Angus Cumming

Angus Cumming produced the first collection of Strathspeys to be published by a person from Strathspey. His "Collection of Strathspeys or Old Highland Reels" was published in (1780) and contains 60 tunes.

Angus Cumming himself claims in the preface that he follows the profession of his forefathers in being a Musician in Strathspey. Thomas Newte in his Tour of England and Scotland in 1781 attributes the strathspey style to the Brownes of Kincardine on-Spey and the Cummings of Freuchie. now Grantown-on-Spey

Angus Cumming describes the Strathspey as an ‘Old Highland Reel’ and indeed twenty six of the tunes in the collection appear with an alternative Gaelic title. It is most likely that Angus Cumming would have spoken Gaelic and he would have been surrounded by people who did so, on an everyday basis. The Gaelic influence in the area and the music is most probably where the dotted rhythms of the Strathspey originated, coming from both Gaelic speech patterns and the bagpipes.

Within the collection, we can find a number of cases, eighteen tunes in all, where there is an irregular use of either the dotted rhythm or the key signature. Whether these are errors in printing or intentional is not known.

Nearly a third of the tunes contained in the collection were never published before. Many which had been published before were transformed into Strathspeys rather than straight undotted reels and in ways which are rhythmically much more complex than before.

External links

Biographical Sketches Of Early Scottish Musicians and Musicsellers Music of Scotland The Fiddle Music of North East Scotland Early Scottish Music Publications