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Traditional Music
Kerr's Merry Melodies
In the
1870s1 the Glasgow music publishing company
James S Kerr published a series of twelve books collectively called
Kerr's Famous Collections for the Violin. The books covered
categories such as Pretty Tunes of All Nations and Popular Dance
Music for the Violin. Of most interest to me are the four collections
of Merry Melodies (Books 1, 2, 10 and 11), each consisting of around 445
reels, strathspeys, hornpipes, jigs, marches, airs, and so on. The
selection appears to be largely from older books - the Gow collections,
Lowe's collections, etc - but there seems to be many contributions from
contemporary composers,
Carl Volti being the most
prominent.
1 = Charles Gore, in his monumental reference work "The Scottish Fiddle Music Index" (Musselburgh, Scotland, 1994), gives the publication date for "Kerr's Collection of Merry Melodies for the Violin" as "from 1875".
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