From 204 Country Dances (~1775), part 1

Straight & Skillern in London published a book of 204 Country Dances around 1775. In format (single line treble melody with succinct dance instructions below), the book resembles editions of the earlier Playford Dancing Master (multiple editions 1651-1728). The music appears to be almost all familiar songs and fiddle tunes, and the dancing instructions are simple, nor by any means ample in detail. Here is a link to the file on IMSLP: link.

Of the 204 numbers, fifteen or so are of interest here. I've divided them into three groups: (1) those with simple ascending lines in a strain; (2) those with more complex lines; (3) special cases.

"The Hot Bath" is in two strains. The first has an internal ascent in the cadence (not marked). The second consists of a rising figure from ^5, repeated. The first time it overshoots its mark, reaches ^10 and then settles to ^9 for a half cadence. The second time it reaches ^8 again in the third bar and stays there for the duration.

"The Nabob" is about as simple a rising line out of the space ^1-^5 as I have seen anywhere. Not only that the ascent to the cadence is used in both strains.

"The Shepherds Jigg" in its second strain makes three attempts (circled) at a simple stepwise ascent from ^5 to ^8, then "gets it right" at last.

"What's that to You" would require an Urlinie from ^3 with an implied ^2 under the traditional Schenkerian rubric. But, even if it is a bit a surprise, the simple ascent clearly can't be willed away as an internal line in this instance.

I'll write about more complicated examples of the rising line in the next post.

Revised Playford essay published

I have published a heavily revised version of my essay/documentation John Playford Dancing Master: Rising Lines (link to original). The new version is, appropriately, titled John Playford Dancing Master: Rising Lines, Revised and Updated. It can be found on the Texas Scholar Works platform here: link to revision.

Here is the abstract:

This updates and substantially revises two publications of mine on the Texas Scholar Works platform: John Playford Dancing Master: Rising Lines (2010; 2015) and the corresponding section in Rising Lines in Tonal Frameworks of Traditional Tonal Music (2015). The main goal was to provide higher quality graphics, but I have also written a new introduction as well as new analysis and commentary for almost all of the dances.

Minor key series, part 14 (Dorian and Aeolian octaves), continued (1)

Johann Walther's ATB setting of the Easter chorale Jesus Christus, unser Heiland (from 1524) shows the relatively rare case of conflicting signatures: once-transposed Dorian in alto and tenor, twice-transposed Aeolian in the bass. The chorale, in the tenor (boxed below) avoids the Dorian ^6, using all other scale degrees within the octave G3-G4. Against this, alto and bass engage in a play of chromatic cross-relations, which, as I noted in the previous post, is far more common in music of the 16th and 17th centuries than our usual counterpoint rules would have us believe.

The final phrase of the chorale (circles below) is embellished via the ubiquitous pre-cadence flourish of small notes, and there the Dorian ^6 finally does appear in the tenor -- not surprisingly, as the alto and tenor move in parallel thirds through the figure. The alto starts with notes of the final chorale phrase and makes an easily heard chromatic connection from F5 to F#5 across the phrase. I would regard the alto here as a descant voice; to analyze in Schenkerian (Salzerian/Novackian) terms, the Urlinie would reside in the tenor.

Nevertheless, there is a point of historical interest in the alto's descant. I quote from my essay Rising Lines, p. 17 (link to the essay):

[One] source of rising lines comes from five-part vocal (but more often) instrumental music, where the cantus (or topmost) line takes on the character of a descant. . . . When the cantus "loses" its descant character and acts as a principal upper voice, rising structural lines are easily achieved. This change is parallel to the one that occurs in the first half of the nineteenth century, when—even though the force of a century-old cliché that demands descending cadential formulas is still strong—composers sometimes "forget" to relegate ascending lines to [their usual position in] the coda. 

A dance from John Playford's English Dancing Master (first edition 1651); music only, without dance instructions. For more information on "Madge on a Tree" go to an earlier post on this blog: link. The Dorian signature and the ascending Urlinie are obvious features. At the asterisks, note E-natural expressing the Dorian ^6 in a striking way in the context of G minor and Bb major triads, then Eb as a simple neighbor note ornament to D5.

