Annotation:Pinkie House

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PINKIE HOUSE. Scottish, Slow Air. E Flat Major (Johnson-McLean): G Major (McGibbon, O’Farrell). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. A sonata based on the air "Pinkie House" was composed (around 1736-40) by Charles McLean and revised by Robert Mackintosh (c. 1745-1807) who, Pulver (1992) says, updated the genre in the 1770’s with new bowing styles and occasional harmonic experiments. It also appears in the 1740 MacFarlane Manuscript in drawing-room style, and in the [James] Gillespie Manuscript of Perth (1768).

Pinkie House is located in Musselburgh, on the east side of the River Esk. It began as a Medieval tower built in 1390 and was greatly extended in 1613 by Alexander Seton (1555 - 1622), 1st Earl of Dunfermline, for use as his residence. Pinkie House changed hands several times over the centuries and still exists as the site of a school, Loretto. It features the famous Painted Gallery, a 70 ft long chamber with a splendid painted wooden ceiling. The mansion was mentioned in Sir Walter Scott’s work Waverly (Chapter 49), and was the location of a ball for Bonnie Prince Charlie the night after the Battle of Prestonpans in 1745 (being then the residence of the Marquis of Tweeddale).

Source for notated version: the McLean Collection, 1772 [Johnson].

Printed sources: Johnson (Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th), 1984; No. 68, pp. 186-189. McGibbon (Scots Tunes, Book 1) c. 1746; p. 13. O’Farrell (Pocket Companion, vol. II), c. 1806; p. 111.

Recorded sources:

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