William Dixon (piper)

The William Dixon manuscript, written down between 1733 and 1738 in Northumberland, is the oldest known manuscript of pipe music from the British Isles, and the most important source of music for the Border Pipes. It is located in the A.K. Bell Library, Perth, Scotland. Very little is known of William Dixon’s biography, except what has been learned from this manuscript, and from parish records in Northumberland.

The man

The only direct evidence for the author's identity comes from the manuscript itself, giving his name and two others, Parcival and John, who may have been his sons. It also gives dates from 1733 to 1738. Many of the tunes in the manuscript were, and some remain, current in Northumberland, and baptismal records for that county show that a William Dixson was christened in Stamfordham, Northumberland, in 1678, and that Parsivall and John, sons of William Dixson, were baptised nearby at Fenwick, near Morpeth, in 1708 and 1710. If this William Dixon was indeed the author of the manuscript, he would have been 55 when he started compiling it, and 60 when he ceased. However, the names William and Parcival occur in several generations of Dixons in this region, so it remains a conjecture whether William the authorwas the one born in 1678, or was a generation younger, an unknown brother of Parcival and John.

The manuscript

The manuscript was identified as pipe music by the piper and fiddler Matt Seattle in 1995; previously it had been considered by some as fiddle music, albeit rather odd. He was able to publish a transcription that same year, with extensive notes, as "The Master Piper"; this has since been issued in a second edition, but sadly is now out of print. It was transposed up a tone from the source, to suit modern Border Pipes, which are generally notated in A.The importance of it as a musical source, apart from its antiquity, is the almost unique nature of the music. Almost all of the 40 pieces in the manuscript are long variation sets on dance tunes - one, "Dorrington", running to 14 strains. Much of the figuration is similar to early Northumbrian smallpipe music, but the compass of many of the tunes is 9 notes, from F to g, with no sharps or flats, rather than the single octave of the Northumbrian smallpipes of the time. It thus seems that the music was written either for smallpipes with an open ended chanter, like Scottish Smallpipes, or else for what are now known as Border Pipes. Both of those instruments had effectively died out by the mid-19th century, and their repertoire had survived only in fragments, mostly in adaptations for other instruments, such as fiddle, Northumbrian Smallpipes, or lute.

The music

In this manuscript was found a large body of music, of considerable sophistication, readily playable on either Scottish Smallpipes or Border Pipes. The musical style is very different from Highland pipe music, despite the many common features of the instruments. In particular, there is no explicitly prescribed ornamentation anywhere, only an occasional direction to ornament certain notes. In contrast, Highland pipe music usually specifies complex patterns of grace notes in detail. Further, the Dixon music tends to avoid repeated notes, and to move predominantly stepwise or in thirds rather than in wider intervals.

The tunes form a substantial and varied repertoire. Some of them are known in other versions in the Northumbrian and the Lowland Scottish traditions - but some of the tunes are not known elsewhere, and all the Dixon versions are distinct from their known parallels. Besides one short minuet, and one song-tune with a pair of variations, there is a selection of dance-music in different rhythms. These include
* 14 reels, rants or common-time hornpipes, in 4/4 or 2/2
* 10 jigs, in 6/4,
* 6 triple time hornpipes, in 3/2
* 9 tunes in compound triple time, 'slip jigs', in 9/4. The time signatures are not given explicitly, but can be deduced from the melodic patterns and bar-lengths. In the manuscript most of the triple-time hornpipes and some slip-jigs are misnotated, with bar lengths of respectively of 4 or 6 crotchets, when 6 or 9 would follow the melodic patterns. The time signatures have been corrected to 6/4 and 9/4 in the transcription. Such misnotation was fairly common at the time, perhaps for ease of reading. The rhythms are not always straightforward - the 3/2 hornpipes show the characteristic syncopation of the form, generally across the second beat in even numbered bars. As in most other Northumbrian examples of 3/2 hornpipes, the syncopated note is not tied, but a pair of repeated notes. Some strains in tunes of other types are also syncopated.

Dick Hensold has argued that the collection can be split into two distinct parts, one family consisting of the single octave tunes, many corresponding to known Northumbrian smallpipe tunes, or similar in style to known examples of these, while the other, somewhat larger, group contains tunes which use the full nine-note melodic range of a nine-note chanter, with its greater harmonic possibilities. In particular, these use the subtonic chord, G major in Matt Seattle’s transcription. Most of the tunes in either group have strains based on two chords, typically G major and A major for the nine-note tunes, but several, notably "Dorrington", are significantly richer, with one of the two chords varying from strain to strain. One tune from the smallpipe group, "Gingling Geordie", has been placed online at the Dragonfly Music website, at http://www.dragonflymusic.co.uk/tunes/gingling_geordie.pdf. It is a good illustration of the style and inventiveness of the Dixon tunes, and it compares well with later versions. Several of these, and two 17th century versions, can be found on the FARNE archive; more modern versions, since its use as an election song in 1774, have been known as "Wylam Away".

It is worth briefly discussing the musical form of the dance tunes - they are all 'long variation sets'; sets of four or more strains, based on the same underlying harmonic pattern as the first, (typically only 2 chords), and all variations ending in a common melodic 'tag'. The tags of different tunes are clearly recognisable, and the most important feature of the harmonic scheme is how the underlying chords fit with the drones, and the rhythm of the resulting concord and dissonance. As an example, in "Gingling Geordie", typically for smallpipe tunes, the underlying chords are the tonic, A major, and supertonic, B minor - the latter is dissonant against drones sounding in A, and here each strain reaches this chord at its mid-point. Strains are constructed from simple standard motifs, maybe repeated, here leading into the supertonic at the end of the first 2-bar phrase, and the tag in the tonic at the end. It should be stressed that in some tunes the harmonic pattern is shifted, so the tonic chord does not necessarily fall at the end. A lot of the melodic motifs are 'floating' in that they are used in several different tunes - perhaps at different pitches to fit a different harmony. The importance of this structure to the player is that these motifs lie well under the fingers on Border Pipes, so the music is technically not as difficult as it sounds, either to play or to learn. The effect for the listener, though, is one of structured improvisation.

Modern response

The publication of the music in 1995 led to a very significant response – Border Pipers now had available a much larger body of traditional music appropriate to the instrument, and this led to considerable discussion in the community about how it might be approached. In particular, the Lowland and Border Pipers’ Society's 1997 Collogue was devoted wholly to the Dixon music and related questions. The talks given there have since been published by the LBPS as "Out of the Flames". In 1999, Matt Seattle released a CD, also called "Out of the Flames", DGM 9907, in which several of the Dixon tunes were recorded - many pipers and others have released recordings of Dixon tunes since then. Matt Seattle maintains a 'Dixography', of all recordings of the Dixon music.

External links

* [http://www.lbps.net/ The Lowland and Border Pipers' Society]
* [http://www.asaplive.com/FARNE/Home.cfm FARNE - The Folk Archive Resource North East]

Books

* "The Master Piper - Nine Notes That Shook the World", William Dixon (1733) & Matt Seattle 1995, Dragonfly Music, ISBN 1-872277-23-3.
* "Out of the Flames", compiler Roderick D. Cannon, Lowland and Border Pipers' Society 2004, ISBN 09522711-1-7.