NRR Project: ‘Bonaparte’s
Retreat’
Performed by W.H.
Stepp, fiddle
Recorded 1937
Again, I must defer to essayist David S. Lynch’s fine work outlining the tune, its background, and the fascinating life of the performer who recorded it. Read it here.
“Bonaparte’s Retreat” was a titled applied to many different fiddle tunes in the early 19th century, all of which commemorate Napoleon Bonaparte’s disastrous retreat from Russia in 1812. This tune is lively and instantly recognizable as a movement from Aaron Copland’s “Billy the Kid” Suite. The rollicking high spirits one gets from listening are infectious.
Stepp lived in eastern Kentucky, which is where folklorists Alan and Elizabeth Lomax found him in 1937. Stepp’s mastery of the instrument is amazing, as he seems to be wielding multiple fiddles at once, spinning out a rapid counterpoint. Alan Lomax called him the best fiddler he had ever heard.
The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Nest time: Archibald McLeish’s Fall of the City.
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