Origins of Hornpipe Harmony?

Trad Irish Music
1

Is there a commonly accepted origin or explanation for why hornpipes and related tunes seem to often feature a higher degree of mode mixture or V of V style progressions with leading tones in the melodies vs other traditional tune types? It seems like a majority of hornpipes feature these implied harmonies through leading tone accidentals (#4 and b6 being quite common) and that these characteristics are much rarer in other tune types like reels and jigs.

They show up even in 18th Century tune collections, and they seem quite at odds with the popular association of hornpipes with the simple diatonic instruments they are named for or sailors tunes. They remind me more of polkas and accordion music from other traditions than anything else tbh.

2

From the lack of responses, I suspect that others are as ignorant of music theory as I am. Nonetheless, I would like to understand your point. Do you have an example of a hornpipe that implies a harmony, what harmony does it imply, and how does it imply the harmony? I would love to be able to insert flute harmonies on the fly, and can occasionally do so. Other times I’m just playing to tune wrong. I suspect that hornpipes may present more opportunities for harmonies because they are sometimes played so much slower than other tune types for dancing.

3

I would love to be able to insert flute harmonies on the fly, and can occasionally do so.

Harmonies in Irish music are a bit of a tricky issue. It’s not something that is usually ‘done’ or seen as appropriate in a lot of contexts. But that’s probably a different discussion. Some musicians, however, do take that route. For one, Séamus & Caoimhe Uí Fhlatharta from Connemara harmonise their Sean nos singing in a hauntingly beautiful way, ( see here, for example). They are fine musicians too and can apply their sense of harmony to dance music as they can be heard doing here, ‘for the crack’ on the whistle : The Lively Wagtail. I’ll leave the whistle clip up for a day or two.

4

I understand just enough of what you’re asking to know that it’s an interesting question but way out of my league.

The OP is asking about (horizontal) harmonic structures that are implied by the melody alone, rather than (vertical) explicit and separate harmonic lines.

5

I am fully aware what the OP was on about. A discussion about structure that had no takers.

The second poster, however, talked about improvising harmony lines on the flute. The line I quoted is a bit of a hint to whose post I was responding to.

6

One thing to throw a wrench into your initial hypothesis is that prior to the 1800s (and even well into the 1800s) time signature and dance were not strictly tied together. So hornpipes could be the 4/4 ones you’re talking about, or in 3/2, or in many other time signatures (similarly, a reel may very well have been danced to a 3/2, 6/8, 9/8, or other time signature and not just 2/2, 2/4, or 4/4 as we know them today).

That might give you a hint into refining your hypothesis, though - the type of harmony you’re talking about might come from or be heavily influenced by certain composers of hornpipes (James Hill, Scott Skinner, etc). So you might want to look at specific examples, and who, where, and when they were composed.

7

Another log to throw on the fire is that I suspect the section quoted above is actually looking at things the wrong way round.

Research projects like The Village Music Project have traced the origins of many hornpipes back to the touring music hall[*] stage, created by professional musicians and played for professional dancers. As such touring stage hits, these tunes were often the genuine pop music of their day; it is the ‘folk process’ and the appropriation/assimilation of those popular stage tunes into the repertoire and tunebooks of local amateur musicians, that has subsequently equated those tunes with ‘simple diatonic instruments’ (if, indeed, that’s how you choose to characterise them).

The myth of Jolly Jack Tars, whiling away the long hours at sea dancing hornpipes to wheezy accordeons and concertinas, has been pretty comprehensively dismissed as a Victorian collectors’ fantasy backstory (see, for example, Celia Pendlebury’s thesis ‘Jigs, Reels and Hornpipes: A History of “Traditional” Dance Tunes of Britain and Ireland’ at https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/8262/ ).

So at least part of the answer to the OP might be that those particular harmonic devices were common currency in the composers of material for theatre pit musicians of the period.

[*] I’m using ‘music hall’ anachronistically here, as the timeline suggests many hornpipes go back to the precursors of music hall in the coffee houses, public houses, and pleasure gardens.

8

My thoughts on the OP also involved The Village Music Project and Celia Pendlebury’s thesis, but because this was the ITM forum I thought it might not be helpful. But the thoughts were along the line of sfmans’.

I suspect the dominant instruments in a tradition may have a relevance and that whistle/flute/pipes encourage things that fall best on them and their style of playing and tend to filter out things that don’t. Many very common tunes in English music have passages that are take a little ‘getting the fingers and breath round’ which are much less common in Irish tunes. Things like the second bar in Madame Bonaparte (to pick a tune in both traditions). Maybe not so noticeable to free reed players in England. The Welsh tunes I know are even more varied and carry things not uncommon in the 18th sources. My understanding is that the harp was the most continuous tradition so accidentalsand chromaticity were not a problem.

9

What sfmans said.

I’m suspicious that hornpipes have been in the Irish tradition for all that long. Traditional Irish singing has nothing of the chromaticism that you find in hornpipes.

It seems to me that the hornpipe tradition comes out of Northumbria and the Scottish borders, both 4/4 and 3/2. Of course tunes migrate around over time, and they also follow fashions in dancing.

I believe that Fisher (as in “Fisher’s Hornpipe”) was a stage dancer based in London in the early 19th century.

“Off to California”, first encountered by Francis O’Neill when he was herding sheep in the San Joaquin valley in the mid-19th century, is an obvious derivative of the song “Whiskey You’re the Devil” (sung by the Clancy Brothers). It sounds like a song of the late 18th century.

Many well-known hornpipes, such as the “High Level” and “Beeswing”, were compositions of James Hill of Tyneside, who was active in the mid-19th century. There’s a collection of his tunes called The Lads Like Beer. One problem with him is that there is very little contemporary documentation on him. So something like “The Wonder” sounds like one of Hill’s, but there’s no paper trail. Of course plagiarism was rampant in the 19th century music publishing industry.

If you look at Playford’s English Dancing Master, published in multiple editions starting in 1651, you can see a couple of things. One is the increasing amount of chromaticism (secondary dominants and such) in the music, and the other is the percolation of Scottish tunes into the London music scene. There is not much in Playford that you would call a hornpipe, though, at least the modern kind of hornpipe.

Another big event in the 18th century was the massive stage hit The Beggar’s Opera, which brought more folk-like singing and dancing to the London theatre. Handel complained that his operas were being driven off by “Lumps of Pudding”.

18th century Scottish fiddling, in Edinburgh at least, was pretty well informed about what was going on in Italy and France at the time.

The richest source of those crazy chromatic hornpipes in flat keys is Ryan’s Mammoth Collection (aka Cole’s 1000 Fiddle Tunes), published in Boston in 1881. This reflects stage fiddling in American vaudeville of the time. He credits some tunes to Tom Doyle, but I don’t know anything about him.

10

I’m suspicious that hornpipes have been in the Irish tradition for all that long. Traditional Irish singing has nothing of the chromaticism that you find in hornpipes.

Hornpipes were around during the 19th century in Ireland. Not all hornpipes were ‘imported’ from the stage etc. I feel there’s a distinct body of tunes that are not James Hill/stage type of tunes. Tunes with a structure perhaps more reminiscent of other types of Irish tunes. Perhaps tunes adapted from older forms to suit a newer form of dance. Or just tunes composed by Irish players in a familiar format/structure.

Clear examples of the adapted tunes are Caisleán an Óir, which Junior Crehan adapted from an existing air and Kit O’Mahony’s which Francis O’Neill got from his mother. It exists both as a multi part jig and a two part hornpipe, both essentially the same tune played at different rhythms.