William Dixon Manuscript
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William Dixon Manuscript
The William Dixon manuscript, written down between 1733 and 1738 in Northumberland, is the oldest known manuscript of pipe music from the British Isles, and the most important source of music for the Border pipes. It is currently located in the A.K. Bell Library, Perth, Scotland. Little is known of William Dixon's biography, except what has been learned from this manuscript, and from parish records in Northumberland. The man The only direct evidence for the author's identity comes from the manuscript itself, giving his name and two others, Parcival and John, who may have been his sons. It also gives dates from 1733 to 1738. Many of the tunes in the manuscript were, and some remain, current in Northumberland, or are named after places in the region. Baptismal records for that county show that a William Dixson was christened in Stamfordham, Northumberland, in 1678, and that Parsivall and John, sons of William Dixson, were baptised nearby at Fenwick, near Stamfordham, in 1708 an ...
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Border Pipes
The border pipes are a type of bagpipe related to the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe. It is perhaps confusable with the Scottish smallpipe, although it is a quite different and much older instrument. Although most modern Border pipes are closely modelled on similar historic instruments, the modern Scottish smallpipes are a modern reinvention, inspired by historic instruments but largely based on Northumbrian smallpipes in their construction. The name, which is modern, refers to the Anglo-Scottish Border region, where the instrument was once common, so much so that many towns there used to maintain a piper. The instrument was found much more widely than this, however; it was noted as far north as Aberdeenshire, south of the Border in Northumberland and elsewhere in the north of England. Indeed, some late 17th-century paintings, such as a tavern scene by Egbert van Heemskerck, probably from south-eastern England, show musicians playing such instruments. Other names have been use ...
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Stamfordham
Stamfordham is a village and civil parish in Northumberland, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2001 Census was 1,047, rising to 1,185 at the 2011 Census. The place-name ''Stamfordham'' is first attested in the Pipe Rolls for 1188, where it appears as ''Stanfordhamn'', which roughly translates as 'village at the stony ford'. The Church of England parish church of St Mary the Virgin was built in the 13th century and overrestored under the direction of Benjamin Ferrey in 1848. In addition tSt Mary's there is a non-denominationa The large village green contains both a market cross (the Butter Crossdatingfrom 1735) and a village lock-up which is Grade II listed and dates from the early 19th century, pre-dating the formation of police forces. The village has an Ofsted 'outstanding' rated schoolStamfordham Primary School, a historiVillage Hall(originally the school), a public houseSwinburne Arms, an annual fête and car show held on the August bank holiday Monda ...
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Blast Furnaces
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric pressure. In a blast furnace, fuel ( coke), ores, and flux (limestone) are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while a hot blast of air (sometimes with oxygen enrichment) is blown into the lower section of the furnace through a series of pipes called tuyeres, so that the chemical reactions take place throughout the furnace as the material falls downward. The end products are usually molten metal and slag phases tapped from the bottom, and waste gases (flue gas) exiting from the top of the furnace. The downward flow of the ore along with the flux in contact with an upflow of hot, carbon monoxide-rich combustion gases is a countercurrent exchange and chemical reaction process. In contrast, air furnaces (such as reverberator ...
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Charles Macintosh (composer And Naturalist)
Charles Macintosh (1839–1922), known as 'the Perthshire Naturalist', was a musician and self-taught amateur naturalist from Inver, near Dunkeld, Perthshire, Scotland. He, with his younger brother James, who was a fiddler and himself a composer, represented the third generation of an important musical family in the area. Their grandfather James (1791-1876) had learned fiddle from Niel Gow, who also lived in Inver. Charles spent nearly all his life in the small cottage in Inver where he was born, only moving in with his brother in Dunkeld for the last few months of his life. He worked as a postman, after losing the fingers of his left hand in an accident at a sawmill when young. This disability stopped him playing the fiddle, but he was able to play the cello, stopping the strings with the edge of his hand. He was also precentor in the local Free Church, as his father, also Charles, had been before him. He was also superintendent of the Sunday School. He composed several dance tun ...
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Niel Gow
Niel Gow (1727 – 1 March 1807) was the most famous Scottish fiddler of the eighteenth century. Early life Gow was born in Strathbraan, Perthshire, in 1727, as the son of John Gow and Catherine McEwan. The family moved to Inver in Perthshire when Niel was an infant. He started playing the fiddle when very young and at age 13 received his first formal lessons from one John Cameron. In spite of being something of a musical prodigy, he originally trained as a weaver, but eventually gave up that trade to become a full-time musician. He was widely considered the best fiddle player in Perthshire, an area which was renowned for its musicians—the story goes that at age 18 he entered a competition that was being judged by John McCraw, a blind musician, who awarded him the first prize and then went on to claim that he "would ken his bow hand among a hunder players" (detect Niel's style among a hundred players). This attracted the attention of the Duke of Atholl, who became Niel's ...
