Music, Audio, Video

By François Behr. Found in a collection of music at Cliffe Castle, Keighley, and research by a number of members of Bacca Pipes Folk Club in Keighley, who get together monthly to play music - originally Welsh tunes but that has expanded to include music from many other places now.

First, Jennie Ellison posted this link: Cliffe Castle: A museum with musical links on Facebook.

Then, Helen Hockenhull got a copy from Cliffe Castle and extracted the melody line.

Mike Hockehull posted an email to the group with the tune and a PDF scan of the original piano score, suggesting "it might be worth a try as a little project with local links."

Anahata extracted a cello part from the left hand side of the piano score, and wrote a harmony part that copied the the part of piano right hand that follows much of the tune in thirds, and composed a new countermelody for the middle section, which was otherwise only tune and a rather flowery bass line.

Now Mary and Anahata have recorded this version, with Mary multi tracked on tune and harmony, and Anahata playing a cello part which for this recording he actually recorded as two cello parts, to avoid tuning problems on double-stopped chords.

This is late Victorian parlour music, not the sort of thing we usually play, but it's fun.

We also think this might be the sort of music Scott Joplin was listening to before he started playing and composing ragtime, especially his more lyrical and harmonically adventurous pieces.

There's no video. It would have been too complicated.