Annotation:Hungarian Waltz

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HUNGARIAN WALTZ. AKA and see "Drink Your Tea Love," "Grand Duke Nicholas." English, Waltz (3/8 time). England; Shropshire, Lincolnshire, Dorset. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCCDD. A highly popular tune which may or may not have been Hungarian in origin. The Hungarian Waltz title, however, speaks not to origins but to a specific type of dance developed in the mid-19th century from a dance form called the Rheinlander, or Schottische. Novelist Thomas Hardy, himself an accordion player and fiddler, mentions the tune in scene notes to his work The Dynasts:

The 'Hungarian Waltz' having also been danced, the hostess calls up the Highland soldiers to show the foreign guests what a Scotch reel is like. The men put their hands on their hips and tread it out briskly. While they stand aside and rest 'The Hanovarian Dance' is called.

Source for notated version: the Hardy MS [Trim]; a c. 1837-1840 MS by Shropshire musician John Moore [Ashman]; the 1823-26 music mss of papermaker and musician Joshua Gibbons (1778-1871, of Tealby, near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire Wolds) [Sumner].

Printed sources: Ashman (The Ironbridge Hornpipe), 1991; No. 36, p. 12. Sumner (Lincolnshire Collections, vol. 1: The Joshua Gibbons Manuscript), 1997; No. 146, p. 80 (appears as "Hungary Waltz"). Trim (The Musical Legacy of Thomas Hardy), 1990; No. 53.

Recorded sources: Beautiful Jo Records BEJOCD-28, The Mellstock Band - "The Dance at Pheonix: Village Band Music from Hardy's Wessex and Beyond" (1999).