Glory of the West

Here's an 18th-century fashion that needs reviving: the dance fan. Women took fans to dances to send elaborate signals as much as to cool themselves. Some had the music of the year's most popular dances printed on them. Boldwood, a classically trained quartet grounded in traditional music, love to rummage through old manuscripts, seeking English dance tunes that deserve a place back on the floor.

In the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford they discovered a dance fan sporting ‘Eighteen of the Most Favourite Country Dances for the Year 1789’. Two appear on this album. Unsurprisingly, given the year, there's ‘The Bastille’ (which is stately rather than storming) and ‘Mrs Casey’, a morris tune that, 200 years on, is still a favourite among dancers.

Glory of the West includes tunes spanning two centuries, from the English Civil War to the coronation of Queen Victoria. Some are from famous sources – the title-track is in John Playford's TheEnglish Dancing Master of 1651. Others were found among obscure publications: the lovely ‘At the Brow of the Hill’ is from The Delightful Pocket Companion for the German Flute (1745) and ‘John Clare's Hornpipe’ is from the poet's notebooks.

Boldwood might be scholarly in their research, but they do what they want with tunes they like, arranging them for fiddle, viola, accordion, piano and concertina, improvising and performing them for dancing or just the sheer pleasure of listening.