Out Of The Flames

Matt Seattle is a well-respected fiddle and bagpipe player from the NE of England. On this 1999 album (label, Discipline Global Mobile DGM 9907) he has recorded mainly music that would have been played on the Border Bagpipes of S. Scotland and N. England; these were a bellows-blown instrument with the same 9 - note range as the Highland pipes, which went out of use in the c19 and are currently being revived.

Five tracks, which I have denoted with a D, comprise tunes taken from the Dixon Manuscript, written in Northumberland in 1733 or within a few years afterwards. This MS had been known about for some time - a biography of one of its owners published in the 1920s reveals that he offered to give it to a lady visitor but was offended by her offer to buy it to the extent that he threw it in the fire. She snatched it out - hence this album’s title - and duly kept it. It recently came to light. It is evidently a compendium of Border Pipe tunes and variations.

I have to confess the tunes themselves don’t grab me to the point I want to learn them - the one I most like on the album is Matt’s own stirring air “Lindisfarne”. The playing, pipes and other instruments, is nice enough with some intriguing arrangements.

This hornpipe from the Vickers MS of 1770 demonstrates that the kind of 4/4 hornpipe associated with the fiddler/composer James Hill was around in the NE (of England) decades before he turned up on Tyneside. The West Indian sounds very much in the manner of Hill’s compositions.

The D’s denote not five tracks but seven distinct tunes.

On Track 10, the tune list is headed by The Rakish Quality. This is actually the name given to the set of four tunes that follow. It is an alternative name for Four Bare Legs Together, one of these tunes. So, there are only 4 tunes on this track, not 5.