allan atlas

JINNY AND FOLKS: with respect to the "pedigree" of the instrument. . . . .having recently completed a study of the women logged in the Wheatstone sales ledgers, i can say that i was NOT able to identify this particular Lady Lennox, whose first initial is "A". . . . . . in the end, i settled for the following: likely related to the Lennox family that bore the title of Dukes of Richmond, though it cannot be Lady Augusta Caroline Gordon-Lennox, daughter of charles Gordon, 5th Duke of Richmond, since she had already married Prince William Augustus Edward of Saxe-Weimar in 1851 [the citation dates from 1856]; perhaps related to the Lord George Lennox of 38 St Jame's Street or the Lord William Lennox of 1 Berkeley Square. . .note that a Lady William Lennox directed an orchestra of twenty-eight ladies in the early twentieth century. . . wish i could pin down her identity with greater precision. . . .i'd sure welcome someone else doing it..........Allan

ANTHONY: i'd second Larry's idea of looking at Alistair Anderson's method book. . . . .i think it's a good starting place for someone who's just getting started. . . . . . i would NOT recommend the victorian tutors. . . . .they are not organized in an intelligent way with respect to pedagogy...........allan

DAVID: no problem at all. . . . .and happy to chime in. . . . . .Allan

ANTHONY: well, as long as David mentioned my name. . . . let me chime in. . . . .i'm afraid i too know no English players down your way. . . . .i think i offered to make some copies of music for you from our little "library". . . .the offer still stands. . . .but the wheels grind slowly (especially since i'm on leave this semester). . . . let me know what you'd like. . . .best in small batches of no more than two or three items at a time. . . . . .allan

ALAN: many thanks for that information. . . . . .Rutterford playing Blagrove. . . . . .should be fascinating. . . . . .allan

ALAN: thanks for the up-date. . . .good to hear that the project keeps moving along. . . ..looking forward to hearing the CDs. . . . . if i remember correctly (which is something i still manage to do once in a while), there are a few recordings by turn-of-the-century concertinists ((19th-20th centuries) performing music from the Victorian tradition. . . . . .i don't recall who the concertinists are or just what they perform. . . . .any chance that English International will devote at least a track or two to them. . . . .it would be fascinating to hear the likes of Regondi and Blagrove performed by concertinists who could trace their concertina lineage back to those guys and who had their (those guys') style still firmly in their (the later guys') ears. . . . . . again, i look forward to hearing the CDs. . . . .and thanks for all the hard work. . . . ..Allan

THANKS. . . but i don't know that there's anything particularly "prestigious" about it.........allan

GOOD FOLKS: for those who might be interested. . . . . .my article "Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers: The Gendered Concertina in Victorian England, 1835-1870," has just been published in Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, vol. 39 (2006), pp. 1-234. . . . . thanks to the generosity of the RMA, we hope to have the article available on Bob Gaskins' "Concertina Library" website: www.concertina.com around the first of the new year. . . . . basically, the article draws upon the Wheatstone sales ledgers now housed in the Horniman Museum, London. . . .and let me say that without Bob's having provided a digitized version of the ledgers, which permitted me to go back to the ledgers time after time while sitting in my own little study, the article would either never have been written or would have taken much, much longer than the three years that it did take. . . . the main inventory lists every entry (there are 1,769) for every woman (there are 978), the women arranged in alphabetical order (obviously, i try to identify as many of these women as possible, place them in demographic groups, point out family relationships, student-teacher relationships, etc.). . . .three appendices rearrange the inventory by date, serial number of instrument, and price paid for the instrument. . . . . .the inventory is preceded by a 71-page essay that tries to put all the data into a musical-sociological context. . . . . let me also take this opportunity to thank a few people -- in full view of the concertina community -- for the help and support that they provided during the course of the study: Bob Gaskins, Wes Williams, Stephen Chambers, Chris Algar, and Randy Merris. . . .in fact, the article bears a dedicatation to them............Allan

