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This jig is taken from Chicago Police Captain Francis O'Neill's celebrated collection Music of Ireland, published in 1903. A Cape Breton jig titled “Northside Kitchen” shares a closely related first strain.
This “Largo cantabile” is étude No. 10 from Giuseppe Gariboldi's Vingt petites études, or Twenty Studies. While it is a Largo, it shouldn't be played too slowly.
During his stay in America, when Dvořák was director of the Conservatory in New York from 1892 to 1895, the composer collected many interesting musical themes in his sketchbooks. He used some of these ideas in his American compositions, notably the “From the New World” Symphony, but some of them remained unused. While in holiday in the summer of 1894 in his beloved home in Bohemia, he worked out some of these sketches into a cycle of 8 piano pieces. Initially, the composer considered naming them “New Scotch Dances” (after an earlier set of Ecossaises he wrote) but eventually settled for the title “Humoresques”.
Of the eight pieces, the seventh is without any doubt the best known; as with all of Dvorák's most successful piano works, it exhibits his talents for rhythmic originality and idiomatic textures that lie gratefully under the fingers. Indeed, the piece quickly became one of the most popular classical pieces in existence, and the publisher made vast amounts of money on it by publishing it separately in arrangements for all imaginable instruments and ensembles.
The original key of the piece is G-flat major (with six flats), but we decided to transpose it up a semitone to G major in order to make it more accessible. Since the piece contains few accidentals, the fussy among us can easily try to play it in the original key by considering a six-flat key signature instead of the printed one. Unfortunately this trick does not work in the minor-mode part, where an enharmonic transposition to F-sharp minor would be needed.
Johann Martin Blochwitz, a flutist in the Dresden Court Orchestra around 1717, composed many pieces of dance music, some of them appearing in Quantz's collection “Fantasies and Preludes” in 1740. This beautiful minuet is one such piece. Sadly, the appearance in Quantz's collection has led many to attribute the piece to Quantz, rather than to its rightful composer.
Thanks to Peter for suggesting this piece!
The earliest version of this tune is found, as an untitled jig, in Book 3 of the large music manuscript collection of County Leitrim fiddler and piper Stephen Grier (c. 1824–1894).
The title “The Angry Peeler” is first seen in Francis O'Neill's 1903 collection Music of Ireland. “Peeler” was (and to an extent, still is) a slang term for a policeman in the British Isles, as well as in America until the end of the 19th century. Originally, it was a nickname for a police constable who was a member of the first modern professional police force, the Metropolitan Police in London, formed by Sir Robert Peel in 1829.
This étude is No. 18 of Ernesto Köhler's 25 Romantic Studies, Op. 66. It is a study in chromatic scales, so be careful to play all 32nd notes evenly. Also remember to play with dynamics, to imitate the blowing of the wind!
This is the fourth and final movement of a sonata in A minor for two flutes by the German Baroque composer and music theorist Johann Mattheson. It was published in Amsterdam in 1708.