Annotation:Madame Hillisberg's Reel
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MADAME HILLISBERG'S REEL. English, Reel. A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. Madame Hillisberg was a famous stage dancer of around the beginning of the 19th century. In the first chapter of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, he writes:
For she could not only sing like a lark, or a Mrs. Billington, and dance like Hillisberg or Parisot, and embroider beautifully, and spell as well as a Dixonary itself, but she had such a kindly, smiling, tender, gentle, generous heart of her own, as won the love of everybody who came near her...
It is perhaps the same tune as "Mdm. Hillingbury," 'recorded' on the mechanical barrel organ from the polar expedition of Admiral Parry of 1810. In place of a ship's fiddler (common in those days), Parry introduced a barrel organ on board ship to provide entertainment and a vehicle to which the men could exercise (i.e. by dancing). "Mdm. Hillibury" was one of eight tunes on barrel no. 1.
Source for notated version: the music manuscript copybook of keyboard player Ann Winnington, which appears to have been written in New York, although she later moved to England.
Printed sources:
Recorded sources: Saydisc SDL234, Parry's Barrel Organ (vol. 11 in the Golden Age of Mechanical Music).
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