Thursday, November 8, 2018

Shaw's Musical Olio (1814)

An interesting item found on IMSLP: Oliver Shaw (1779-1848), Musical Olio. Comprising a selection of valuable Songs, Duetts, Waltzes, Glees, Military Airs, &c. &c. adapted to the Piano-Forte, with an accompaniment for the Flute or Violin. Selected and published in numbers, by Oliver Shaw. Providence: H. Mann & Co. Of these, four issues are available on IMSLP: March, June, September, and December 1814. The pieces are consecutively numbered. Five of them are presented below.

The term "olio" may seem odd-to-humorous today, but it was a common 19th and even early 20th century term for miscellaneous incidental pieces intended for vaudeville, minstrel shows, and similar kinds of entertainments. More generally it meant "miscellany" or "hodge-podge" (link to dictionary definition). (An internet search will show that "olio" is still very much alive, in periodicals with the older sense of miscellanies, in a food-sharing app, the Anglicized version of the Spanish dish olia, a Los Angeles based rock group, etc.)

9_contentment. The figure is in the 1st voice and might be read as an incomplete mirror, where ^8 drops directly to ^5 (bars 3-4), then returns by line (bars 5-8) -- or as a double neighbor figure about ^8.



17_Belles. A 6/8 country dance that might well have been called a reel. Complicated though this might seem, I hear a principal voice rising from ^1 to ^3 (bars 1-2, again in 5-6 and 13-14), answered by ^6-^7-^8 in the same part in bars 3-4 but in the "discant" in bars 7-8 and 15-16.



19_Himmel waltz. Dance and trio (at the dolce), with the rising figure in the former.



39_Moore. Music repeated for a second verse. Small ternary form in the verse. From ^9 to ^8 in the voice's opening (bar 5), then focus on figures in the tetrachord, ^5-^8.





49_Cottage dance. A simple 2/4 contradance, the music (not the suggested figures) having some of the character of a schottish. Equally simple in design: mirror Urlinie in the first strain, same but leading on the dominant in the second strain. Ends with reprise of the first strain.