Dear David: the Victorian tutors for the English concertina have many exercises that call for playing in octaves. . . . .mainly scales. . . . . .i provide one such example in my own CONTEMPLATING THE CONCERTINA: AN-HISTORICALLY INFORMED TUTOR FOR THE ENGLISH CONCERTINA, which can be had from the Button Box........Allan

FOLKS: there are not many things about which i can speak with authority. . . . .but one of them, since i brush my teeth in front of a mirror, is ME............. I am the "pretty good" concertinist to whom Pauline refers. . . . . but let me make two corrections. . . .the venue was Carnegie Recital Hall (that's the LITTLE hall. . .holds about 250 people. . . .now called Weil Hall). . . .and "feint" is not correct. . . ."collapse" is more like it.............. i think it was the Fall of 1967. . . . .i had been fighting a flu for a week or so. . . . .and the strength just gave out. . . . .the accompanist, Sam Sanders, who accompanied many of the great soloists who came through New York, passed away a few years ago. . . . . . .Allan

AS A LITTLE POSTSCRIPT: Roylance also arranged for the concertina and published tutors for the instrument, both English and Anglo. . . . . .one of the tutors for the English, "How to Learn the English Concertina Without a Master" (1877) contains some misleading remarks in its little "history" of the early concertina.............Allan

FOLKS: Wes could be right, but i'd still go with the late '40s. . . . .note that C1047, which gets going on January 1st, 1851, lists the following serial numbers for its first five entries: 3144, 2311, 2319, 2828, 2829. . . . . .so if serial number is any guide at all to PRODUCTION (as opposed to sales), i'd say that 2037 is a bit earlier. . . . we might split the difference and play it safe by saying CIRCA 1850. . . . .one of the problems is that the sales ledger that would have recorded the sales in the period immediately prior to that in C1047 is missing. . . . . thus we're missing most of 1848 and 1849-1850, during which period 2037 was likely sold.................allan

DEAR LARRY: yes, the annotation "SH" in the ledgers does indicate that the instrument is being sold second hand. . . . .given the serial number, i'd say it's from the late 1840s. . . . . .even though there is no listing for it at that time. . . . .Allan

DEAR PETER T. Would it be possible to get a "review" copy of the CD for PICA? Allan Atlas

GOOD FOLKS: just to let everyone know: volume 2 of PICA is now available in its electronic version. . . . . .one can access it through the websites of either the International Concertina Association or the Center for the Study of Free-Reed Instruments. . . . .these are, respectively: www.concertina.org and web.gc.cuny.edu/freereed. . . . . . in addition, volume 3 is now in page proofs. . . . .there are three feature articles: one on the concertina in County Clare (Gearóid O'hAllmhuráin), another on Regondi at Oxford (Susan Wollenberg), and one on concertinas in Salvation Army bands (Les Branchett). . . . .in addition, there's a major review of Anglo International by Roger Digby. . . .a historical document that deals with references to the concertina in The Times (London) in 1860). . . .a review of Dan Worral's edition of Kimber by Jody Kruskal. . . . .the picture gallery presents a mid-19th-c. photo of Mary Baker with concertina in hand (she's the sister of the famous explorer Sam Baker who discovered Lake Albert). . . . .we hope that the issue will appear somewhere around the middle of October....................allan

STEPHEN: leave it i will. . . . .there's no great rush. . . .and you're probably right about people being away. . . . . . wonder if any of those instruments are among the four that he was supposed to have given to family members at the very end of his life. . . . . . .identifying the instruments is not of earthshaking importance. . . .but it would be nice to be able to say just what they were. . . . . .unfortunately, the ledgers shed no light on the matter. . . .which may, of course, imply that they were all trebles we know that he played trios with another concertinist -- richard strutt (brother of the famous physicist john william strutt, who won the nobel prize for isolating argon) and with mary gladstone at the piano. . . .we also know that at one session they played through Beethoven piano trios. . . . .it would have been nice if they had a bass concertina to take the cello part. . . . . .they also played duets (two concertinas, with piano playing the orchestral part) from FIDELIO. . . .again, they would have needed something that could go below the treble's low "g". . . . .on the other hand, since it was a rather informal affair, one of the guys could simply have transposed up an octave when necessary..................allan

