Propinquity

How does one decide, when compiling a book of tunes, what order to put them in? They generally don't seem to be alphabetical by title or composer. They are often grouped into types of tunes (marches, reels, retreats) but within each group it's difficult to spot any pattern. Maybe it comes down to length of tune and space on the page...

This intrigues me partly, I suppose, because my profession is one in which ordering of items is quite important. But I am also wondering if tunes are grouped together on the page because that it how they are played. Or do they perhaps end up being played in those groups because that's how someone found them on a page? Kevin Macleod, for instance, puts together Oh, But Will You Come to Town, The Battle of the Somme and The Grinder, which appear together on p45 of the Seaforth Highlanders. As he calls the set Seaforth's 9/8 pipe retreat marches it's reasonable to suppose he found them there.

I've been playing The Rock and a Wee Pickle Tow with The Irishman's Cudgel. Sheer luck that I had been looking for both tunes and that they happen to be, in the Thomas Glen collection, on the same page, but it did make me think that perhaps they would sit together as a set. My - now disbanded - Nova Scotia set was two tunes on a page, and now I am looking at putting Magersfontein with either Now the Battle's O'er or The Green Hills of Tyrol, just on the grounds that they are printed together in the Seaforth book. Printed together because they are played together, possibly: going to be played together because they were printed together, definitely. After all, nothing propinks like propinquity.

BTW - played a good hour today. Reasonably relaxed and tried loosening the bellows strap, which feels a little odd and I think will mean my wrist resting on the bellows and the bellows rubbing on my hip bones, but I'll see how it goes. I had to rack my brain for tunes, but they came in the end and I only stopped because my hands were too cold. Am contemplating a pair of fingerless mitts to keep them warm.