I was going to comment, but this really merits a full post.
The Miller Brothers CD isn't that great for calling, especially "Money Musk." I had bought it with that purpose in mind, but it's too improvisational and the tune length doesn't match the way the dance is danced. It's also very, very fast. Startlingly so.
I'm really loving the Henry Ford CD right now. I ordered it from Stig Malmo and it was definitely worth the money ($30 for 2 CDs, including postage). It has "Money Musk" and a ton of other great music and calling on it. Most dances are on there w/ and w/o calls. I also own the companion book in my personal dance library and would be happy to bring it to a dance for anyone to look at. Just remind me.
The trad caller's yahoo group really helped me to understand why I was having trouble puzzling out the Miller Bros. CD. Go join. Lurk if you like. Learn a lot, especially about more traditional dances. Right now they're talking about "Strip Ninepin."
In addition, the CDSS (are you a member yet?) column on cracking chestnuts spoke to the evolution of the "Money Musk" tune and dance. There's one on "Hull's Victory" too, which specifically recommends a forward & back balance.
Dancing these so-called chestnuts, btw, really isn't that old. These are the dances that Childgrove was dancing back in the late 70s.
I was talking to Larry about it last night, and he said that they used to dance all night long, and the unequal dances is what let them do that--he said no one ever sat out a dance. In addition, he said, the fact that the inactives stood back gave the active couples room to really dance hot and hard. I hadn't thought about it before, but what he said made a lot of sense.
3 comments:
We did manage to do Money Musk at that brisk tempo. Wade said it was the 24-bar version, so that makes it the “old” version, right? It was a bit peppy for us, but we were doing it for the first time. The couple of times we got the timing really right, it felt great, like a good hot dance. I am told that playing Money Musk fast was, for years, a popular way to show off your fiddling virtuosity, so the tempo on the Chestnuts CD just added a bit of authenticity to our experience. We might prefer to try a slightly different period of the tune’s history, however, the next time we dance it. I don’t think we’d want it at its original Strathspey speed, but something a little slower would help us get through the dance better. I would love to hear the Ford CDs!
Dance Discovery did Money Musk as a Schottische, which (to tell the truth) got old on the fifteenth or thirtieth time through, and I would have loved to have been able to break into a good, high-energy contradance tempo.
Actually, if you read the column, you'll realize that the "old" version was 32 bars, while "modern" version (which people think is old) is 24 bars. The Ford version is played ABCD.
CDSS is in the process of putting out a booklet of all the chestnuts from the column along w/ an accompanying CD. Can't wait.
The "old" version of Money Musk (which is the original version), according to the articles, was a strathspey composed in 1776 and first published in 1780. The "new" version dates from the middle of the 19th century, so the new version of the tune is at least 150 years old, and the dance as we tried to dance it is likely as old as that. The article speculates that the dance originally fit a standard 32 bar version of the tune. The "new" version of the tune plays the A and B parts of the original strathspey one time apiece rather than two, and adds a third part to the tune to give it the unusual 24 bar length. From talking with some of the musicians, I get the feeling that there are many odd versions of the tune out there, and that dancers have adopted the dance to fit it in various ways.
So, Deborah, if the Ford version is ABCD, does that make it 24 or 32 bars? (Sounds like it oughta be 32)
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