Southern Fiddlers and Fiddle Contests

2009-12-16 Music

Author : Chris Goertzen
Release : 2009-12-16
Genre : Music
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 314/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Southern Fiddlers and Fiddle Contests by : Chris Goertzen

Download or read book Southern Fiddlers and Fiddle Contests written by Chris Goertzen. This book was released on 2009-12-16. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Southern Fiddlers and Fiddle Contests explores the phenomenon of American fiddle contests, which now have replaced dances as the main public event where American fiddlers get together. Chris Goertzen studies this change and what it means for audiences, musicians, traditions, and the future of southern fiddle music. Goertzen traces fiddling and fiddle contests from mid-eighteenth-century Scotland to the modern United States. He takes the reader on journeys to the important large contests, such as those in Hallettville, Texas; Galax, Virginia; Weiser, Idaho; and to smaller ones, including his favorite in Athens, Alabama. He reveals what happens on stage and during such off-stage activities as camping, jamming, and socializing, which many fiddlers consider much more important than the competition. Through multiple interviews, Goertzen also reveals the fiddlers' lives as told in their own words. The reader learns how and in what environments these fiddlers started playing, where they perform today, how they teach, what they think of contests, and what values they believe fiddling supports. Southern Fiddlers and Fiddle Contests shows how such contests have become living embodiments of American nostalgia.

Championship Contest Fiddling

2016-04-13 Music

Author : Nate Olson
Release : 2016-04-13
Genre : Music
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 599/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Championship Contest Fiddling by : Nate Olson

Download or read book Championship Contest Fiddling written by Nate Olson. This book was released on 2016-04-13. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Championship Contest Fiddling contains painstakingly detailed transcriptions of 44 fiddle tunes as they were played by thirteen champions of the National Old Time Fiddlers' Contest held in Weiser, Idaho. In addition to the tunes, the book includes excerpts of extensive interviews with these champions where they offer advice on how to play in the contest style, prepare for contests and deal with nerves, adapt and arrange tunes to make them your own, and play with drive, among many other topics. It is an indispensable resource for fiddlers seeking to understand contest fiddling better and prepare for fiddle contests, or learn some great tunes from the masters! Includes audio CD of the actual piece played during the contest.

With Fiddle and Well-rosined Bow

2001 History

Author : Joyce H. Cauthen
Release : 2001
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : /5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis With Fiddle and Well-rosined Bow by : Joyce H. Cauthen

Download or read book With Fiddle and Well-rosined Bow written by Joyce H. Cauthen. This book was released on 2001. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relying on extensive archival research and on sixty interviews with fiddlers and their families and friends, Cauthen tells the rich, full story of old-time fiddling in Alabama. Writing of life in the Alabama Territory in the late 1700s, A. J. Pickett, the state's first historian, noted that the country abounded in fiddlers, of high and low degree. After the defeat of the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1813, the number of fiddlers swelled as settlers from the southern states surrounding Alabama claimed the land. The music they played was based on tunes brought from Ireland, Scotland, and England, but in Alabama they developed their own southern accent as their songs became the music of celebration and relaxation for the state's pioneers. Early in the 20th century such music began to be called "old-time fiddling," to distinguish it from the popular music of the day, and the term is still used to distinguish that style from more modern bluegrass and country fiddle styles. In With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow, Cauthen focuses on old-time fiddling in Alabama from the settlement of the state through World War II. Cauthen shows the effects of events, inventions, ethnic groups, and individuals upon fiddlers' styles and what they played. Cauthen gives due weight to the "modest masters of fiddle and bow" who were stars only to their families and communities. The fiddlers themselves tell why they play, how they learned without formal instruction and written music, and how they acquired their instruments and repertoires. Cauthen also tells the stories of "brag" fiddlers such as D.Dix Hollis, Y. Z. Hamilton, Charlie Stripling, "Fiddling" Tom Freeman,"Monkey" Brown, and the Johnson Brothers whose reputations spread beyond their communities through commercial recordings and fiddling contests. Described in vivid detail are the old-style square dances, Fourth of July barbeques and other celebrations, and fiddlers' conventions that fiddler shave reigned over throughout the state's history.

American Antebellum Fiddling

2020-02-28 Music

Author : Chris Goertzen
Release : 2020-02-28
Genre : Music
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 317/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis American Antebellum Fiddling by : Chris Goertzen

Download or read book American Antebellum Fiddling written by Chris Goertzen. This book was released on 2020-02-28. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique volume is the only book solely about antebellum American fiddling. It includes more than 250 easy-to-read and clearly notated fiddle tunes alongside biographies of fiddlers and careful analysis of their personal tune collections. The reader learns what the tunes of the day were, what the fiddlers’ lives were like, and as much as can be discovered about how fiddling sounded then. Personal histories and tunes’ biographies offer an accessible window on a fascinating period, on decades of growth and change, and on rich cultural history made audible. In the decades before the Civil War, American fiddling thrived mostly in oral tradition, but some fiddlers also wrote down versions of their tunes. This overlap between oral and written traditions reveals much about the sounds and social contexts of fiddling at that time. In the early 1800s, aspiring young violinists maintained manuscript collections of tunes they intended to learn. These books contained notations of oral-tradition dance tunes—many of them melodies that predated and would survive this era—plus plenty of song melodies and marches. Chris Goertzen takes us into the lives and repertoires of two such young men, Arthur McArthur and Philander Seward. Later, in the 1830s to 1850s, music publications grew in size and shrunk in cost, so fewer musicians kept personal manuscript collections. But a pair of energetic musicians did. Goertzen tells the stories of two remarkable violinist/fiddlers who wrote down many hundreds of tunes and whose notations of those tunes are wonderfully detailed, Charles M. Cobb and William Sidney Mount. Goertzen closes by examining particularly problematic collections. He takes a fresh look at George Knauff’s Virginia Reels and presents and analyzes an amateur musician’s own questionable but valuable transcriptions of his grandfather’s fiddling, which reaches back to antebellum western Virginia.

George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels and the History of American Fiddling

2017-09-25 Music

Author : Chris Goertzen
Release : 2017-09-25
Genre : Music
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 304/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels and the History of American Fiddling by : Chris Goertzen

Download or read book George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels and the History of American Fiddling written by Chris Goertzen. This book was released on 2017-09-25. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels (1839) was the first collection of southern fiddle tunes and the only substantial one published in the nineteenth century. Knauff's activity could not anticipate our modern contest-driven fiddle subcultures. But the fate of the Virginia Reels pointed in that direction, suggesting that southern fiddling, after his time, would happen outside of commercial popular culture even though it would sporadically engage that culture. Chris Goertzen uses this seminal collection as the springboard for a fresh exploration of fiddling in America, past and present. He first discusses the life of the arranger. Then he explains how this collection was meant to fit into the broad stream of early nineteenth-century music publishing. Goertzen describes the character of these fiddle tunes' names (and such titles in general), what we can learn about antebellum oral tradition from this collection, and how fiddling relates to blackface minstrelsy. Throughout the book, the author connects the evidence concerning both repertoire and practice found in the Virginia Reels with current southern fiddling, encompassing styles ranging from straightforward to fancy—old-time styles of the Upper South, exuberant West Virginia styles, and the melodic improvisations of modern contest fiddling. Twenty-six song sheets assist in this discovery. Goertzen incorporates performance descriptions and music terminology into his accessible, engaging prose. Unlike the vast majority of books on American fiddling—regional tune collections or histories—this book presents an extended look at the history of southern fiddling and a close examination of current practices.

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Southern Fiddlers and Fiddle Contests

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