John Peacock (piper) - Peacock's Tunes

Peacock's Tunes

This, the first published book of music for Northumbrian smallpipes, contains much of the most characteristic music of the instrument, variation sets with a single-octave range. It is the main source for this body of music. Some of these tunes may be compared with earlier versions from the William Dixon manuscript, from more than 60 years earlier. Some of these are very similar - Cut and Dry Dolly is an elaboration on Dixon's Cut and Dry Dolly the new way, while I saw my Love come passing by me is also very like its precursor in Dixon. A pair which can be compared closely are Peacock's Wylam Away, and Dixon's Gingling Geordie; apart from inessential differences in key and note length, most strains in the one have close parallels with some strain in the other. However the strains occur in a different order, and melodic figures may be swapped in order between the two versions of a given strain. Evidently these versions were current over the intervening 60-70 years. Other Peacock variation sets are less closely related to the Dixon versions; in particular My Hinny sits ower late up is much shorter than, and rather different from, Dixon's Adam a Bell.

Some of the Peacock variation sets such as Cuckold come out of the Amrey, based on the Scottish tune Struan Robertson's Rant, are not known from any earlier source. The collection also contains adaptations of other music, particularly some Scottish fiddle music, to smallpipes. Some of these pieces, like My Ain Kind Dearie, need the keyed chanter with its extended range; this tune in particular is notable for the detailed notation of the variation and the ornaments. This may give some idea what Bewick meant by 'his lilts, his pauses and his variations'. Some tunes in the collection, such as The Black and the Grey, are adaptations to a single-octave chanter of Border Pipe tunes with a nine note range; necessarily something of the original was lost, and this adaptation in particular is less successful, however some others, such as Over the Border, work very well in Peacock's version.

The whole collection, with some notes on the tunes, may be viewed online on the FARNE archive, or at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/musicfiles/manuscripts/peacock.pdf. The music was republished by the Northumbrian Pipers' Society in 1999.

The manuscript tunebooks of Peacock's pupil, Robert Bewick, contain some twenty single octave variation sets not found in the Peacock collection; it is possible that they too formed part of Peacock's repertoire, or were developed from versions of Peacock's, being stylistically very similar to those in 'A Favorite Collection'.