York Winter Warmer 2007

What do dulcimers, harps, hurdy gurdys, recorders, fiddles and cod pieces have in common?  Well you could see them all at Barley Hall in York on the afternoon of the 24^th February, but more of this later…… 

For those who’ve been to the Winter Warmer before, I don’t need to remind you how much fun everyone has. By necessity it’s a fairly small but select gathering, as Ascot House (a Guest House just out of York City Centre) isn’t huge but where else would you find hosts as genial as Ken and Sandy, ex movers and shakers in the Holmfirth folk scene and very happy to facilitate the strange requirements of fellow musicians playing equally strange instruments.

What did we do this year?  Well the main event planned for Saturday afternoon was a trip into York to perform some ‘real’ medieval music on fairly authentic instruments in Barley Hall, which has been around since the 14^th century. Our musical director (Jenny Coxon) had scoured her obscure music book collection to find some authentic old music which she’d circulated a few weeks before the event. We got together on the Friday evening over copious tea and biscuits to find out if our versions of the tunes sounded anything like Jenny’s, Surprisingly, we could almost recognise them, so Jenny set about organising us into small groups for the actual performance. By the way, we’d all been told that we should get into the spirit of the occasion by finding suitable medieval style clobber for the Saturday ‘do’, which is where the cod piece comes in……

Meanwhile, as we were messing around with the organisation for Saturday, Dick and Sabine Glasgow, our Tutors for the weekend, had just set off from a gig in County Antrim and were heading for the ferry to Stranraer. As we settled down for the night in our cosy B&B, Dick was heading south through the night fuelled only by the vision of a Yorkshire breakfast. They arrived safe an hour before the bacon was sizzling in the pan, so managed a whole hour in horizontal mode before meeting up in the breakfast room.

 I find any sort of revision just before the exam totally useless, but there was a demand for some last minute practise after breakfast so we crammed ourselves onto the landing. Shifting the dulcimers and harps around, in what can best be described as a restricted space, to constitute the various bands that Jenny had put together was really good fun and should be a new Olympic sport. There was the added excitement of it being a dress rehearsal, as Dorothy wanted to know if her floppy bits were going to get in the way of her hammers.

Suitably convinced that all was well, the instruments were loaded up into the vehicle known as Tony’s Tardis (how does he get it all in?) and we piled into York to conduct the ritual of retail therapy and inspection of the Tea Rooms before presenting ourselves to the waiting public. Actually, when we had all assembled, got dressed up and arranged the instruments in the Great Hall we outnumbered the punters by about 12 to 1, unless you count the people peering at us through the big window on to Coffee Yard (the adjoining ginnel) who were too tight to pay to get in. Undaunted, we carried out the performance to the high standards expected of the Nonsuch Dulcimer Club (and friends). We had a really good time anyway, especially with the brisk version of ‘La Rotta’ arranged for dulcimer and harp, and ‘Angelus’ where everyone tried to make themselves heard over my Hurdy Gurdy.

There was the added intriguement of whether we had disturbed the Barley Hall ghosts – a strange transparent figure had appeared on one photo, and my wife Yvonne took some photos which have inexplicable transparent ‘orbs’ floating around which we’ve never seen before so don’t think it’s the camera – two photos of the same scene taken one after the other show something on one and not on the other so it’s anybody’s guess what they are. One was floating around Jenny so I hope it was an orb of approval! 

Back to Ascot Lodge, and the first workshops with Dick and Sabine. Not being a harpist I can’t say what Sabine did, but Dick taught the dulcimer crew a fife tune played by the marching bands to illustrate how traditional music in Northern Ireland had evolved. Now if any of us happens to go to a session in County Antrim we know at least one tune that we’ll be able to join in with! 

Saturday evening saw us off to the Carlton Tavern for food and alcoholic refreshment, which left us in a suitably relaxed state for the evening ‘easy peasy’ session back at the B&B. After the excitement of the day’s events, no-one was going for a 4.00 AM Launde style finish. 

Sunday went at a gentler pace. First job was the ‘Team Photo’, only this year we had fancy dress and we were going to use it. Off to workshops with Dick and Sabine. Dick told us how the Antrim tradition had been polarised by the politics of ‘the troubles’ which surfaced in the 1970’s. Sadly, many non catholic players felt that traditional music associated them with the ‘wrong side’ so stopped playing altogether. This has now more or less ceased to be an issue, and traditional music is regaining popularity without any of the baggage of the past, and so have the instruments that the music is played on, including the dulcimer.

After lunch we were visited by Thomas the Yangqin student (Chinese Dulcimer http://www.geocities.com/risheng99/instruments/yangqin_music.html for a sound clip) who was making his way through Europe – next stop Hungary to study the Cimbalom. He has a gorgeous inlaid instrument with totally inscrutable (to westerners) tuning that he makes a fantastic sound with. Watching Thomas make sense of the Antrim tunes Dick and Sabine were playing was a treat in itself – he probably remembered more than I did!

After the final (of many) cup of tea in the Ascot House hall way, email addresses and places to buy strings from (never knew hurdy gurdys and harps had something in common!) were exchanged and we headed off back to the different parts of the country we all came from. 

I’m sure I speak for all to say a big ‘Thanks’ to Jenny for organising the Winter Warmer yet again, to Ken and Sandy for putting up with us so enthusiastically, and to Dick and Sabine, Thomas, and the Barley Hall people for helping make this another weekend to notch up on the bed post of experience.

 Oh, the cod piece…….. well it wasn’t there last time I hired the costume.

 Eric Woulds