatively slow-tempo listening tunes. On P.E.I., most of the airs played
have forms and patterns of notes drawn from the dance tune tradition. Airs have
a variety of tempos and structures. Many airs are played without a strict
tempo.
Tune Conversions
As indicated above, folk melodies
tend to be elastic in terms of form. On the Island, they are often altered to
suit the need at hand. Song melodies and airs often become set-tunes and
waltzes; marches and strathspeys become reels.
Are there Standard Versions of Tunes?
Because the fiddle tune tradition
has been so well documented for so long, it is easy to get the impression that
each tune has a definitive version. Even a glance through the most common
tunebooks quickly scuttles this notion. In fact, versions of the same tune
appearing in different books often differ in a wide variety of details.
Having had the opportunity to work
with a living fiddling tradition, and to listen carefully in some cases to
dozens of performances of the same tune, I would have to concur with the
general Island attitude on this subject. Islanders feel that there is a core to
every tune -- certain phrases that
must be reproduced in more or less a note-for-note fashion for the tune to
retain its identity. There are other portions of a tune that each fiddler is
permitted to play in his or her own way (see "Individual Styles and
`Twists'.")
Medleys
In the old days a fiddler rarely
changed tunes in the middle of a set-dance figure or step-dance performance.
Nowadays the medley or group of tunes
has become an important feature of Island playing, especially in those areas
closest to Cape Breton. The Island fiddler commonly chooses all the tunes of a
group from the same key, although changes of mode (see "Pitch and Mode") are common. Each tune (with
its repeats) is generally played through twice before moving on to a new tune.
For set-dance accompaniment, a
fiddler generally plays a group of jigs, a group of reels, or a group of
set-tunes. Unless there is a big crowd, a few tunes (each played twice) will
get you through the full length of most set-dance figures.
For stepdance accompaniment, the
fiddler usually plays either a group of reels, or what might be termed a step dance group. In a step-dance group,
one or more gradually accelerating strathspeys is followed by several reels.
At fiddle festivals, ceilidhs, or
musician's gatherings most fiddlers play a group of tunes that is a variation
on the Scottish Set. A Scottish Set
is a medley that consists of at least three different kinds of tunes, all of which usually share the same key-note. It
usually begins with an air or march, and then (like of a step-dance set) it
continues with one or more gradually accelerating strathspeys, and concludes
with one or more reels. Quite often the musician will keep the reels portion of
his set group going until he either runs out of tunes or runs out of energy.
The Island Repertoire
The central core of the Island repertoire consists of perhaps a
dozen tunes -- often referred to as good
old tunes -- that nearly every
fiddler plays. What's more, no Islander ever seems to get tired of playing (or
hearing) them! While there is some variation in different parts of the Island
(see "Regional and Individual Styles"), these tunes can in general be
identified as "Lord MacDonald's Reel," "The Princess Reel,"
"Paddy on the Turnpike," "Pigeon on the Gatepost,"
"Pride of the Ball," "The Farmer's Reel," "Heather on
the Hill," "Sheehan's Reel"
"The Flowers of Edinburgh," "St. Anne's Reel,"
"The Maid Behind the Bar," and "The Mirimachi Fire." In
Western P.E.I., we could add "La Marmotteuse" and "The Ottawa
Valley Reel." In Eastern P.E.I., we could add "Homeward Bound,"
and "Jerome's Farewell to Gibraltar."
This group is far from static. Some
tunes -- like "Lord MacDonald's Reel" and "Pigeon on the
Gatepost" have been good old tunes
for generations, but others are more recent additions. "The Princess
Reel" and "St. Anne's Reel," for example, first appeared in the
1930s, while "Heather on the Hill" did not achieve Island-wide
circulation until the 1950s. Nowadays,
two tunes composed recently by Cape Bretoners -- "Sandy MacIntyre's Trip
to Boston," and "Brenda Stubbert's Reel" -- are fast moving into
this company.