FOLKS: well. . . .guess no one has any of those instruments. . . . . .as i said. . . . .they may have had their last gasps squeezed out of them long ago . . . allan

GOOD FOLKS: I am trying to locate the whereabouts of the following nineteenth-century Wheatstone concertinas (assuming that they're even alive): 4004, 4157, 4606, 11502, and 13149 all five instruments were either sold or rented to BALFOUR during the 1850s/60s. . . . .enquiries to the family have gone for naught. . . . . any information will be generously acknowledged in a forthcoming article on which i'm working .................... Allan

Dear Maria: If you can get hold of some of the books and articles by MARIA DUNKEL, you'll find fingering charts for various kinds of bandoneons. Two places to start: "Ideographies for Bandoneon and Concertina as Examples of Alternative Notational systems in Nineteenth-Century Germany," Free-Reed Journal, 2 (2000), 5-18 and if you can handle the German: Akkordeon, Bandoneon, Konzertina im Kontext der Harmonikainstrumente. Texte zur Geschichte und Gegenwart des Akkordeons, 6 (Bochum: Augemus, 1999) the latter is a standard work on the instrument...........Allan

MIKE: you might also try looking him up in: G.C.D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage, 15 vols. (New York, 1927-49; reprint: New York, 1970). . . . . allan

DEAR MICHAEL: as Stephen noted, the sales ledgers bite the dust on May 23rd, 1870. . . .so any purchases of a Wheatstone after that date would not be recorded. . . . . . you probably noted that Dan is preparing an article for PICA, vol. 4. . . . . .let me extend an invitation to you. . . . if you're interested. . . .best to be in touch at aatlas@gc.cuny.edu Allan

DAN: you're absolutely right. . . .i missed that one. . . .thanks............my eye fell upon the latter statement, and i simply didn't go back. . . . .i think the quotation you offer certainly does testify to his playing in a "harmonic" style. . . .no doubt about it............thanks again...............and that likely would support the contention that the tutors do in fact reflect what people were playing. . . . . .allan

FOLKS: to reconsider the statement at the end of my last blurb. . . . . . i said that the teenage player says nothing that would contradict our imagining that he used a "harmonic" style of playing. . . .yet perhaps he does. . . . . he says that when he and his fiddler brother play together (that is, just the two of them), it doesn't sound that good. . . . .could that be because the overall musical texture was too thin???. . . . . .this being a result of his playing single-note melody only. . . . .things got better, however, when a harpist came along. . . . .was it the harpist's function to fill out the texture????. . . .i have no idea. . . . . in the end, much of what we have in the way of evidence (for anything) is double-edged and admits of more than one interpretation. . . . . . . .still another reason constantly to go back to the SOURCES in order to have as much evidence as possible.............Allan

FOLKS: if i may make two points: (1) as a footnote to Dave's observation: there is a very famous passage (to those who work on fifteenth-century music) in the treatise of Johannes Tinctoris. . . .after proscribing this, that, and the other contrapuntal motion, he goes on to point out that many of the very best composers use them. . . . . (2) with respect to my note in which i mentioned the teenage Anglo player interviewed by Mayhew: Dan uses one of his statements to add support for the early use of the "harmonic" style of Anglo playing. . . .Dan states that the young fellow says something to the effect that the concertina sounds like a fiddle and a harp together. . . .but this is NOT what our player says. . . .what he says is this: "We [= he and his fiddle-playing brother] never hardly went out together in the streets and play together, only once or twice, because a fiddle and a concertina don't sound well together unless a harp's with it, and the it's beautiful.". . . . he is, then, talking about three instruments, not about the concertina sounding like more than one instrument. . . . at least that's how i read it........... thus, while the teenage player says nothing that would contradict the use of "harmonic style," nothing that he says can be used to support it. . . . .Allan

DAN: i would not and cannot argue with a single thing you say. . . . . .you are far more informed about the Anglo and its tutors than i am. . . . . i really was speaking off the top of my head. . . . .just throwing out thoughts that occured to me without knowing the subject. . . . .Allan