Today was unexpectedly eventful. Aaron McGregor’s been researching repertoire for our Purcell’s Revenge in Aldeburgh, and looking at late 17th century fiddle music in Scotland and England: I suggested he get in touch with the Musica Scotica folks to see if he could look through some of the huge amounts of material that the late Kenneth Elliott left behind. In the fiddle section of the Leyden MS he found the Scots Chaconne, which appears on our Late Night Sessions album and is probably by John McLachlan. The compiler of the otherwise reliable Bowie MS had managed to miss out the key signature completely, which explains why the tune there is so bizarre – and we’ve been playing it spectacularly wrong all this time. But then wrong notes can be fun: the version of Bonny Dundee (Adew Dundie) in the Skene MS with mistranscribed rhythms in the tablature and 7-bar phrases instead of 8, is much more enjoyable to play than the correct version. The title of The Scots Chaconne was wrong too (I’d suspected it wasn’t really a Chaconne) as the Leyden MS has ‘The Scots Shechone’ which I’m hoping a friendly Gael will help me understand.

I had just enough energy left tonight to spend an hour at an old piano putting music to some pictures.