Tune Sources
Most of the Island repertoire, as
previously indicated, derives from a variety of outside sources. Some tunes
arrived with the first waves of Scottish and Irish settlers, others came via
later immigration. Most other methods for acquiring new repertoire depended on
the quick ears and highly developed musical recall of local fiddlers.
Since the late nineteenth century,
many Island fiddlers were forced by a poor local economy to work away for portions of the year, or even
for years at a time. Many young men, for example, spent their winters in the
"lumber-woods" of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Maine and Quebec. Many
others spent years working in major North American cities such as Boston, New
York, Montreal and Toronto. All of these situations created opportunities to
learn new tunes from off-Island fiddlers.
Conversely, there were occasions
when musicians from distant Island communities or even from away participated
in local musical events. Each of these would almost certainly bring with them a
stock of new tunes.
Scottish, Irish, and North American
tune books -- such as Cole's One Thousand
Fiddle Tunes, The Skye Collection,
The Athole Collection and The Scottish Violinist -- were another
major source of new repertoire (See Appendix A). Since the ability to read
music has never been widespread among Island fiddlers, this method often
required the presence of an intermediary. An ear-player would actually spend
extended periods of time with someone -- like a church organist -- who had the
ability to read music. The latter would then play tunes from a book until the
fiddler had them committed to memory.
Like the good old tunes, the Island repertoire as a whole is always
changing. A large number of old Scottish tunes, for example, -- most of the
strathspeys and classic reels like "Archie Menzies" and "The
Bonny Lass of Fisherrow" -- had dropped from general circulation by the
end of the 1920s. In the 1950s, the size of the new circular-formation dance
sets had grown so large that most fiddlers no longer had sufficient stamina to
play reels throughout certain figures, particularly the "grand
chain." This led to a great increase in the number of set-tunes learned.
Most other developments in tune "fashion" since 1930 have followed
local trends in fiddle music broadcasting and recording.
Radio and Recordings
Since so many Island fiddlers had
developed the ability to recall the essence of a new tune in a couple of
hearings, the appearance of fiddle music on radio was bound to have a
significant effect on repertoire. The first fiddling broadcasts reached P.E.I.
about 1930. These broadcasts, which originated in New Carlisle, Québec and
featured Québecois players, were the source of such popular Island tunes as
"St. Anne's Reel" and "The Old Man and the Old Woman." Shortly
thereafter, a number of Island players were tapped for live radio broadcasts
originating in Charlottetown. Fiddler Lem Jay of Mt. Stewart, for example, is
still remembered Island-wide for his annual New Year's Eve concerts, during
which he always played (among other tunes) "Bonaparte Crossing the
Alps" and "Jay's Reel."
Two subsequent developments in
broadcasting were to have a considerable effect on the Island repertoire -- the
rise of Don Messer, and the appearance on radio of fiddlers from Cape Breton
Island, Nova Scotia. In 1939, a New Brunswick native named Don Messer was hired
by CFCY-radio in Charlottetown to anchor its fiddle broadcasts. Within a
decade, Messer's popularity grew to a level where he literally dominated fiddle
broadcasting throughout Canada and the northeastern United States. Messer drew
his repertoire from a variety of sources -- fiddlers he met in his travels, old
tune books, and fiddle recordings from the US. Although Island fiddlers were
quick to learn many of the tunes he popularized -- like "Whalen's
Breakdown," "Little Burnt Potato" and "Blue Mountain
Hornpipe" -- his fiddling style was never very highly regarded by most
old-time players on P.E.I. By and large, they felt he played too fast and too
"straight-ahead," with none of the complexity and drive so prized in
Island playing.
Since the first days of Nova Scotia
radio broadcasting in the mid-1930s, the Cape Breton fiddling style and
repertoire has captivated many Island players. Beginning with fiddlers like
Winston Scotty Fitzgerald, Angus Chisholm, and Little Jack MacDonald -- and
continuing to present day artists like Jerry Holland and Buddy MacMaster --
Cape Breton has become the largest single new-tune source for Island fiddlers.
