Hornpipe: A Song History

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The English word hornepype is recorded from around 1400 for a wind instrument whose bell and mouthpiece were made of horn, and by the late 1400s the word also meant a brisk country dance, at first accompanied by that pipe, which sailors later took up with special enthusiasm.[1] Single-reed pipes with a cowhorn bell have been known since antiquity and are still played in places such as the Basque country, where the instrument is called the alboka.[2] The name has since been attached to several kinds of dance: the solo hornpipe of England, Scotland and Ireland is in 4/4 time, frequently imitates a sailor's dance and is commonly performed in clogs, above all in northern England.[2]

Etching of the River Thames seen from a timber pier, with men standing on the bank and buildings on the far shore.

James McNeill Whistler, Millbank, etching and drypoint, 1861. The Thames in London, where Handel's Water Music was first played; shown for the place, not the music.

In the Baroque suite the hornpipe took a different shape, a stylized country dance in 3/2 time, and Handel's Water Music contains one.[2] Handel's music for King George I's cruise on the Thames was first heard on July 17, 1717, and the king enjoyed it enough to have it played again and again.[3] In the usual division of the music into three suites, the dance turns up twice: a Hornpipe in the F major suite (HWV 348) and a movement marked Alla Hornpipe in the D major suite (HWV 349).[4] Only selections were printed in Handel's lifetime, and the complete set did not appear until 1788.[3] He came back to the dance two decades later, ending his Concerto Grosso in B-flat, Op. 6 No. 7 (HWV 325), dated 1739 and published in 1740, with a Hornpipe.[5]

Shelley Stevens includes a Handel hornpipe in Classical Music For Mountain Dulcimer, a collection of 26 intermediate classical arrangements for solo mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Hornpipe"

Sources

  1. Online Etymology Dictionary: "Hornpipe".
  2. Britannica: "Hornpipe (musical instrument)".
  3. Britannica: "Water Music".
  4. IMSLP: "Water Music (Handel, George Frideric)".
  5. IMSLP: "Concerto Grosso in B-flat major, HWV 325 (Handel, George Frideric)".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Classical Music For Mountain Dulcimer".
  7. Image: James McNeill Whistler, Millbank, etching and drypoint, 1861. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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