If one is not lucky enough to have musicians available for balls and classes, finding usable recordings of Regency country dances can be a bit of a challenge. While there are quite a few CDs on the market billed as Regency or Jane Austen-era music, they are often made up mostly of music from other eras. Even the ones that are actually suitable selections for the time period frequently include only a few country dances. And it is, alas, very typical for those tunes to be recorded at the lengths used for modern English country dance: three to seven times through the music.
Since historical country dancing needs the length of the music matched to the length of the set, and the lengths can be quite lengthy, most of these recordings are not very useful without substantial work with music editing software to add a substantial number of repeats.
So I am very happy to note that the UK band Green Ginger, whose album Music for Quadrilles is one of my very favorites for the Regency era, has very considerately offered for online purchase a set of extended-length versions of seven of the country dance tunes from their Grand Waterloo Ball 2015 album, namely:
- "The Waterloo Dance" (12 x 24 Reel)
- "The College Hornpipe" (12 x 32 Hornpipe)
- "Cupid in Armour" (6 x 64 Waltz)
- "Bonaparte in a Knapsack" (12 × 32 Jig)
- "The Oldenburgh Bonnet" (12 × 32 Reel)
- "The Young Widow" (12 × 32 Jig)
- "Lord Dalkeith’s Reel" (12 × 24 Reel)
I'm especially excited that this batch includes "Waterloo", which is a tune I use regularly at balls but for which I have never had a good recording. Along with "Lord Dalkeith's Reel", it is one of two twenty-four-bar arrangements in this set of tunes. That length is fairly rare compared to the quantity of recordings made for thirty-two-bar dances.
Six of the seven tracks are twelve times through, which is the proper length for a four-couple set for a triple minor dance or a five-couple set for a duple minor one. The last is a sixty-four-bar (!) waltz offered six times, which will work for a three-couple set either duple or triple minor. It could also be thought of as thirty-two bars twelve times or used for a (very lengthy) waltz.
As usual for Green Ginger, the sound is rich and the instrumentation is lovely: fiddles and piano, mercifully free of out-of-period accordions.
The seven tracks are available for individual download only on the page for the Grand Waterloo Ball 2015 album. They are at the very bottom of the list of download links. Note that they are not included if you just buy the whole CD (online or otherwise). You have to purchase them individually and separately. The CD has only the shorter versions.
I'm hoping that Green Ginger will do long versions of other tunes from their current and future CDs, so I would like to encourage everyone who does Regency-era country dance to purchase these extended tracks for your own use and to demonstrate to the band that it is worth the trouble to make them.
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