Mathematician’s hornpipe

A J. Scott Skinner tune. There was a marvelous midi of a pianist and the sheet music on the RSCDS Stirling Branch web site a while back, so I transcribed the abc from there. I can play all the notes sequentially on my piano, but I can’t actually play the tune, if you know what I mean. But what a tune to stop your heart!

This tune was on the request list. I was recently back at the Stirling web site, and while they still have midis, I couldn’t find a way to select a particular tune or get sheet music any more. If you’d like to look around they’re at http://www.rscds-stirling.com.

cj

Good work - I think it needs to be listed as a hornpipe though, not a reel.

I changed it to a hornpipe as suggested. I guess I thought reel automatically because a friend of mine composed a Scottish country dance to the tune, and I just think of all dances as jigs or reels. Of course, the dances don’t actually change, it’s the tunes that do, so hornpipe should have occurred to me. Thanks for the correction.

a lovely tune - certainly a hornpipe although I like to play it [on the guitar] in a sort-of ragtime fashion. I havent heard it played on the fiddle but it is getting to be a popular guitar piece - Ian Melrose has a nice arrangement.

It is in the James Hunter book [#332]

Simon Mayer in his book Mastering the Mandolin has a good clear arrangement - he plays it at a slowish pace on the CD but the tune is still a cracker! Unfortunately I’m still trying to learn it - will get there one day….

The sheetmusic doesn’t correspond exactly to the ABC. In particular, the high g‘ appears in the sheetmusic as f’’.

Sorry, I meant f‘ and not f’’ !

A copy of the final draft of this tune as sent to the publisher in 1900 is on Aberdeen University’s Scott Skinner website http://www.abdn.ac.uk/scottskinner/index.shtml at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/scottskinner/display.php?ID=JSS0618&Creator=1&Creator_Manuscript=2
This website seems to be a fairly comprehensive collection of Scott Skinner’s manuscripts but unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be an alphabetical index or way of accessing a particular tune (The Mathematician in this instance) other than trawling through a large amount of irrelevant material.
There are a few differences between the original tune and the version as posted (as one would expect after the passage of a century), a major one being the organisation of the repeats.

I’ll also draw attention to the bowing slurs shown in the final draft manuscript (a clear indication of how this hornpipe would have been played by Skinner), and the accompaniment which sets out the very basic chord structure.

this one’s a b*tch on the pipes that’s for sure :S

wonderful tune altogether though

I wish the second part was actually playable on winds…

Well, it’s definitely playable on winds… it might be pretty troublesome on flute, but whistle could do it… Although, I’m not sure anybody would particularly enjoy it too much. I know a friend who would have a ball with it, being one who showed me how high a whistle can go… and probably caused what seems to be a slight hearing loss in my right ear.

What do you mean by “playable”?

This transcription is just barely possible in the normal range of the fife. The accidentals are a bitch unless you have a 10-hole fife, and the high-c, while normally just out of range, can be squawked out by playing the high-b, and lifting the left pinky (or L3 on a 6-hole). This is super fun to play!

X: 1
T:The Mathematician
C:J.S. Skinner
M:C|
R:Hornpipe
L:1/8
K:G
DC|B,C^CD BGDB,|CD_E=E cAEG|Fedc BAGF|(3GBA (3GFE D2DC|
B,C^CD BGDB,|CD_E=E cAEG|Fedc BAGF|G2B2G2::d2|
gdBG DB,G,=F,|E,^G,A,C EAce|aecA ECA,G,|F,A,DF Acfa|
bgdB GDB,G,|CEGc egc’e|(3dba (3gfe (3ded (3cBA| [1 (3GBd (3gdB G2:| [2 G2B2G2||

Called a clog, not a hornpipe in Cape Breton, and played with an undotted rhythm, as I’ve shown.

https://youtu.be/kphr82-bcQ0

play video

BT

Typical A major variation as player by Sean McGuire.

Same as setting X:3 that I like a lot but showing the repetition of each part, the anacrusis and the ending note.

Version from legendary fiddler Sean Keane. It appears in their Album Contentment is Wealth

The wonderful Sean McGuire played this at the end of a fiddle workshop that I was fortunate enough to go to in Co. Antrim, a few years before he died. He said it was the tune that ‘scared him most’ - he could never be sure that it would come out right!

What a great tune! I’ve been trying to figure it out on fiddle for years, on and off. Just finally figured a way that isn’t really impossible if you can play in 4th and 5th position…I love it played on flute, hear this:
https://youtu.be/kphr82-bcQ0.

play video