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(2 of 2) The Welsh excel in happy-sounding tunes. On balance, you’ll get many more pure major tunes in a Welsh session than the darker Irish modal tunes or the Scots tunes borrowed from the Highland pipes, with their built-in flatted sevens. And if you happened to stumble across a "twmpathan,"you might be surprised both at the frequency that hornpipes are dropped into the mix and with the different ways hornpipes are played there. Mick Tems and Pat Carron-Smith, the married two-thirds of the trio Calennig, have been based in Llantrisant, South Wales, a lovely little hill town north of Cardiff, for many years. It seems that every time I wandered through, there was a dance on that night and Mick and Pat were running it—Mick on accordion, Pat on concertina, whistles, and spoons, and both singing lustily in English and Welsh. Their band-mate Peter Davies added all manner of pipes and woodwinds and the mix was always fun. Mick and Pat have collected some marvelous hornpipes. Their inclination with the dances is not to straighten them out, but to occasionally lean toward a polka-like swing, which encourages wild dancing without ripping through the tune too fast. And a good thing, too, since many of the hornpipes have wonderful melodic shapes and unusual forms. The native Welsh tune "Y Lili" (The Lily) is a 24-bar hornpipe that carries a whiff of Scotland with it. And "Y Bregeth" (The Sermon) has got to be the only 112-bar hornpipe ever written, this from an old collection and reintroduced into the tradition by harper Robin Huw Bowen. Both tunes are on Calennig’s CD "Dwr Glan" (Sain SCD4025, 1990), which is rare but available through www.folkwales.org.uk/calnig.html. Visit the site for more about Calennig and to further whet your appetite for Welsh tradition. And send out good wishes to Mick, who’s recovering from a stroke. The village dances need him back soon. The tune I have for you this time, "Gypsy Hornpipe #1," is not on Mick and Pat’s CD, but I swear I’ve heard them play it in Llantrisant. It’s been recorded but I can’t recall by whom. This is both a perfect example of a pure, old-fashioned hornpipe and a typically happy Welsh melody. There’s really no trick to playing it, other than to play it every bit as syncopated as indicated in the notation. And I find I often play a unison low D with the high D on the first beat of the 5th bar in the B part, since the melody in the previous bar is pointing you down in that direction. I hope this won’t be the last Welsh tune to find its way into your repertoire. We can’t have too many happy tunes these days. |
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