Peter Kennedy

[Rhomylly]

Peter Kennedy, son of Douglas Kennedy (student of Cecil Sharp), and folk collector in his own right, passed away Saturday. He'd been ill with cancer for some time.

 

Apparently his website www.foltrax.org (?) has some concertina recordings available on it. (just to keep on topic )

 

I met Peter Kennedy once in the late 1990's. I was totally blown away by the amount of information contained in one human being.

 

My copy of his Folksongs of Britain and Ireland is the flagstaff of my music collection.

 

Rumor has it that Douglas Kennedy was the one that put the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance together with the tune used in the States...

[Roger Gawley]

Like everyone else, I regret the loss of a great man.

 

His websiite is at http://www.folktrax.org/ and there are indeed concertina recordings there although you may have to hunt for them.

 

There is a terse but decent obituary on the EFDSS news page at http://www.efdss.org/news.htm (top news item at time of writing)

 

We will miss him.

[Peter Brook]

Rumor has it that Douglas Kennedy was the one that put the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance together with the tune used in the States...

 

I'm sorry to hear of Peter Kennedy's passing, but slightly also amazed at this bizzare statement. I understand that the abbotts bromley tune {also know as Robinson's Tune after the chap it was noted from in the 1850's} is one of the oldest so the rumour is plain wrong.

Edited June 16, 2006 by Peter Brook

[wes williams]

Another giant of folk music leaves us. Thanks Peter; Thanks Douglas.

.... the rumour is plain wrong.

Not quite. When Cecil Sharp collected the dance they were using simple tunes like "Yankee Doodle", and the old tune was thought to be lost, because later musicians had found it too difficult. It was rediscovered, but by who and how I don't know now, although I did read about it many years ago.

[Peter Brook]

Another giant of folk music leaves us. Thanks Peter; Thanks Douglas.

.... the rumour is plain wrong.

Not quite. When Cecil Sharp collected the dance they were using simple tunes like "Yankee Doodle", and the old tune was thought to be lost, because later musicians had found it too difficult. It was rediscovered, but by who and how I don't know now, although I did read about it many years ago.

 

You may be right, I find it hard to believe. I'll talk to my father over the weekend about this. He wrote a paper on Abbots Bromley for the University of Sheffield Folklore course in the 1980s.

[wes williams]

You may be right, I find it hard to believe. I'll talk to my father over the weekend about this. He wrote a paper on Abbots Bromley for the University of Sheffield Folklore course in the 1980s.

You'll find confirmation of the loss and rediscovery in Sharp's 'Sword Dances of Northern England', perhaps only from the 2nd edition (c.1950). I vaguely remember some heated discussions in print in the early/mid 1970s.

[Rhomylly]

According to a letter Douglas Kennedy wrote Jack Langstaff (which was reprinted in a Cambridge Revels program years ago and which I have a copy of...somewhere...) Cecil Sharp found the tune, but it was Kennedy's idea to try the tune with the dance at a performance at Royal Albert Hall (which is why it's sometimes referred to as the Royal Albert Horn Dance) -- without warning Sharp in advance.

 

Kennedy says Sharp was in tears because of how extraordinarily beautiful and magical the dance suddenly became.

[Paul Read]

I got to meet Per Kennedy at the Goderich Celtic College in Ontario a few years back. Peter's presentations were so rivetting that more and more people skipped their class each day to go and listen to him. A sad loss.

[inventor]

I was very sorry to hear of Peter Kennedy's death. I first met him together with his mother Helen and father Douglas at EFDSS courses (particularly the Christmas music courses at Chelsea) in the late fifties. He played a Melodeon (25 key Hohner club 11/10/4) in D/G plus a few accidentals. I had just taken up the melodeon at that time and he encouraged my playing. He made a particular point of building up the air pressure before hitting the buttons. His mother Helen Kennedy played an English system 48 button Piccolo Wheatstone Aeola; this instrument passed on to Peter but I don't believe he ever played it. The last time I met him (it must be some 15 to 20 years ago at a Lecture he gave at the Albemarl Centre at Taunton) I mentioned this instrument to him, as I knew somebody who was particularly looking for one; but he was unwilling to part with it for sentimental reasons. He had made many recordings of traditional folk music players in the fifties.

 

Inventor

[Chris Drinkwater]

I was very sorry to hear of Peter Kennedy's death. I first met him together with his mother Helen and father Douglas at EFDSS courses (particularly the Christmas music courses at Chelsea) in the late fifties. He played a Melodeon (25 key Hohner club 11/10/4) in D/G plus a few accidentals.

 

Inventor

 

Yes, a very sad passing indeed. I believe Peter was responsible for persuading Hohner to start producing 2 row melodeons in the keys of D and G in the early 1960's as he considered these keys the ones that best suited and enabled a variety of different music instruments to play English country dance and Morris music together. Hohner, it seems, obliged to his request. Prior to that, the key of C seemed to be the main key traditional music was played in, and that tradition is still continued today in East Anglia by people like Katie Howson, the melodeon player. The English Guardian newspaper published a nice obituary about him on monday 19th June which should be viewable on their web pages at Guardian Unlimited on the net, if anyone is interested.

 

Chris

[christianmayne]

His obituary is here:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,,1800799,00.html

A sad loss. "Folksongs of Britain and Ireland" is my desert Island Book.

[Stephen Chambers]

I was very sorry to hear of Peter Kennedy's death. I first met him together with his mother Helen and father Douglas at EFDSS courses (particularly the Christmas music courses at Chelsea) in the late fifties. He played a Melodeon (25 key Hohner club 11/10/4) in D/G plus a few accidentals.

Yes, a very sad passing indeed. I believe Peter was responsible for persuading Hohner to start producing 2 row melodeons in the keys of D and G in the early 1960's as he considered these keys the ones that best suited and enabled a variety of different music instruments to play English country dance and Morris music together. Hohner, it seems, obliged to his request. Prior to that, the key of C seemed to be the main key traditional music was played in, and that tradition is still continued today in East Anglia by people like Katie Howson, the melodeon player. The English Guardian newspaper published a nice obituary about him on monday 19th June which should be viewable on their web pages at Guardian Unlimited on the net, if anyone is interested.

A sad loss indeed.

 

There's a post here about Peter and his influential role in the introduction of the D/G melodeon, going back as early as March 1949, though they were probably still pretty uncommon until the 1960s.