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Author Topic: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project  (Read 60546 times)

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Sandra Cameron

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #200 on: January 24, 2019, 10:46:26 PM »

Hello – I’m the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of John Buttrey. I’ve just found this forum page and see that there is some discussion about the tunes being written for the fife.
Various fifers at Fort York in Toronto, Canada have talked to me about the ms. It seems the fifers supplied the military and social music for the soldiers and that many times the same tunes were used for both. One of these fifers, Tracy Macdonnell, has played the entire ms and can play a huge number of the tunes at the drop of a hat. He does use more than one fife. I could ask him about the keys of fifes etc. if you have any particular questions.
The forts in Canada have been very interested in this manuscript since I had it microfiched in the early 1970’s at the Nat’l Archives, as this is the music that was being played at the time of the forts. Buttrey tunes are often used at the forts now and in re-enactment bands like the Drums of the Crown Forces. https://www.drums1812.org/aboutus  Ross Flowers, drum major of the Drums of the Crown Forces, would also be very willing to answer any questions. From my About Us page you can see the people who have been involved in researching this ms. I imagine all of them would be willing to answer questions that you might have.
http://www.buttreyfifemusic.ca/about
« Last Edit: January 24, 2019, 11:42:05 PM by Sandra Cameron »
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Sandra Cameron

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #201 on: January 24, 2019, 11:48:44 PM »

At the opposite end of the Buttrey Ms, starting at the cover and working inwards, there are indexes for the melodies and harmonies; 49 unnumbered melodies interspersed with drawings and 49 harmonies; and the text of the Battle of St. Kitts. You can see how these play out here:  http://www.buttreyfifemusic.ca/melodies/unnumbered-melodies/

After the 10th unnumbered melody is “A Gamut for the Fiddlers”.  This is the only mention of fiddlers in the ms.
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Sandra Cameron

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #202 on: January 25, 2019, 12:58:31 AM »

Ah, I see what you mean, having looked at the MS. The image, and that is what we are transcribing, merely says "O What a Beau (or Beauty? I can't make it out and the index doesn't help) my Granny was" - then does it faintly say "A Quickstep"? I see no reference to carrols or K.Purvis, which seems to be a note added by the Canadian transcriber or editor which doesn't concern us. It may be that K. Purvis was the transcriber and knows that it was written by Carroll? Could Google it, and if so then that info would be added as C:Carroll or whatever. Further investigation may or may not help.
On the Buttrrey website, all tune listings end with the time signature and key: eg.  Braes to Ballendine  A Retreat 3/4 G
Anything after the key is added notes by me from one of the researchers, usually Ian Bell or Ken Purvis. Anything after the key should be in italics to show that it is an added comment, but of course, I could have slipped somewhere. Therefore, if "A Retreat" comes before the key, it is copied from the ms. If it comes after the key, then Ken or Ian suggested this.
Hope this helps. Only found these forum notes today or would have reponded earlier.
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Sandra Cameron

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #203 on: January 25, 2019, 01:19:40 AM »

Oh What a Bomey etc. Haha, the author is unfamiliar with the French and has gone all phonetic!
All the texts are phonetic which can be a great hoot. (This text is earlier than Buttrey leading us to believe that the ms was passed to his reg't from a previous reg't. His reg't was new when he joined.)
"on the 26th of Junearey 1782) ... We Whear Covred by frigats in our landing likewise the prince Gorg was hunder sail to asist us in Case any patroats should be thear to open on us but thar was None"
Can anyone figure out the where the accent is from ?
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Sandra Cameron

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #204 on: January 25, 2019, 02:47:51 AM »

Tune 189 has in the typed notes 'Prince Lonarians March'. I've put this down as a title and in the Z: field noted I can't quite read it as such on the ms.
Does this mean the person making those typed notes could read it better when reading the actual manuscript, or are they too guessing?
A bit of both? Ken Purvis was much better at reading the titles than I was, but I did check each to see if I agreed. I used a magnifying glass on the original ms and whatever else help I could get.

