Posted 01 April 2003

Instruction Manuals for the English, Anglo, and Duet Concertina: An Annotated Bibliography 1

Randall C. Merris

Introduction

This bibliography lists 183 “instruction manuals” for English, Anglo, and duet concertina,2 dating from the 1840s onward. With some exceptions, the items listed are books (or booklets) published in the United Kingdom or the United States.3 The bibliography is divided into separate sections for English, Anglo, and Duet concertina, with the entries (in alphabetical order by author or title4) being numbered successively within each section (E1, A1, and D1 for the first English, Anglo, and duet concertina entries, respectively) to facilitate cross-referencing.

“Instruction manual” is broadly defined. I have included a publication if the title or subtitle contained “tutor,” “instructions,” “learn to play,” “primer,” “method,” or other wording that implied instructional content. Many publications are rich in instructions and exercises, while others are glorified tune books that are short on instructional material. These often contain more on learning the rudiments of music (i.e., standard musical notation) than on playing techniques and exercises for the concertina itself. In fact, some of the publications limit their “concertina instruction” to no more than one to three pages.

The titles of the manuals offer various names for the concertinas. The English and Anglo concertina were often simply called “concertina.” Nineteenth-century Anglo tutors often referred to the instrument as the “German,” “Anglo-German,” or “German-Anglo” concertina. From the 1860s on, the term “chromatic” was used to designate Anglo concertinas that could play all the notes in the chromatic scale. Today, “Anglo concertina” often refers to both the diatonic and chromatic instruments. “German concertina” now usually refers to the Chemnitzer concertina or even the bandoneon (sometimes “bandonion”).5

I include a publication date—either precise or approximate—for all entries in the bibliography. Thus a date of 1890, for example, indicates that the book was either published in 1890 or that 1890 was the year in which the publication was received by the national depository—the British Museum (later the British Library) or the United States Library of Congress. Dating publications that were not distributed to the national depository is challenging.6 Often, the most useful clue is the address of the publisher as printed on the cover, since many of the publishing firms changed their names (e.g., from “& Co.” to “& Sons”), moved their premises (for some firms, several times in a few decades), sold their music catalogues, or merged with other firms.7 In most cases, a date such as “c. 1890” indicates that the publication appeared either in 1890 or one or two years earlier or later, but a few may be a bit further from the mark. For some entries, I can suggest only a broad time period, as in c. 1890-1900. Finally, I have sometimes resorted to providing a date only for a dated edition subsequent to the first.

Each entry is followed by one or more of the following sigla, these either telling if the publication is still available in the retail market or, if it is not, providing a library location at which it may be found, or still some other source of documentation.

The sections for English, Anglo, and Duet concertina (including the postscript) contain seventy-four, one hundred and two, and nine entries, respectively. Sixty-one of the English concertina entries originated in the United Kingdom, seven in the United States, two in Ireland, and one each in Holland, Germany, Russia, and Sweden. Forty-nine of the British and three of the American publications for English concertina appeared in the nineteenth century. The earliest entries for the English concertina, dating from 1844 or shortly thereafter, are Instrucción para tocar la Concertina (E30—published in London despite the Spanish title, and nothing more than a translation of E31); Instructions, Followed by a Selection of Melodies and Harmonized Airs (E31); George Case, Exercises for Wheatstone’s Patent Concertina (E11); Ferdinand Pelzer, A Practical Guide to the Concertina (E46); Giulio Regondi, Rudimenti del Concertinista (E52); and Joseph Warren, Warren’s Instructions for the Concertina (E69).

Of the one hundred and two tutors for the Anglo, sixty-nine are from the United Kingdom, twenty-seven from the United States, two from Germany, and one each from Canada, Ireland, Italy, and Sweden. All but twelve of the British publications and all but nine of the American publications appeared in the nineteenth century. The 1846 tutor by Carlo Minasi (A50) and that from circa 1846 by Elias Howe, Jr. (A32) are the earliest British and American publications for Anglo concertina, respectively.