Many of the tunes played on radio or recorded by Cape Bretoners were old
Scottish tunes, and this led to a resurgence of this material on the Island.
There has also been quite a number of new fiddle compositions coming out of
Cape Breton which have achieved wide circulation, most notably those of Dan R.
MacDonald and Jerry Holland.
Variants
As tunes move among players within
an oral music tradition, become isolated within a region, or migrate between
traditions, they tend to change. As tunes evolve, they form what are known as variants -- entities that are clearly
derivative from a "parent tune," but quite different from each other. An example of two such variants
are the U.S. tune "Leather Britches," and the PEI version of the
Scottish tune "Lord MacDonald's Reel." There are quite a number of
tune variants that are unique to PEI, such as "Jerome's Farewell to
Gibraltar," the Prince Co. version of "St. Anne's Reel," and
"Pride of the Ball."
Memory is often imperfect, and this
can lead to what might be termed mongrels
and hybrids. In a mongrel variant,
portions of two or more tunes are mixed together within the same part. In a hybrid, intact parts from different
tunes are combined together. An example of a hybrid tune is the jig "Paddy
Carrey's Ship*," which combines the low turn of "Paddy Carrey's
Fortune" with the high turn of "The New Rigged Ship." As is the
case with this last tune, sometimes a hybrid can become widely played in its
own right.
"Making" New Tunes
Over the generations, fiddlers on
the Island have been continually composing (making
is the term in local parlance) new tunes. Many of these homegrown Island tunes
have been forgotten, but some of them -- like "The Brae Reel," and
"The Women of Pisquid" -- are still in circulation. Nowadays, there
is still quite a bit of tune-making going on. A substantial number of the
fiddlers we taped had made a tune or two, a few fiddlers had made several
tunes, and at least two players -- Emmett Hughes and Bill MacDonald -- had
become prolific tune smiths. Transcriptions for most of these newer original
tunes have been included in this collection.
Regional and Individual Styles
Because transportation was so
difficult in the old days, fiddlers rarely had the opportunity to hear players
from communities more than a wagon- or sleigh- ride away. At one time, then,
each district more or less had its own style of playing. Today, with improved
transportation and communications, these many local styles have coalesced into
perhaps six regional styles of playing, named for the various Island Counties
-- Northeast Kings, Central Kings, South Kings, Queens, East Prince/Evangeline
Coast, and West Prince. Players from each of these regions differ in terms of
both overall sound and -- to a lesser degree -- repertoire. Capsule biographies
organized by region for the fiddlers whose tunes are transcribed in this book
appear in the section entitled "The Players."
Fiddlers of Northeast Kings Co. near the town of Souris tend to play an ornate,
hard driving style heavily influenced by the Scottish-oriented fiddlers of Cape
Breton. Along with the reels and jigs so popular throughout the Island, they
also play a large number of marches, strathspeys and airs. Their repertoire is
laced with both old Scottish tunes, and the newer tunes coming out of Cape
Breton. They tend to use a relatively abrupt style of bowing, Scottish style
ornamentation, cuts, and snaps ( see "The Prince Edward Island Playing
style"). The pace of their music tends to be on the moderate side.
Fiddlers of South Kings Co. near the
town of Montague play a shuffling, lilting style that reminds me of old
1920s-era recordings of fiddlers from the American South. They play mostly the
"good old" reels and set pieces of P.E.I. Relative to their Northeast
Kings counterparts, their tempos are faster, they have a more rolling style of
bowing, and they use less ornamentation, cuts, and snaps.
Fiddlers of Central Kings Co. near the
towns of Cardigan and Georgetown represent what might be termed an intermediate
style between Northeast and South Kings. Fiddlers from this area play a lot of
the Scottish and Cape Breton repertoire, but in a relatively
"straight-ahead" non-ornamented style with few cuts and snaps.
Fiddlers of West Prince Co. near the towns of O'Leary and Tignish play a style
and repertoire that has a distinct Acadian flavor, with strong ties in terms of
style and repertoire to the fiddle-music scene in neighboring New Brunswick.