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Dorothea Ruggles-Brise
Lady Dorothea Louisa Ruggles-Brise (née Stewart-Murray; 25 March 1866 – 28 December 1937), was the daughter of the 7th Duke of Atholl. She was an expert about and a collector of Scottish traditional music. Life Lady Dorothea Louisa Stewart-Murray was born in 1866 to John Stewart-Murray, 7th Duke of Atholl, and his wife, Louisa Moncrieff (daughter of Sir Thomas Moncreiffe, 7th Baronet). Her family had been the patrons of Niel Gow, the great Scottish fiddler, composer and music publisher, and she grew up with a lifelong interest in, and later became a great authority on, and collector of, Scottish traditional music. Even in her youth, she had started to compile a collection of little-known Scottish melodies, and would perform these herself. In 1895, she married Harold Goodeve Ruggles-Brise, an officer in the Grenadier Guards, and lived with him in London. A photograph of her, dated the year before this, is in the National Trust Collection at Polesden Lacey. A 6/8 pipe march comm ...
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Northumbrian Smallpipe
The Northumbrian smallpipes (also known as the Northumbrian pipes) are bellows-blown bagpipes from North East England, where they have been an important factor in the local musical culture for more than 250 years. The family of the Duke of Northumberland have had an official piper for over 250 years. The Northumbrian Pipers' Society was founded in 1928, to encourage the playing of the instrument and its music; Although there were so few players at times during the last century that some feared the tradition would die out, there are many players and makers of the instrument nowadays, and the Society has played a large role in this revival. In more recent times the Mayor of Gateshead and the Lord Mayor of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle have both established a tradition of appointing official Northumbrian pipers. In a survey of the bagpipes in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University, the organologist Anthony Baines wrote: "It is perhaps the most civilized of the bagpipes, maki ...
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Scottish Smallpipes
The Scottish smallpipe is a bellows-blown bagpipe re-developed by Colin Ross and many others, adapted from an earlier design of the instrument. There are surviving bellows-blown examples of similar historical instruments as well as the mouth-blown Montgomery smallpipes, dated 1757, which are held in the National Museum of Scotland. Some instruments are being built as direct copies of historical examples, but few modern instruments are directly modelled on older examples; the modern instrument is typically larger and lower-pitched. The innovations leading to the modern instrument, in particular the design of the reeds, were largely taken from the Northumbrian smallpipes. Although there is evidence of small pipes dating back to 15th century, in its current form it is perhaps the youngest bagpipe with widespread popularity, having only existed in this form since the early 1980s. Characteristics Scottish smallpipes are distinguished from the Northumbrian smallpipes by the open en ...
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Northumbrian Smallpipes
The Northumbrian smallpipes (also known as the Northumbrian pipes) are bellows-blown bagpipes from North East England, where they have been an important factor in the local musical culture for more than 250 years. The family of the Duke of Northumberland have had an official piper for over 250 years. The Northumbrian Pipers' Society was founded in 1928, to encourage the playing of the instrument and its music; Although there were so few players at times during the last century that some feared the tradition would die out, there are many players and makers of the instrument nowadays, and the Society has played a large role in this revival. In more recent times the Mayor of Gateshead and the Lord Mayor of Newcastle have both established a tradition of appointing official Northumbrian pipers. In a survey of the bagpipes in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University, the organologist Anthony Baines wrote: "It is perhaps the most civilized of the bagpipes, making no attempt to ...
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Hornpipe
The hornpipe is any of several dance forms played and danced in Britain and Ireland and elsewhere from the 16th century until the present day. The earliest references to hornpipes are from England with Hugh Aston's Hornepype of 1522 and others referring to Lancashire hornpipes in 1609 and 1613. It is suggested that the hornpipe as a dance began around the 16th century on English sailing vessels. However, the dance does not seem to have become associated with sailors until after 1740 when the dancer Yates performed 'a hornpipe in the character of a Jack Tar' at Drury Lane Theatre, after which, in 1741 at Covent Garden we hear of "a hornpipe by a gentleman in the character of a sailor". Movements were those familiar to sailors of that time: "looking out to sea" with the right hand to the forehead, then the left, lurching as in heavy weather, and giving the occasional rhythmic tug to their breeches both fore and aft. Folk hornpipes The hornpipe is an Irish, Scottish and English d ...
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