My Pretty Quadrille: A Song History
"My Pretty Quadrille" is a dulcimer tune associated with Walter Miller of Tioga, West Virginia, who both played and built the instrument.[1] Born in 1914, Miller had been playing and making dulcimers since 1928, according to notes on a 1988 field tape.[2] Gerry Milnes, the Augusta Heritage Center's former folk arts coordinator, recorded him at Tioga on March 6, 1991, and the tune heads the list of pieces Miller played that day on a dulcimer of his own making.[1] The notes for that session put his output at about 150 instruments.[1] The sources consulted here say nothing about where the tune came from before Miller.[1]
Antoine Watteau, The Country Dance, oil on wood. An older French country dance, shown for the subject; it has no connection to the tune.
Milnes also photographed Miller in Nicholas County in December 1989, holding a six-string instrument Miller called a "church dulcimer."[3] One of his later instruments, an hourglass-shaped dulcimer with four bird-shaped sound holes, marked inside "Walter Miller / Tioga, WV / 1992," is part of the David Schnaufer collection owned by the Tennessee State Museum.[4] Stephen Seifert includes "My Pretty Quadrille," credited to West Virginia dulcimer player Walter Miller and set in DAD tuning, in The Early Years, a book of 73 tunes and arrangements drawn from his workshop handouts of 1996 to 2002.[5]
Sources
- Augusta Heritage Center Archive: "Walter Miller and Freeman McKinney dulcimer tunes; 3/6/1991".
- Augusta Heritage Center Archive: "Walter Miller dulcimer tunes and interview; 4/18/1988".
- Augusta Heritage Center Archive: "Walter Miller with dulcimer".
- Appalachian Dulcimer Archive: "Walter Miller Hourglass [Dulcimer], West Virginia".
- Stephen Seifert: "The Early Years".
- Image: Antoine Watteau, The Country Dance, oil on wood. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.