The pace of music is quite rapid compared to that found in Kings Co., and the
bowing style is extremely vigorous. In fact, the bow moves so fast and extends
so far afield as the fiddler attacks the strings that it sometimes seems in
danger of flying out of his hand. West Prince fiddlers use few ornaments, cut,
and snaps, but their music is replete with lively rhythms and syncopations.
Fiddlers
of East Prince Co./Evangeline Coast
near the towns of Abram-Village and Wellington blend a bit of the Scottish-Cape
Breton repertoire and rhythmic attack into a largely Acadian-oriented style.
This Scottish influence is due mostly to the influence of fiddler Eddie
Arsenault, who learned a significant part of his repertoire from Cape Breton
broadcasts, and who had the opportunity to play with a number of great Cape
Breton fiddlers while serving in the Canadian Army during the second World War.
Fiddlers from Queens County play what might be termed an intermediate or
central-Island style -- they incorporate some "Scottish" elements
into their playing, but they also tend to have a bit of a syncopated
"French" swing to their bowing.
Two other stylistic considerations
are Island-wide instead of regional. The first involves a distinction made
between Cape Breton-oriented fiddlers and "Island fiddlers." As you
might suspect, the former are those P.E.I. fiddlers who (regardless of region) look
to Cape Breton for both style and repertoire. Island fiddlers, on the other
hand, try to maintain for the most part the tunes and playing style of the era
prior to Cape Breton domination of fiddle broadcasting. Also in the mix of
Island players are the followers and admirers of Don Messer, who emulate his
style and keep his repertoire alive. Most of the latter were bred in Queens Co.
Individual Styles and "Twists"
Within these various styles, there
is tremendous variation from player to player. No two fiddlers hold the
instrument or bow exactly alike, no two conduct the bow across the strings in
exactly the same manner, and no two play any given tune in exactly the same
way. In fact, each fiddler regards it as almost a point of honor to put his
brand (put his own twist is the term
used in local parlance) on each tune that is part of his repertoire. In other
words, there will almost always be a part of each tune where a given player
uses a unique sequence of notes that derives from his own fancy. After all, as
fiddler Leonard McDonald of Emyvale, Queens Co. puts it, "If we all played
exactly alike, it wouldn't matter who played, would it?"
Accompaniment
Accompaniment on the Island begins
with the fiddler's own foot. From the days before extensive instrumental accompaniment,
fiddlers have carried over the habit of affording them-selves rhythmic support
via a stylized foot stomp (usually heel-toe, heel-toe) that accentuates the
off-beat. Much of the time this
foot-stomp is really all the fiddler needs to stay on the beat, even in
situations where an accompanist is not up to the task. Foot-stomping styles
tend to be regional as well, with fiddlers from the western part of the Island
tending to use a more rhythmically intensive two-footed routine (heel-left,
toe-right; toe-left, heel right).
In the old days the accompaniment
instrument of choice was the pump organ, examples of which still grace many an
Island parlor. Pump-organists had worked out an accompaniment style
(unfortunately not heard much nowadays) in which oom-pah piano-like rhythmic
patterns were strategically accented by sustained notes. Today the favorite
accompaniment instruments are piano and guitar. The piano is especially popular
-- and its style of play most highly developed -- in Northeast Kings Co.
Fiddlers' Gatherings
When Island fiddlers meet to have a few tunes, it is rare to have two
melody instruments playing together. Generally, a fiddler will sit himself down
next to the accompanist and play medley after medley until his bowing arm grows
weary (generally about 20 minutes). Then the next fiddler gets up to play. No
one takes it amiss if the same tune is repeated by several different fiddlers
in the course of an evening. After all, each player has his own twist on it!
