Episode 2

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Published on:

1st May 2020

Episode Two – John Keats - Bright Star

In Episode Two of The Thunder Mutters Adam and Becky present a selection of John Keats’ poetry, interwoven with tunes from 18th and 19th century fiddlers' manuscripts.

The performance of the poems and tunes is presented as a seamless flow, from music to poetry and back, so the titles of poems and tunes, and the histories of the tunes, are given beforehand. We have also listed them in the text below, along with Becky’s sources, for your ease and listening comfort.

Tune: Morning Star / Butchers of Bristol

Poem: The Human Seasons

Tune: Camberwell

Poem: La Belle Dame Sans Merci: A Ballad

Tune: Poor Soldier

Poem: Modern Love

Tune: Maid of the Mill

Poem: Ode on a Grecian Urn

Tune: The Rising Sun

Poem: To Sleep

Tune: The Good Old Way

Poem: Bright Star

Tune: Childgrove (Such a Wife as Willy Had)

The Thunder Mutters’ theme tune is: Gardengate

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Barlow, Jeremy, The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford’s Dancing Master (1651-ca.1728) (London: Faber Music Limited, 1985)

Deacon, George, John Clare and the Folk Tradition (London: Frances Boutle Publishers, 2002)

Hampton, Thomas, Music Manuscript Book (Dances for Violin) (Dellow Personal Collection, c1870)

Kuntz, Andrew, and Valerio Pelliccioni, Traditional Tune Archive (2017) <http://tunearch.org> [Accessed 24 April 2020]

Menteith, Charles, and Paul Burgess, The Coleford Jig Traditional Tunes from Gloucestershire, 4th edn (Cheltenham, Gloucestershire: 2014)

Offord, John, John of the Green The Cheshire Way (Green Man Music, 2017)

Seattle, Matt, The Great Northern Tune Book : William Vickers' Collection of Dance Tunes Ad 1770 (London: English Folk Dance & Song Society, 2008)

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About the Podcast

The Thunder Mutters

Poetry and traditional folk fiddle music from the British Isles presented by poet Adam Horovitz and fiddle player Becky Dellow. Featuring poets such as John Clare, Thomas Hardy, Blake and other Romantic poets with fiddle tunes from 18th and 19th...

The Thunder Mutters is a podcast in love with music, and with the music of words. Presented fortnightly by poet Adam Horovitz and fiddle player Becky Dellow, it takes its name from the poem by John Clare.

We will be exploring the connections between music and poetry, concentrating for the first year of the podcast on Clare’s 'The Shepherd’s Calendar' and on the tunes Clare gathered. Every month, we will bring you the appropriate section of the Calendar interspersed with relevant tunes that Clare himself collected and likely played. We will be discussing the provenance of the tunes and leavening the academic with a healthy dose of poetry and music in performance.

In the weeks in between, we will present shorter shows exploring the works of the Romantic poets and others from the 18th and 19th centuries, again always interweaving tunes that the poets themselves might have heard or played amongst the poems and conversation.

Having said that we will be presenting poets and tunes from the 18th and 19th centuries, it is very much our intention to also invite living poets and musicians to respond to the work of the poems and tunes we present. We believe that music and poetry are perhaps the best ways of holding an on-going conversation with our ancestors and our descendants, and are keen to find ways of furthering that conversation through The Thunder Mutters.

We hope that you enjoy this podcast. If you do, we hope you might be inspired to subscribe and contribute to our Patreon in some small way, to help mitigate the costs of producing the show, (https://patreon.com/thethundermutters) and that you will consider following us on Facebook (fb.me/thethundermutters) and/or Twitter (https://twitter.com/ThunderMutters) If you enjoy the shows, we’d love to hear from you.

Becky Dellow is an experienced and versatile fiddle player who fuses fiddle traditions from around the British Isles. “The tradition of fiddle playing in my family goes back at least five generations,” says Becky, “to my great great grandfather Thomas Hampton, a fiddle player from Hereford. It was his hand-written tune manuscript book that inspired my PhD research under the supervision of trad singer and academic, Dr Fay Hield.”

Since completing her PhD, Dr. Dellow has continued to carry out tune research, contributing to academic journals and conferences, and uses the research to develop her performance as a folk musician.

Adam Horovitz is a poet, editor and performer. His first collection of poetry, Turning, was published in 2011 and his most recent book, The Soil Never Sleeps, explores the farmlands of Britain 200 years on from Clare, who was a strong influence on the book. He has collaborated numerous times with musicians, and has presented two shows with Becky. The first was for the Laurie Lee centenary.

“I asked Becky because Laurie was a fiddle player as well as a poet,” he says, “not knowing at the time that her grandfather, Charles Hampton played in a band with Laurie in the late 1920s. It was perfect synchronicity, and that surprise has led to The Thunder Mutters.”

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About your host

Adam Horovitz

Becky Dellow is an experienced and versatile fiddle player who fuses fiddle traditions from around the British Isles. The tradition of fiddle playing in her family goes back at least five generations, to her great great grandfather Thomas Hampton, a fiddle player from Hereford. It was his hand-written tune manuscript book which inspired Becky’s PhD research under the supervision of trad singer and academic, Dr Fay Hield.

Becky has developed a potent playing style which has allowed her to explore these different traditions, and which has given her research a much deeper context. Since becoming Dr Dellow, Becky has continued to carry out tune research, contributing to academic journals and conferences, and uses the research to develop her performance as a folk musician.

She has played in numerous duos and bands ranging across many traditional genres. She has also collaborated regularly with poet Adam Horovitz, exploring the connections between poetry and music. Their latest collaboration is on The Thunder Mutters, a podcast exploring the poems and tunes of John Clare and more.