James Hill: hornpipes from Tyneside

About James Hill

Hill was born in Dundee around 1811 and moved with his family to Newcastle upon Tyne, where he spent the rest of his short life, living on Bottle Bank in Gateshead and keeping a public house. He was baptised at Christ Church, North Shields, and married there in 1833. Contemporary accounts describe him playing in pubs, markets and at race meetings, and later writers called him the Paganini of Bottle Bank. He died in 1853, aged 42, of tuberculosis.

His reputation rests on the Newcastle hornpipe, a common-time tune type with a steadier tread than its Irish cousin. The High Level Bridge and The Beeswing were printed in Ryan's Mammoth Collection in Boston in 1884 and became widely known among hornpipe players; The Beeswing is named for the racehorse that won the Ascot Gold Cup in 1842. Around fifty tunes are credited to him, and the figure is unstable because nineteenth-century collections attached his name to pieces he did not write. Blaydon Flats is the usual example.

That instability is visible in this catalogue. It merges 'By James Hill' and 'Attributed to James Hill elsewhere', so a title in the list may be securely his, merely ascribed to him, or a setting copied from a manuscript. Fifty-nine entries are indexed as classical and eight carry no genre. Duplicate titles are different files for one tune: there are three Champion Hornpipes and several Flying Dutchmen.

Listening and playing notes

Hill's hornpipes are built for a steady, sprung bow: the dotted rhythm is written, not added, so play it as notation rather than as a lilt. Keep the first finger free for the frequent C-naturals and the passing accidentals that give the Tyneside style its edge. In The Champion and The Flying Dutchman the second part climbs into the upper octave, so save bow length for that climb. A light staccato in the crotchets keeps the triplets crisp.

Selected scores

1. The Flying Dutchman (Hornpipe)

   The most-viewed score on the page, for a tune the catalogue also holds under two plainer titles.

2. The Pear Tree

   A two-part hornpipe in the compact shape that runs through Hill's output.

3. The Enterprise Hornpipe

   Named, like several of his tunes, after a vessel or a public house rather than a person.

4. Navvy on the Line

   Its title refers to the railway labourers who built the lines through Tyneside in Hill's lifetime.

5. The Champion Hornpipe

   Probably the most widely played of his tunes, and the one most often used to teach the Newcastle style.

6. Off to California

   Long a session standard; the catalogue files it under Hill, though it also circulates as a traditional tune.

7. Hornpipe (Roose 1118)

   An entry keyed to a numbered manuscript collection rather than to a printed title.

8. The Cage Hornpipe

   One of the noisier catalogue titles, set in capitals in the source and kept that way.

9. Beeswing

   Named for the mare that won the Ascot Gold Cup in 1842; the catalogue gives only a manuscript siglum for its source.