As to #189, by scrolling in on the website I can read "Prince ___rians March" and with my magnifying glass on the original ms I can see it is "Lonerians". I definitely vouch for an "e" in the middle, as on the website, not an "a".
« Last Edit: January 25, 2019, 02:56:17 AM by Sandra Cameron »
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Steve_freereeder

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #205 on: January 25, 2019, 06:53:33 AM »

Hello – I’m the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of John Buttrey....
Welcome to the forum Sandra!
Many thanks for sharing the John Buttrey manuscript with us all. It is a fascinating document and a wonderful snapshot in time of the music played by a Lincolnshire musician living in the late 18th/early 19th centuries. I love all the beautiful illustrations too.
Your comments are also very informative. Please keep them coming!
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Thrupenny Bit

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #206 on: January 25, 2019, 08:36:25 AM »

Yes, welcome aboard Sandra!
My friend asked me if I knew about a tune played by John Kirkpatrick, an amazing player over here, and I asked my friend and  fellow member Julian. That chance question led us to the ms and you know the rest!
I'd like to add my thanks for allowing us to transcribe the ms. It's a wonderful project for us and I feel privileged to be able to help in this task.
Q
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Thrupenny Bit

I think I'm starting to get most of the notes in roughly the right order...... sometimes!

Tone Dumb Greg

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #207 on: January 25, 2019, 09:56:15 AM »

Hello Sandra,

Thank you for letting us be involved in this and for the help you are giving.
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Roger Hare

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #208 on: January 25, 2019, 10:21:15 AM »

Hello – I’m the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of John Buttrey...
Sandra, you and I have already exchanged private messages about different (though related) matters,
but I'll just add my two-penn'orth - welcome to the forum! Thank you again for making this fantastic
resource available to a wider adience.

Roger.
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Thrupenny Bit

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #209 on: January 25, 2019, 11:40:18 AM »

Back to deciphering the MS:
Currently looking at 669, bar 4 of the A music, and similar in the bar below it in the ms.
I have something that looks like an inverted 'L'. A definite straight line on the top, not a blob that I'd expect to denote a note.
Is this a pause or a 'ghost' marking?
It makes sense listening to the tune if I add it as  a pause.....
cheers
Q
currently sorting a few more tunes!
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Thrupenny Bit

I think I'm starting to get most of the notes in roughly the right order...... sometimes!

Pete Dunk

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #210 on: January 25, 2019, 12:48:39 PM »

If it looks a bit like a back to front number 7 then it's possibly a crotchet rest which used to look like a reversed quaver rest . . .
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Thrupenny Bit

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #211 on: January 25, 2019, 12:55:20 PM »

Yep that's the boy!
I tried adding the rest into the notation when I asked here and it made sense within the tune, but I wanted to make sure.
Thanks Pete.
Q
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Thrupenny Bit

I think I'm starting to get most of the notes in roughly the right order...... sometimes!

Sandra Cameron

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #212 on: January 25, 2019, 06:52:48 PM »

Yes, welcome aboard Sandra!
My friend asked me if I knew about a tune played by John Kirkpatrick, an amazing player over here, and I asked my friend and  fellow member Julian. That chance question led us to the ms and you know the rest!
We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Ian Bell, melodeon player in Canada, who harassed the Cdn Natl'l Archives in the 80's about finding old music until he found the Buttrey MS; sent the Shropshire tune to John Kirkpatrick; then when tracked down last month, told you folks about the Buttrey website. He's the piece that brought us all together.

You might enjoy seeing his Ontario Traditional Music Library website: http://www.ontariotraditionalmusic.ca/results?subject=21&page=1     

I already knew Ian from contra dancing and Folk Festivals but only through his website last year did I find out he was interested in my ms. He came to visit it the next day !
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Sandra Cameron

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #213 on: January 25, 2019, 07:02:30 PM »

'My' section (1-43) includes several tunes where the Buttrey team have already transcribed the tune and included a JPEG image of the score on the web site. I am using these as the initial basis for my own transcriptions, but once I have an initial draft, I will go back and carefully compare the Buttrey transcriptionwith the page image, and make any 'necessary' changes.
Please note that the previous transcribers were working from what I am told was a really horrible 1970's microfiche or later on some early 1990's black & white photos taken by Fort York. They are now in love with the new colour photos taken by me and Ross Flowers which are "so much easier to read" (although still quite something to tackle). So what you are seeing is probably much more accurate than what they were able to see.
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Sandra Cameron

