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REFERRED TO AS "WM" IN TUNE TITLE
Transcribed into ABC Music Notation for The Village Music Project
by Chris Partington
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of transcription
"William Mittell, His Book. 1799."
"Being a collection of dancing tunes for the flute, violin or oboy
with figures to each tune as performed overleaf."
"A Collection Of Hornpipes, Reels, Country Dances etc.
For Violin, German Flute.
Progressive for practice. W. Mittell."
This Manuscript was found in a Hastings bookshop in 1991, by Barry
Dransfield, in whose private collection it remains.
(Ed. Now rumoured to have gone missing)
A Photocopy of the MS is deposited at the Vaughan Williams
Memorial Library in Cecil Sharp House.
My copy was kindly provided by Keith Leech, of Hastings, also of
Banjax.
It consists of 147 Dance tunes, written in a capable hand, some
with dance instructions below the tune.
There are few evident musical errors. Some of the tunes seem to
have been copied from elsewhere.
In 1993 the late Dave Roberts, ex-Blowzabella and Banjax, put
together 87 of the tunes into a book :-
" William Mittell His Book Etc " ISBN 1 898512 00
0 Price £7.50 Pub. Timespan Music
Publications, East Timewell Cottage, Morebath, Tiverton, Devon
WE16 9BY
This book remains in print, therefore the tunes that it
contains are represented in this file usually by the first two
bars of the tune, and in the Notes box by "DR" although ABC2win
sometimes loses odd bits out of these boxes! If you want any
more, well, sorry, but you have to go and buy the book!
(Ed. out of print at this
time, April 2008, all tunes now in this file)
Introduction by Chris Partington, VMP
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