Snowflake Hornpipe

If you are looking for some good winter music, check out Snowflake Hornpipe. We’ve got snow on the brain here in Colorado. Mostly because we haven’t gotten any! Ski resorts have delayed their opening, and we are all watching the weather forecasts hoping that a few little snowflakes are on the horizon. Well, ok, more than a few, actually we would like a lot of snow. Don’t get me wrong, I am loving the warm fall days full of sunshine, but our parched ground in desperate need of water. So here’s a little music to bring on the snow!

Classical Winter Music

Composers throughout the centuries have tried to capture and depict snow and snowfall. One famous piece we think of when thinking of winter and snow is Vivalidi’s  “Winter” from the Four Seasons. Tchaikovsky included a “Waltz of the Snowflakes” in his Christmas classic The Nutcracker. The impressionist Claude Debussy adds his composition “The Snow is Dancing” from the Children’s Corner. In more recent history we hear the jovial sound of Bing Crosby singing “Let is Snow!,” and who can’t get away from the Frozen soundtrack that seems to play endlessly around little 5-8 year old girls.

Folk Winter Music

Just as classical and pop music have their songs about winter weather, folk music has its tunes depicting winter weather that have been passed down through the years. Coming from the British Isles, the Snowflake Horpipe is a fun tune for violinist of all levels. So what is a hornpipe? A hornpipe is a type of dance, and just like other dance forms, music was developed to go along with that dance. The genre of music has taken on the same name as the dance step. For the hornpipe, dancers wear hard soled shoes to help them keep track of the timing. While the hornpipe dance was orginally attributed to sailors, it seems that this idea came after a dancer performed a hornpipe dance in the character of a sailor at the Dury Lane Theater in 1741.