Introduction

Paul de Ville, The Concertina and How to Play It (New York: Carl Fischer, Inc., 1905) is one of the most widely available sources of basic instruction and tunes for the Anglo concertina. A recent printing features a new cover, a slightly enlarged format, and a retail price of about $10. Copies of earlier printings have sold for $25 or more in the secondary market. Buyers and sellers have assumed that these copies were printed in 1905 or soon thereafter. However, all copies that I have seen in the secondary market were printed from the 1950s onward.1 In fact, when the book first appeared in 1905, it was titled as The Eclipse Self Instructor for Concertina2 (see Fig. 1).

The Concertina and How to Play It has links to both earlier and later periods. Most of its tunes and other material were taken from earlier publications, and most of its contents reappeared seventy years later in Bob Kail, The Best Concertina Method—Yet! (Carlstadt, NJ: Ashley Publications, 1975).

Predecessors of De Ville’s Book

The Concertina and How to Play It has the same basic organization as many Anglo concertina books that predated it. Like these books, The Concertina and How to Play It contains sections on (1) reading music (staffs, key and time signatures, time value of notes, etc.); (2) use of the concertina (holding the instrument, using the air valve, understanding the button layout, using the tablature, etc.); (3) a few scales and exercises; and (4) tunes in standard musical notation and tablature. The Concertina and How to Play It, like many earlier books, is long on tunes and short on instruction. It contains 60 pages of tunes and only 17 pages of other material, including “Rudiments of Music” (10 pages), “Description of the Concertina”(4 pages), and scales and exercises (3 pages).

A somewhat surprising discovery is that 208 of the 250 tunes in The Concertina and How to Play It were taken directly from two books by Elias Howe, Jr.3 (see Figs. 2 and 3)—i.e., 98 tunes from Howe’s Eclectic School for the Concertina (Boston: Elias Howe; and Chicago: Howe & Grant, 1879), 108 tunes from Howe’s Western German Concertina School (Boston: Elias Howe; and Chicago: Howe & Grant, 1879),4 and two tunes that appeared in both of these Howe books. With a few minor exceptions, the musical arrangements and tablature in The Concertina and How to Play It are identical to those in Howe’s books.5 Howe’s books contain a number of songs with lyrics. The Concertina and How to Play It includes some of these songs but without the lyrics.

The Concertina and How to Play It contains 42 tunes that do not appear in Howe’s concertina books. A few of these tunes are still well known—e.g., “Rickett’s Hornpipe,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Adestes Fideles,” “Rock of Ages,” “Nearer My God to Thee,” and “Sweet Bye and Bye.” The original sources for these 42 tunes have not been documented. Six of theses tunes (i.e., “College Hornpipe,” “The Coquette,” “Morella’s Lesson,” “Old Zip Coon,” “Rory O’More,” and “The Tempest”) are the same arrangements as those found in Howe’s The Complete Preceptor for the Accordeon (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1843, 1850, and 1851), suggesting that de Ville appropriated these arrangements and wrote concertina tablature to replace Howe’s accordion tablature.

Almost all instructions, scales, and exercises in The Concertina and How to Play It were taken verbatim or in paraphrase from Howe’s books. However, the “Rudiments of Music” section of de Ville’s book was borrowed elsewhere.6 This section is larger and more advanced than the “Elementary Rules of Music” in Howe’s Eclectic School for Concertina. The advanced material in the section has no direct relevance to the other sections of The Concertina and How to Play It.

The Concertina and How to Play It contains an illustration (taken from Howe’s books) of the notes for the 28-key German concertina, even though all tunes in de Ville and Howe’s books are tablatured exclusively for the 20-key concertina. The 28-key German concertina had slipped into obscurity long before de Ville’s book was published.7

The Successor to De Ville’s Book

Bob Kail’s The Best Concertina Method—Yet! (1975) contains 249 of the 250 tunes from The Concertina and How to Play It.8 Except for eradicating the tune numbering and enlarging the pages, Kail reproduced the tunes exactly as shown in de Ville’s book.9 Kail’s book contains (1) Elementary Music Principles (1 page), (2) a description of how to hold the concertina and how to read tablature (1/2 page), (3) scales and exercises from de Ville’s book, (4) twenty-nine songs arranged by Kail,10 and (5) the 249 tunes from de Ville’s book. Kail structured his book to downplay the acquisition of tunes from de Ville, but made no outright attempt to conceal the fact. The first part of Kail’s book contains scales, exercises, and a few tunes from de Ville, interspersed with songs arranged by Kail. The second part contains 235 tunes that are reproduced in the same order--even with the same page numbers--as in The Concertina and How to Play It. The last part contains more songs arranged by Kail and more exercises from de Ville’s book, as well as a couple exercises by Kail. The note layout for the 28-key German concertina was not included in Kail’s book, and the 20-key concertina diagram in de Ville’s book (p. 15) was transformed into a pull-out card to accompany Kail’s book.

Paul de Ville’s book contains no table of contents or tune index, and Kail’s book contains no tune index. Kail’s book has a table of contents, but the tunes taken from de Ville’s book are not individually listed therein. A complete index of all instructional material and tunes in The Concertina and How to Play It and The Best Concertina Method—Yet! is shown in the annex.

The Kail and de Ville books have similar retail prices, even though The Best Concertina Method—Yet! contains almost all of the contents of The Concertina and How to Play It, as well as the songs and exercises not found in de Ville’s book. A minor selling point for the de Ville book has been its smaller size (6¾-by-10 inches, compared with 8½-by-11 inches for Kail’s book), making it convenient for storage in non-fitted concertina cases. The latest printing has a slightly larger format of 6¾-by-10½ inches.

Contents

• Back to the Future: De Ville’s The Concertina and How to Play It and Other Tutors
• Introduction
• Predecessors of De Ville’s Book
• The Successor to De Ville’s Book
• Notes
• Annex: Index of Tunes and Exercises

© 2005 Randall C. Merris.

• Other articles
  by Randall C. Merris

Links to related documents