As for the duet concertina, all nine publications are from the United Kingdom, the earliest being Joseph Warren’s 1855 tutor for the “double concertina” (D8).9

The annotations (not included for every item) contain information about authors, publishers, and contents. Choices from among the publications would no doubt have depended on the user’s proficiency, learning style, and musical preferences (classical, folk, etc.). The instructional material tends to be timeless (as witness at least one present-day player of the English concertina who warms up each day with nothing but Regondi, Alsepti, Warren, and Case), except when it deals with such obsolete systems as the 28-key German concertina or the technique of playing the English concertina with four fingers of each hand (though the latter can still be a useful exercise, and at least two concertinists—Douglas Rogers and Wim Wakker—have revived the technique). Many of the tunes and ballads in some of the publications, popular music from a bygone era, have mercifully passed into obscurity.

Most Anglo concertina tutors were written with both standard musical notation and tablature. The tablature was used mainly to overcome musical illiteracy, not to indicate specific fingerings, since many passages contain notes for which there are alternative fingerings. Instruction manuals for English and duet concertina, on the other hand, have little, if any, tablature and have, therefore, been suited mainly to those who can read music. Recently, however, tutors for the Anglo concertina have moved away from tablature, and four of the five most recent Anglo concertina tutors are written in standard musical notation with little, if any, accompanying tablature. These include Mick Bramich’s 1996 tutor, The Irish Concertina: A Tutor for the Anglo Concertina in the Irish Style (A7); Frank Edgley’s 2001 tutor, The Anglo Concertina: Handbook of Tunes and Methods for Irish Traditional Music (A24); Niall Vallely’s 2002 tutor, Concertina CD ROM Tutorial (A87); and the booklet accompanying John Williams’s 1995 video, Learn to Play Irish Concertina (A93). The exception is Mick Bramich’s 2000 tutor, Absolute Beginners’ Concertina (A6), which is written in tablature only and, unlike the others, has no audio or video component.

English concertina instruction has fared less well in the video and digital-audio age. Until recently, the only English concertina tutors with accompanying audio were Alistair Anderson’s 1974 tutor, Concertina Workshop (E2), and Richard Carlin’s 1977 tutor, English Concertina (E8). Anderson’s tutor is currently marketed without the companion LP recording, and Carlin’s tutor, which contained a floppy vinyl record, is out-of-print. The first English concertina tutor with accompanying CD—Pauline de Snoo, Concertina Course, Volume One (E73)—appeared in 2002. The first video or CD-ROM for English concertina instruction has yet to be produced.

The Bibliography

• Go to Part I. English Concertina

• Go to Part II. Anglo Concertina

• Go to Part III. Duet Concertina

Notes

Postscript

After this article went to press, five additional instruction manuals were found:

English Concertina

Anglo Concertina

Postscript 2

Postscript 2: After this article was published, the following new editions and new tutors were found.

Anglo Concertina

Postscript 2003

Since this article was posted online in 2002, additional instruction manuals have appeared:

English Concertina

Anglo Concertina

Postscript 2004

Since this article was last updated in 2003, additional instruction manuals have appeared:

English Concertina

Anglo Concertina

Postscript 2005

Since this article was last updated in 2004, additional instruction manuals have appeared:

English Concertina

Anglo Concertina

Duet Concertina

Author

Randall C. Merris ( ) is an economist at the International Monetary Fund and an amateur Anglo concertinist. He has been an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; has taught economics and finance in the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University; and has consulted with Asian governments on economic policy and financial reform. He writes mainly on economics and occasionally on the concertina and its history.

Contents

• Instruction Manuals for the English, Anglo, and Duet Concertina: An Annotated Bibliography
• Introduction
• Part I. English Concertina
• Part II. Anglo Concertina
• Part III. Duet Concertina

The original version of this article appeared in The Free-Reed Journal, Vol. 4 (2002), pp. 85-118. © 2002 Randall C. Merris.