Annotation:Colonel Hamilton's Delight

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COLONEL HAMILTON'S DELIGHT. AKA and see "Hamilton House (1)," "Honorable Colonel Hamilton's Delight (The)," "New Bumpkin." Scottish, Jig. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCC'. Composed by Joseph Reinagle (1762-1836) around 1783 or earlier. Joseph was the English-born son of an Austrian trumpet player who lived in Portsmouth, and first gained prowess on horns. He gave them up French Horn and trumpet, according to Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians, due to his brother's skill on them, but, later returned to them after the death of his sibling. He transferred his skill to the violin and cello, and gained great fame as a teacher and performer on those instruments. It was Reinagle who taught Nathaniel Gow the cello, and he became leader of the theatre band, St. Cecelia's Hall, Edinburgh. After a two-year stay in Dublin, Reinagle moved to London and became a prominent cellist with orchestras there, and even a principal player for the Haydn and Salomon concerts. The tune appears in Niel Gow's Strathspey Reels, the Sharpe Manuscript, and Davie's Caledonian Repository. Niel Gow printed it as "The Honorable Colonel Hamilton's Delight," but in a later volume renamed the tune "New Bumpkin."

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Johnson (Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th Century), 1984; No. 87, p. 230. Gow (Second Collection of Niel Gow's Reels), 1788; p. 6. (Neil (The Scots Fiddle), 1991; No. 3, p. 6 (appears as "Hamilton House").

Recorded sources:

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