What, really, is a Hornpipe? And who is "Durang?"
Depending on your point of view, a Hornpipe is an instrument, or a dance, or a tune. Durang is an entertainer that danced to a hornpipe tune composed especially for him.
INSTRUMENTThe hornpipe instrument is a "cylindrical bore wooden instrument with finger holes like a recorder or tin whistle, an animal horn bell (widening cone at the bottom) and animal horn mouthpiece to accommodate a single beating reed, as used in a bagpipe chanter. It's been around since medieval times, and considered obsolete (in polite society anyway) by 1600 or so." [1]
DANCEHornpipes and jigs are dance forms for footwork-focused dances that are performed in small places. Jigs and hornpipes were favored by sailors aboard ship to make merry and keep fit. The hornpipe is first mentioned in the sixteenth century and is accepted to be of English origin. It probably arrived in Ireland around the beginning of the eighteenth century.
TUNEHornpipe music is found in early Tudor keyboard manuals. It is associated with the North of England and the Lowlands of Scotland. It was 3/2 complex metre until the end of the 18th century, and was then found mainly as 4/4. A Scottish hornpipe is what could be called a rant: "a tune which ends dubber-diddy dubber-diddy dum, boom boom". Think of "Soldiers' Joy" or "Morpeth Rant." [1]
Any tune could have been called a hornpipe if it was played on the hornpipe.
THE TUNE "DURANG'S HORNPIPE"Music historians have researched "Durang's Hornpipe" and conclude that it was named after actor and dancer John Durang, styled as "the first American dancer." Durang stated in his memoirs that it was composed for him by one "Mr. Hoffmaster, a German Dwarf, in New York, 1785."
In 1784, John Durang, a white British American who was the first American-born man to win widespread recognition as a professional dancer, introduced his "Sailor's Hornpipe - Old Style," a clog dance that mixed ballet steps with African American shuffle and winging steps. Performed in burnt cork makeup, Durang's "Hornpipe" became a poular solo stage dance, one of the earliest prototypes of tap dance on the American stage.
What appears to be Durang's own coreography of the Hornpipe - step by step - has been preserved:
1. Glissade round (first part of tune).
2. Double shuffle down, do.
3. Heel and toe back, finish with back shuffle.
4. Cut the buckle down, finish the shuffle.
5. Side shuffle right and left, finishing with beats.
6. Pigeon wing going round.
7. Heel and toe haul in back.
8. Steady toes down.
9. Changes back, finish with back shuffle and beats.
10. Wave step down.
11. Heel and toe shuffle obliquely back.
12. Whirligig, with beats down.
13. Sissone and entrechats back.
14. Running forward on the heels.
15. Double Scotch step, with a heel Brand in Plase.
16. Single Scotch step back.
17. Parried toes round, or feet in and out.
18. The Cooper shuffle right and left back.
19. Grasshopper step down.
20. Terre-a-terre or beating on toes back.
21. Jockey crotch down.
22. Traverse round, with hornpipe glissade.
THE TUNE COMPOSED BY HOFFMASTER:
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Durang had many different talents. He worked as a dancer, mime, tightrope walker, puppeteer, clown, designer, author, theatre manager, actor, pyrothecnic display artist, and in 1794 he performed on the slack wire and coreographed pantomimes. He often performed with members of his rapidly growing family, all of whom had been trained in dancing. During the war of 1812, he and two of his sons, Charles and Ferdinand, served in the garrison at North Point in Baltimore in the battle that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the words to "The Star Spangled Banner." Durang's son, Ferdinand, was the first to put the poem to its well-known melody and also the first to sing it in public.
John Durang retired from performing in 1819 and died in 1822.
He was reputedly George Washington's favorite entertainer.
Although not a tap dancer, John Durang was an important historical link in the evolution of tap dancing. He had brought professional dance to a wide American audience and had popularized such dances as the hornpipe, later fused with African rhythms to create American Tap.
For much of his career his hornpipe dancing was both his and his audience's favorite. He boasted in his memoirs that, around 1790, he danced "a Hornpipe on thirteen eggs blindfolded without breaking one." Durang is also credited with popularizing the nautical-style hornpipe dance that is still thought of as the "Sailor's Hornpipe". It is the hornpipe that bears his name for which fiddlers remember him, however, and, according to his memoirs it was composed specifically for him by one "Mr. Hoffmaster." The hornpipe became famous in his own time, for Durang noted that it was written "expressly for me, which is become well known in America, for I have since heard it play'd the other side of (Pennsylvania's) Blue Mountains as well as in the cities."
Professor Samuel Bayard was of the opinion that the "folk process" had been kind to the tune over the years, honing the rather banal original into a rather more distinctive and powerful piece.
Sources and References:
www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers
[1]www.colinhume.com/hornpipe.htm
www.newcelticinstruments.com/whistle_history.html
"Tap Dancing America: A cultural History" by Constance Valis Hill.
"Tap Roots: The early history of tap dancing" by Mark Knowles.