The Prince Edward Island Playing Style
All regional styles and individual
"twists" aside, there is definitely a distinctive "sound"
that is characteristic of nearly all Island players. This sound is the result
both of shared stylistic features and techniques on the one hand, and of shared
attitudes toward fiddle music on the other. These shared techniques and
attitudes reflect for the most part the conditions presented by the house party
era -- the need to learn in a self-reliant manner, the need to play
effortlessly (and rapidly) for hours on end, the need to be heard above the din
of a rollicking community dance, the need to keep strong time with little or no
accompaniment, the need to make your neighbors (tired though they were after a
hard day of farm work or fishing) get up and dance, the need to please an
"audience" who knew all the tunes and had some very distinct ideas
about how they should be played.
Before we take a look at a few
specific aspects of P.E.I. fiddle technique, I'd like to quickly sketch some of
the cultural attitudes that support them. Specifically, most Islanders --
whether or not they play themselves -- have a fairly clear idea of "what
makes a good fiddler."
First,
as locals express it, a good fiddler must not only have music in him, he must in fact be just full of music. He's got to have excellent musical recall, be
able to keep a large number of tunes in memory, and have the ability to bring
those tunes to life on his instrument. This ability to remember and make music
are considered by most Islanders to be gifts
from the Deity. They are also considered to be inheritable, like hair and eye
color. One common theory on the handing down of the art holds that great
fiddling often skips a generation. Consequently, the most likely group of
offspring among whom the gift might fall would have fiddling grandfathers on
both sides.
Second, a good fiddler's got to play
good and lively. Lively does not mean fast. Instead, it means
playing at comfortable dancing speed, with all the subtle rhythmic nuances of
the local brand of square- and step-
dancing reflected in the bowing. This last quality is referred to as putting a good timing on the music.
Third, a good fiddler's got to play true and avoid "cutting up the
tunes." What this means is that -- all individualistic twists aside -- the
major themes (strains) of each tune as locally known must be played intact.
What's more, notes should not be left out because they are too hard to play at
speed.
Fourth, a good fiddler should have a
sweet, smooth sound. Good players are described as having a lovely sweet music, as being able to take "a dandy sound out
of the fiddle."
Fifth, a good fiddler never stops learning new tunes or ceases
"improving" the ones he knows. Acadian fiddler Eddie Arsenault of St.
Chrysostom, Prince Co. likens the process of perfecting the playing of a fiddle
tune to carpentry:
"It's
like building a house ... [A]fter the rough work is done you gotta put on the
trimming ... [B]ut the fiddler's about the same thing, you see ... When you
start you put mostly the ... note, and then after a while, well you put the
extra note in there in order to put the finishing touch on it -- like finishing
the inside of the house. When you have
the rough work done you got to do the finishing inside."
Techniques of Fiddling
(Examples
referred to are in the book, Fiddle Music
of PEI)
To get that strong sweet tone prized
by most Islanders, fiddlers use a powerful modified "saw-stroke" (one
note per stroke with occasional "slurs"). This stroke is so natural
for most experienced fiddlers that they can virtually do it in their sleep.
Playing is almost always done sitting down. They put a lot of forearm and wrist
into their stroke so that plenty of sound can be obtained without having to
bear into the strings with the hand. They use only a small portion of the bow
for fast tunes to reduce wear and tear on the arm. To allow for easy access by
the bow to the lowest, or fourth string, many players hold the fiddle tilted
down at an extreme angle. Alternatively, some Prince County fiddlers keep the
instrument relatively level, but use their noting hands to periodically tilt
the fourth string into the bow's path.
To decorate their melodies and make
the sound of their tunes sing out, most fiddlers make frequent use of graces (noting-hand ornaments), bowing ornaments, and double-stops (doubled strings). All
three practices owe much to the influence of Celtic bagpiping.
As in other Celtic-based fiddle
traditions, most Island ornamentation is produced by slurring one or more quick
notes off the same bow stroke that produces the
following melody note (see Example 1). Perhaps the most common ornament is
the slow grace (1a). For this
technique, which is similar to a fretted-instrument technique called a
"hammer-on," the player comes on to an important note from below. As its name implies, the slow grace is quite long in duration for
an ornament. Although it is not considered to be an integral part of the
melody, in some instances it can sound as long as a short melody note.
