Annotation:Timour the Tartar

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X:1 T:Timour the Tartar M:C L:1/8 B: Joseph Lowe - Lowe's Collection of Reels, Strathspeys and Jigs, B:book 1 (1844–1845, p. 3) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:A E|A2 (c/B/A) eA (c/B/A) |(eA)aA gAfA|A2 (c/B/A) eA (c/B/A)l(BE)dE cEBE| A2 (c/B/A) eA (c/B/A)|(eA)aA gAfA|eaec eaec|{c}BABc A2A2|| E2 (G/F/E) BE (G/F/E)|(BE)dE cEBE|A2 (c/B/A) eA (c/B/A)|(eA)aA gAfA| (e^d)ec (ag)af|(e^d)ec (ag)af|ecag fedc|BAGF EFGE||

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TIMOUR THE TARTAR. AKA and see "Peter Street (1)," “Babes in the Woods (3),” “Blackling Races,” "Blanchland Races, "Miller's Frolics," "Mudville Frolic." Scottish, Reel (whole time). A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Athole, Emmerson, Honeyman, Hunter, S. Johnson, Kerr, Köhler, Lowe, Skinner, Skye): AABB (Raven, Shears): AABB' (Brody, Cranford, Phillips). Timour the Tartar was otherwise known as Timur the Lame, Tamburlaine and Tamerlane, who lived from c. 1336 to 1405. The Tartars were Mongol Turks, and Timur was a devout Muslim, descended from the infamous conqueror Genghis Khan. Like his forbearer, Timur created an empire by the sword, although it did not long survive his death. Raised to the throne of Smarkand in Tukestan in 1369, Timur soon set about conquering huge territories, from India to Syria, but died of a camp fever just before a planned invasion of China.

Timour was the subject of a grand romantic melodrama in two acts by the prolific Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), with music by Matthew Peter (M.P.) King. Timour the Tartar was first acted at Covent Garden in April, 1811, and proved a very popular theatre piece. Several melodies from the production appear in period music collections; King’s “Grand Cavalry March,” for example, was often reproduced. Lewis's work was a caricature of Napoleon, with whom Britain had been engaged in a protracted struggle, and has Timour, of low origin, usurping the throne and raising up his needy relations to princely dignity. The play featured horses brought onto stage, which was a response to a revival of Bluebeard at a competing London venue, which first introduced them. Eino Railo (in his book Haunted Castle: A Study of the Elements of English Romanticism, 2003) remarks:

The play has no claim to be regarded as dramatic art, but is simply a circus piece, ranking among the spectacles which great variety theatres sometimes offer their audiences. For such a purpose Timour was very well suited, for in addition to possessing an exciting plot—a series of hairbreadth escapes—it is a fine costume play. Timour enters clad in a yellow satin shirt, red trousers, green boots, a dagger inlaid with gold at his belt, a gleaming turban on his head and a gold chain round his neck; the pretty head of the heroine Zorilda was covered by a helmet, her breast by a silver corselet, while her dress was white satin petticoat, richly ornamented, long crimson train; her boots were yellow. When she rode on the stage perched on a magnificent stallion, the audience was completely won over. Timour was given fourty- four times in succession and was revived as late as 1831, on that occasion at Drury Lane.

Lewis first gained popularity with a gothic novel called The Monk (1796), condemned for its horror, violence and eroticism, but nonetheless widely read. It earned its author the sobriquet of ‘Monk’ Lewis and made him famous in fashionable society. His Tales of Terror (1799) were dedicated to Lady Charlotte Campbell (see “Lady Charlotte Campbell's Reel (2)), afterward Bury, with whom he was in love.

Lewis also wrote ballads, many of which were sung to music of his own composition. He was a clever, kind and good man, as both Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott attest, although Byron complains that Lewis was often a “tiresome bore”—-“My only revenge or consolation,” wrote the poet, “used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially.” Apparently Lewis and William Sheridan (another English author and playwright) disliked each other and had a running feud. Lewis once offered to bet Sheridan “a very large sum—I will bet you what you owe me as Manager, for my (1797 play) Castle Specter.” “I never make large bets,” said Sheridan, “but I will lay you a very small one. I will bet you what it is worth.” While Byron was abroad Lewis sent him the following epigram upon Sheridan:

For worst abuse of finest parts
Was Misophil begotten;
There might indeed be blacker hearts,
But none could be more rotten.

Researcher Conor Ward finds the tune first published in Dublin music publisher Maurice Hime's Hime's Collection of Favourite Country Dances for 1809 (No. 3, p. 3) as "A Favourite Dance--as danc'd at Peter Street", subsequently published in P. Alday's (Dublin) 1815 volume under the same title. The title seems to fairly quickly have been shortened to "Peter Street" in usage. The Hime publication predates Lewis's 1811 stage play, but it may be that the tune later became associated with the name of the play and acquired the title "Timour the Tarter" at some point. As Ward and Fr. John Quinn point out, the earliest publication of the "Timour the Tarter" title with the tune is in Joseph Lowe's Lowe's Collection of Reels, Strathspeys and Jigs, book 1 (1844–1845), and the tune by the title "Peter Street" was in print and in musicians' manuscript copybooks long before Lowe's volume.

Uilleann pipers, not being able to play in the key of A, render the tune in G Major. The alternate title “Peter Street (1)” (the name of a street in Dublin) probably is a shortened version of the tune name in Hime's 1809 issue, and it is also the name of the tune in c. 1880's Ryan’s Mammoth Collection. Glasgow music publisher James Kerr prints it (vol. 1, p. 22) as “Babes in the Woods (3).”

Paul Stewart Cranford says the tune was popularized among Cape Breton fiddlers by the influential recordings of Winston Fitzgerald. Christine Martin uses the tune as an example of Scottish ‘back bowing’, or playing a up bow on the strong beat of the bar (i.e. bars two and four, etc.).

One of the earliest sound recordings of the "Timour the Tartar" was made by the long-lived violinist John Edward Horace Fellowes (1875-1975) in 1911 (HMV 3-7939), as the last tune of a march-strathspey-reel set (as arranged by Alfred Moffat).

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