The Boundless Energy of Niel Gow and Sons

Anyone involved in the Scottish music scene knows that Niel Gow and his sons - particularly Nathaniel - produced an enormous amount of fiddle music to dance to.

• Take a look at IMSLP and be amazed. 
• Find out what motivated those fiddling Gows!  Here's a new posting from the Bass Culture project about Niel and Nathaniel Gow's controlling influence.
• And another posting about Nathaniel's diversion into Scottish song repertoire: Nathaniel Gow's "small share of trouble". 
• When the Bass Culture website goes live this autumn, there will be much, much more digitized fiddle music for you to exclaim over at http://hms.scot  (At the moment it's just a holding page.)

Strathspey Players Past and Present, by William Honeyman

If you play the fiddle, take a look at this.  It was written in 1922, practically a century ago.  William Honeyman is all but forgotten now.  He talks about Niel Gow and James Scott Skinner in an unashamedly anecdotal style.  But the stories themselves might be worth sharing next time you're introducing a Gow strathspey at a gig.

Fifteen pages to 'favourite' (They're already in my Diigo bookmarks!):-

http://www.cyberstudia.com/ogmios/texts/honeyman/strathspey-players/strathspey-players.html


Honeyman wrote a Strathspey, Reel and Hornpipe Tutor, too - we have it in the Whittaker Library.  We blogged about it in the context of Newcastle fiddle reels, not so long ago.  Read that blogpost here.

PhD Student Ronnie Gibson blogs about Niel Gow the Gael

Gow the Gael: An Alternative History of Scottish Fiddle Music