Music for dancing, 1650-1700, part 3

Today's tune is The Cherping of the Larke (this facsimile is from the first edition, The English Dancing Master). From the second edition on, the C at the end of the third phrase and the C five notes from the end were given sharps—all that suggests that a player would have changed the notes in performance anyway (in the manner of the by then ancient musica ficta practice).

Four short phrases are marked (a) through (d) under (1) below. Under (2), patterns of recurring notes and lines are sorted, and under (3) registers. These last clearly parse the octave F5-F4, suggesting a proto-background, but the end of the melody is a surprise, as a wedge figure draws lines to a close on D, final of a once-transposed Aeolian mode. In this case, the registral isolation of F5 at the beginning of (c), its repetition a few notes later, and the ascent to D5 from below, all make a line F5-E5-D5 credible.

In this series of posts, basic information about the individual tunes is taken from Jeremy Barlow, ed., The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master, 1651-ca.1728.