Two other ornaments -- the quick grace, generally comes from above
(1b), and the double grace (1c) are
usually performed by quickly touching an open or stopped sounding string with a free left hand finger. The actual
point at which the string is touched is often not that important, since the
"free finger" does not
fully stop the string. There is also a kind of double grace where the player
ascends or descends to the melody
note via two quick scale steps (1d-e).
A technique I'll call a reverse double-grace (1f), may be unique
to the Island. Here an ornament is created by a quick release and reassumption
of pressure in a finger, without actually lifting that finger off the string.
This "suggests" in succession both the sound of a lower stopped note
or open string, and the original
stopped melody note.
The term hard vibrato was coined by fiddler Paul MacDonald of Charlottetown
(1g). It describes a "scratchy" ornament created by a combination of
an extremely active noting-hand vibrato and a bearing-in by the bow.
Finally, there are a number of
ornaments in circulation made up of three or even four notes (1h-i).
Bowing ornaments (Example 2) are a
variety of techniques used to dress up the tunes. These include snaps, cuts and what I've termed a suppressed stroke. Snaps are a
distinctive rhythmic device imported from Scotland, performed by a quick pair
of alternate-direction bow strokes. They are usually written as a sixteenth
note followed by dotted eighth note (2a), implying that the second note sounds
three times as long as the first. On P.E.I. and Cape Breton, however, snaps are
played in such a way that the second note is only about twice as long as the first, yielding what amounts to a tied-note
triplet (2b). While snaps form integral parts of such Scottish tunes as marches
and strathspeys, they are often integrated into jigs and reels as a form of
syncopation. If played in a jig, they are usually written as an eighth note
followed by a quarter note, as shown in example 2c.
Cuts (2d), known as birls in Scotland, are three quick notes
(two short, one somewhat longer) played in the space of one 4/4 or cut-time
quarter note. They are always performed with a down-up-down motion. They
originated in Scotland to imitate the sound on fiddle of certain kinds of
bagpipe ornaments. Cuts are much more a feature of Cape Breton than of Island
fiddling. In fact, most Island players who put a lot of cuts into their music
come from Northeastern Kings Co. While cuts certainly appear elsewhere on
P.E.I., many fiddlers tend to substitute for them snaps or merely doubled
straight eighth notes (2e).
One fiddler, Dennis Pitre from
western Prince County uses what amounts to an inverted cut (an eighth note
followed by two sixteenths) as a rhythmic device in his tunes (2f).
The suppressed stroke seems to have
originated with Acadian fiddlers, but it has also been borrowed by many of
their Celtic neighbors. It is used as a form of syncopation. On a strong beat
of a tune, the fiddler manipulates the bow in such a way that a
"scratching" sound is heard instead of a pure note. As the tune goes
by, the weak-beat note rings, but the strong beat sounds empty. This creates
the impression that the weak beat note has been accented (syncopated), and the
strong beat note omitted altogether. This is shown by replacing a note-head
with an "x" (2g).
Perhaps the most strongly developed
characteristic of Prince Edward Island playing is the system of elaborate double stops (string-doubling) used by
most of the players. This system -- which probably arose as an attempt to
imitate the droning of bagpipe music -- serves the function of both increasing
volume and dressing up the tune with another level of complexity. Since the
non-melody string in a double stop can be above or below the melody, the
overall effect is of a "harmony line" that corkscrews around the
melody. These double stops fall into a number of categories -- open neighbor strings, anticipated stopped strings, doubled open
strings, and fingering forms. I
have already mentioned that for the
tunes in this book, non-melody "double-stopped" notes are
shown in reduced size.
The double stop involving an open
neighbor string (3a-b) is perhaps the simplest to accomplish. When bowing a
melody note, the fiddler merely takes the higher or lower neighbor along for
the ride. This is a common feature in particular of key-of-A tunes, where the
open first string (E) is played along with many second string notes, and the
open second string (A) is played along with many first string notes.