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #214 on: January 25, 2019, 07:14:22 PM »

I cannot think of a single instance where late 18th - early 19th century music of this genre would ever have a 5/4 time signature!
I assume this is #27. I have revised it to 3/4. (When typing the lists, I did not check the time or key signatures provided by Fort York but included them simply because it seemed they must be helping someone.) I hope you like having the "suspected" titles under each photo. Working those out was a huge project for the first half of the ms. Eventually the ink and penmanship got better so the photos could be read themselves.
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Thrupenny Bit

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #215 on: January 25, 2019, 07:33:41 PM »

Ah... thanks Sandra.
John Kirkpatrick lives in Shropshire and actively digs out old tunes from his area. For Ian Bell to dig it out and send JK the Shropshire Militia Hornpipe was fortuitous indeed as it was the catalyst for all this. I'd assumed John had found it himself. That's answered that question!
Q
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Thrupenny Bit

I think I'm starting to get most of the notes in roughly the right order...... sometimes!

Sandra Cameron

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #216 on: January 25, 2019, 08:27:59 PM »

X:191
T:Sandra Cameron's March,aka. JBut.191
T:Slow March. JBut.191, A
Z:Village Music Project Quinton Cumbes 2019
R:Slow March
N:In it's unedited state this seems to make little sense, but
N:I have made a heavily edited version which is quite pleasant,
N:and named it after the donor of the MS - C.Partington, Ed.
So I have my own march now !!   It's quite pretty (in the edited version). I'm honoured.
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Julian S

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #217 on: January 25, 2019, 08:30:04 PM »

Ah... thanks Sandra.
John Kirkpatrick lives in Shropshire and actively digs out old tunes from his area. For Ian Bell to dig it out and send JK the Shropshire Militia Hornpipe was fortuitous indeed as it was the catalyst for all this. I'd assumed John had found it himself. That's answered that question!
Q

And my friend Q asked me if I knew the tune (as I live in Shropshire and know John K). I didn't - but a search on line led me to a review of the recording by John K which mentioned the Buttrey ms - and so I found this wonderful collection and shared the news with Q. I didn't at first appreciate that the source was hardly known over here...And I am so pleased that that will change.
As a keen student of military history I also wonder whether there are other manuscripts from this period buried in regimental archives...
J
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Sandra Cameron

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #218 on: January 25, 2019, 08:55:46 PM »

a search on line led me to a review of the recording by John K which mentioned the Buttrey ms - and so I found this wonderful collection and shared the news with Q. ...
As a keen student of military history I also wonder whether there are other manuscripts from this period buried in regimental archives...
Many thanks for bringing us all together.   (:)

A drum major who uses the Buttrey MS with his fife and drum band has said "this is the only collection of British military music that we know of, created in and around the Napoleonic period by a Drum Major of a British Battalion”.

Would love to know if any of you know of other such manuscripts that I could pass along to them.
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Roger Hare

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Re: The VMP Buttrey MSS Project
« Reply #219 on: January 26, 2019, 05:16:55 AM »

I cannot think of a single instance where late 18th - early 19th century music of this genre would ever have a 5/4 time signature!
I assume this is #27. I have revised it to 3/4. (When typing the lists, I did not check the time or key signatures provided by Fort York but included them simply because it seemed they must be helping someone.) I hope you like having the "suspected" titles under each photo. Working those out was a huge project for the first half of the ms. Eventually the ink and penmanship got better so the photos could be read themselves.

Yup, it's 27 - one of 'mine'. Without going back over the (now voluminous) posts in the thread, I think I raised
the query about the possibility of it being 5/4, and Steve_freereeder's comment was a response to my query.
I subsequently 'corrected' the time sig. to 3/4 and it sounds fine.

I also convinced myself by a little experiment in 'calligraphy' that a copperplate 5 and 3 could be mistaken one
for the other when the thinner diagonal stroke (on the 3) and vertical stroke (on the 5) have faded.

However, I now draw your collective attention to No. 43 - it really does look like a 5/4 to me. On my first pass,
I have transcribed it as 3/4, because of the (entirely reasonable) comment above, but what does 'the body of the
kirk' think? Is it a 5, or is it a 3?

Roger
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