Saturday 2 July 2005

I've been playing Nathaniel Gow's fiddle tune Coilsfield House for at least 20 years in various forms, but it's only yesterday that I finally went to Glasgow University Library to look at the original book from around 1809, and to find out how Gow's own bassline goes. And of course it changes the character of the tune completely from my version. So I now have a choice: stick with mine which I like, or be faithful to Gow (or something in the middle). And this is at the heart of the 'early music' experience: you think the music goes a certain way, and then a striking piece of evidence comes along and points out to you that it clearly doesn't. So you have the option of historical awareness or historical ignorance, both of which can have musical value. You can stick with the familiar or easy version, but  with a bit of application, you can also look for a way to make the historically informed version as musically meaningful as the freer but ignorant one.