Anticipated stopped strings (3c-d)
are more or less reversed instances of open neighbors. In other words, the
fiddler has a melody note on one string but anticipates
that his next act is to stop a note on a neighbor string. If he likes the
combination, he will stop that neighbor string early and play it as a double
stop with the melody string. Both kinds of double stopping mentioned thus far
create a droning effect, analogous to that produced on the bagpipes.
Doubled
open strings are employed for more force and emphasis on the open note. The
player in effect "doubles" the sound of the open string by finding
the same pitch on the lower neighbor string. The two strings are then played
simultaneously. In this book, a doubled open string is written as a note with two opposing stems (3e-f).
One common Island practice is to play a slow grace into the stopped member of a
doubled pair (3g).
Two-string fingering forms are used
almost universally on the Island. These amount to fingering patterns that yield
nice-sounding double stops. Each key -- and each "chord" within that
key -- has its own distinct group of these fingering forms. Examples of
fingering forms for the keys G, D, and A are shown in example 4. Note that some
forms include open strings (examples marked "(a)") some are two
finger forms (examples are marked "(b)"), and some involve bridging, or holding down parallel
points on adjacent strings with a single fingertip (examples marked
"(c)"). Note that many fingering forms yield combinations of tones (intervals) known as thirds or sixths.
Because these tone-combinations are the building blocks of chords, use of
fingering forms tends to give the music a very full sound, even when
unaccompanied.
Note that bridging at A and E on the
low strings is used nowadays as a substitute for a once commonly employed scordatura (alternative tuning) called high bass and counter, (AEAE). Other
fiddle tunings used included high bass
tuning (ADAE), and high counter
tuning (GEAE).
Fingering
forms also serve Island fiddlers in a variety of other ways. First, they
provide convenient way-stations throughout the tune, analogous to the use of
chord forms on fretted instruments. Second, fingering forms are used -- again
like fretted instrument chord forms -- to increase the sonority of the
instrument through sympathetic vibration. In other words, even when only a
single string is bowed, its neighbor will also ring slightly at the pitch
stopped in the fingering form. Third,
their use makes certain kinds of otherwise difficult passages easy to play --
especially those made up of quick arpeggios
(broken chords) such as the low turn of "The Princess Reel." Fourth,
fingering forms are used to signal the accompanist what key is in the offing.
To indicate the key of G, for example, the fiddler runs his bow back and forth
across the tones G-B (marked "(b)" on the Key of G line); to indicate the key of D, the fiddler plays the
tones D-F# (marked "(b)" on the Key
of D line), and so on.
Some Important
Island Fiddlers Active in the Early 1990s
On P.E.I. Nomenclature: The "Handle"
P.E.I.
was settled by a relatively small number of family and clan groups who tended
to occupy land in the same immediate area. As a result, there were usually
many families in the same area with the same last name. This led to a situation
where several individuals within a radius of a few miles might have identical
first and last names,
e.g., Joe MacDonald, or Joe Arsenault. To avoid confusion, many community
members are referred to by a special name or handle. Most often this consists of the individual's first
name plus the name of his or her father. So if an individual's handle is Joe
Pete, or (in French-speaking sectors Joe à Pierre) everyone knows he is Joe,
the son of Pete (or Pierre). Sometimes this is not enough and the name of the
grandfather must be brought into play. So, if someone is named Joe Pete Simon,
the community knows that Joe is son of Pete and grandson of Simon.
Fiddlers from North-East Kings County
Sterling Baker (b. mid-1940s, Residence: Montague,
Bred: Morell; Occupation: Merchant) learned his first tunes from local fiddlers
while growing up. He started out as a guitarist, and did not take up the fiddle
until his mid-twenties. While not as ornate as many of his Kings county contemporaries,
his playing is exceptionally clean and tasteful. He plays regularly at a weekly
summer ceilidh held at a restoration called the Orwell Pioneer Village.
