Posted 22 January 2005

Arrangements for Maccann Duet Concertina
by Henry Stanley of Birmingham

Robert Gaskins

Henry Stanley of “B’ham” [Birmingham] was a noted teacher of and arranger of music for the Maccann Duet concertina, operating primarily between the World Wars and into the 1950’s. A number of Stanley's students have described how he wrote by hand (with excellent musical penmanship) arrangements of progressive difficulty for each student, and manuscript tutors for each of them, often marked at the end with his distinctive octagonal rubber-stamp.

One large collection of such music is in the process of being digitised and made available on this website, that formerly belonging to the late Cecil C. White. A sample manuscript tutor was contributed by Richard Evans, a concertina maker in Australia who was formerly the Editor of the notable Concertina Magazine.

A notable pupil of Stanley’s was Reuben Shaw of Nottingham, who was introduced to Stanley in 1950, and received a handful of personal lessons, but mostly received music by post for many years, and inherited more of Stanley’s music from other pupils. Reuben Shaw discusses Stanley’s arrangements and plays several examples in a fifty-minute video available for download on this website. The few samples below, digitized from the forthcoming Cecil C. White Archive, are White’s manuscripts from Stanley corresponding to the songs played in that video by Reuben Shaw.

Contents

• Arrangements by Henry Stanley:
• Love’s Old Sweet Song
• Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana
• Only to See Her Face Again
• The Lost Chord
• Manuscript Tutor for Maccann Duet Concertina

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