Strathspey (dance)

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A strathspey is a dance tune in 4/4 time (usually set to quavers or eighth notes). It is similar to a hornpipe but slower and more stately, and containing many snaps. A so-called Scots snap is a short note before a dotted note. An example of a strathspey would be the song "The Bonnie Banks O' Loch Lomond", provided you sing it staccato:

"You'll tak the high road, and I'll tak the low road, and I'll be in Scotland afore ye"

Other examples are the tunes to Auld Lang Syne and Coming through the rye - both probably based on an old strathspey tune called The Miller's daughter.

Strathspey refers both to the type of tune, and to the type of dance usually done to it (although strathspeys are also frequently danced to slow airs).

The strathspey step is a slower and more stately version of the skip-change step used for jigs and reels.

The strathspey also forms part of the musical format for competing pipe bands - modern high grade bands are required to play a March, Strathspey and Reel for competition purposes.

Strathspey is one of the dance types in Scottish country dancing. A Scottish country dance will typically consist of equal numbers of strathspeys, jigs and reels.

It is named after the Strathspey region of Scotland, in Moray and Badenoch and Strathspey.

The Strathspey may have originated as bagpipe tunes, but arguably the greatest tunes were written in the 18th and 19th C by composers such as William Marshall and James Scott Skinner, who utilised the full range of the fiddle to produce many memorable tunes. Skinner distinguished between dance tunes, which retained the staccato bowing (Laird o Drumblair), and airs which were to be listened to (Music of Spey). More recently, Muriel Johnstone has written some elegant piano strathspeys. These days there are at least four, some would say seven, varieties: the bouncy schottische, the strong strathspey, the song or air strathspey, all three of which can be enjoyed for dancing, and the Competition strathspey for the bagpipe, primarily intended as a displaty of virtuosity