Jinkey Wells, onetime
fiddler for Bampton MorrisEnglish Fiddle
Any country's fiddle style can be regarded to some extent as
an accident of history; if so the English Fiddle has had more
of a disaster than an accident. Our nearest neighbours Ireland
and Scotland have incredibly rich and vibrant fiddle traditions,
but what do English fiddlers choose to play- well most of them
play Irish and Scottish!
English fiddle is regarded as plain, clumpy and unornamented,
fit only for the accompaniment of Morris Dancing (itself the butt
of more than it's fair share of jibes!)
Is this really the true situation, and if so how did it come about?
To understand the present situation we have to look back through several stages in the tradition's history; firstly the largely pre-industrial, pre-Vctorian era; secondly the Victorian era, thirdly the 20th Century and up to the present.
There is little in the way of an unbroken line of tradition for the English fiddle, so most of what we know about pre- Victorian playing has been reconstructed from published music, written records and notes from the time. Paul Roberts in particular has done a great deal of research in this area, and we have a fairly detailed picture of what the fiddle would have been doing through the 17th and 18th centuries.
Jinkey Wells, onetime
fiddler for Bampton Morris
Pre-Victorian English Fiddle
The repertoire would have consisted mostly of jigs, reels and hornpipes, not dissimilar from the Celtic tradition we see today, but with a wide variety of rhythms and time signatures, including several "obscure" ones such as 6/4, 9/4.12/8 and 3/2. Hornpipes were probably the speciality, particularly in Northern England, the often complex melodies giving the opportunity for flashy displays of technique.
A wide variety of tempos was used, from slow to very fast. The fiddle would have been held low on the chest and pointing a little down, the bow gripped some way up from the frog, effectively shortening the bow length. The bow itself was shorter, and on the fiddle there was no chin rest, the bridge was flatter and the neck shorter.
The fiddle would mostly have been used to play for dancing, so a strong rhythm and maximum volume were import ant. To this end double stops and open string drones were frequently used. The drones would have been partly a response to the bagpipes, which were the chief competitor to the fiddle in England as well as Ireland and Scotland; they were also a carry- over from the medieval fiddle style which was almost exclusively dominated by drones. Various cross tunings (notably ADAE, AEAE, and AEAC#) were used- a practice now rarely seen in English playing. A good variety of keys was used, with majors all the way from A through D and G down to E flat, and minors from B and E down to C.
A bowing pattern identical to America's Nashville Shuffle was widespread; in this pattern each group of four quavers (half notes) is split so that the first two are slurred or bowed together, whilst the next two have separate bows. The effect is " doo-ah da da,doo-ah da da." Often there is a strong accent on the third note (doo-ah DA da).
The style was rich in fingered ornamentation, with most of the rolls and turns currently found in Irish music, and the staccato repeated semiquaver called the Burl by the Scots.
Variation and improvisation seem to have been an important
aspect of playing; this ranged from small variations of rhythm
and ornamentation, the addition of a degree of syncopation, and
the development of complete and complex variations on whole sections
of the melody- a technique known as "Division playing"
not unlike jazz soloing.
Often two or three fiddlers would either alternate their solos
(Like playing"fours", in the modern jazz idiom,or all
improvise together, Dixieland-style.
English fiddle in Victorian times
The picture we have, then of pre-Victorian English fiddling,
is a style very rich and deep in almost every aspect, sharing
a great deal in common with Irish, Scottish and American styles;
indeed it is thought that at that time these four styles would
all have been much closer than they are today.
Much of that richness and variety was, sadly, lost in Victorian
times. Industrialisation and the move from farm to factory would
have disrupted the lives and traditions of many musicians. New
dances came in such as the polka and waltz; ballroom dancing took
over from barn dancing; brass band and light orchestras took over
from village string bands. The bagpipes virtually disappeared,
and instead the fiddle had to contend with the accordion and concertina,
capable of less harmonic subtlety and more limited in keys.
At a time when English culture was seen as the dominant force
in the British Isles, the old country style of fiddling would
have been seen as backward and dated, and anything new and modern
was jumped upon. In Ireland and Scotland, conversely, a new nationalism
was growing and traditional folk styles were seen as symbolic
of nation pride and individuality, even a form of resistance against
the oppressor.
The result of all these changes was that in the 20th century English fiddling was left as a shadow of its former self. When collectors such as Cecil Sharp started writing down what was left of the old tunes, the repertoire was already much denuded. One of the few situations in which a tradition of sorts was still alive, was in the accompaniment of Morris dancing, though this was in reality only one fairly narrow aspect of what had been a much wider tradition. The pace of dancing itself dictated the rhythm of the playing, the repertoire was limited to what suited the dancing, and the presence of an inevitable melodeon, concertina or accordion limited the keys available, whilst ornamentation was no longer relevant or appropriate.
To make matters worse, revivalist fiddlers in the 70' s deliberately tried to make English fiddling distinct from its far more successful Celtic neighbours by stressing the plodding rhythms and plain delivery.
Contemporary English fiddle
More recently, players such as Pete Cooper, Chris Bartram and Katherine Tickell have done much to redress the balance and ton popularise regional English styles (Staffordshire, Oxfordshire and Northumbria respectively) through recordings, workshops and writing.
John Dipper
Among the most influential players today are Chris Wood and John Dipper, now working together in the English Acoustic Collective, with a dynamic and forceful agenda to prove to the English that they do, after all, have folk music worth listening to.