Here are the first two of four dances from Michael Praetorius's collection Terpsichore. The four are ns104, 147, 148, and 295, and all have been discussed elsewhere on this blog.

(1) Here is my comment on n104 from an earlier post:

A shift to minor quality in the second strain, with a fairly leisurely descent/ascent pair that use both F# and F-natural in each half of the figure. (link)

A modern-sounding major/minor contrast is achieved between the strains: Mixolydian in the first, once-transposed Dorian in the second -- except that the consistent use of Eb (asterisks) renders the scale Aeolian in sound. Exceptions in the cadence (boxed) are routine embellishments.

(2) Here is my comment on n147 from an earlier post:

. . . author of the melody unknown; this is one in a series of courantes in once-transposed Dorian mode (final G; one flat in the signature). The box shows a simple linear ascent to the cadence on D5. In the second strain, the figure in part or whole occurs four times in a row.  (link)

Here, as we have seen in some earlier cases, inflections of E as Eb produce an Aeolian sound in the first half of the first strain, but move toward a cadence on D brings back the Dorian ^6 as E-natural in bars 5-8. The final measures of the second strain are exclusively Dorian in sound.

Music for dancing, 1650-1700, part 5

This is the last entry in the Playford series of posts. Mug House appeared for the first time in a supplement to the 7th edition (1687); this version is from the 14th edition (1709) and includes the dance instructions that were printed with the melodies in all editions of The Dancing Master. (I deleted those from graphics in the previous posts.)

Four phrases, (a) to (d), are marked up with a soprano-alto pair—(1) and (2). The upper voice is centered on D5, traces a neighbor note figure in the first phrase, then a line into the cadence in the second phrase. It disappears in the third phrase, to re-emerge in the fourth, which, however, is dominated by G5, not D. The alto voice is similarly centered on B4, and it also disappears, after the opening notes of the fourth phrase.

 I have made a more traditional linear analysis, as well, based on the above. The reader can decide how plausible this all seems. For my part, I would be inclined to prefer a proto-background B4-D5 to begin, expanding to the sixth B4-G5 by the end of the second phrase, then remaining there for the duration.

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.

Music for dancing, 1650-1700, part 4

A well-known 16th century tune, Wooddicock, also known as The Green Man, is reproduced from the first edition, The English Dancing Master. I have sketched this in a preliminary way in the manner of linear analysis. An initial ^8 (final of the once-transposed Aeolian mode) sinks to ^7 by the end of the short first phrase. The figure appears again in the second phrase and in two consecutive notes to begin the third. An ascent from below (see the angled line) meets ^7 and closes to ^8 in the final phrase.

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.

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.

Music for dancing, 1650-1700, part 2

Madge on a Tree appeared in the first edition of The English Dancing Master (but this facsimile is from the fourth edition [1670]). The tune was called Mage on a Cree and Margery Cree in some other editions. (Many songs and dance tunes went by various names in that era.)

Clearly a modal tune, Madge on a Tree is in once-transposed Dorian (one flat in the signature with G as the final or tonic note). The climb to the final cadence is as clear as it could be, occupying the entire fourth phrase.

As a postscript to an earlier series on the clausula vera or cadenza perfetta in the sixteenth century, I have created a second part (at *) to show how naturally the 6-8 figure appears in a cadence with an ascending upper voice.

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.

Music for dancing, 1650-1700, part 1

This post initiates a series on dances from Playford's English Dancing Master (its first edition, 1651, was the only one called The English Dancing Master). I have already gathered fifty numbers with ascending cadence gestures in a PDF documentation essay published on Texas Scholar Works: Playford rising line file. Material from that essay is also included in my Rising Lines essay.

In this series of posts I will analyze a small number of these melodies for matters of register, line, and cadence.

Here is a simple example of register treatment, apparently in service to the title: Under and Over, which appears initially in the second edition (1652). I am using the text as it stands in the fourth edition, from 1670; according to Jeremy Barlow's annotations, several note changes in the ninth (1695) and later editions reduce the modal turns and emphasize typical tonal figures for G minor. (The second flat in the signature, on the other hand, was added in the fourth edition.)

Three of four phrases immediately establish the octave G4-G5. The first phrase then moves by step through that octave from above. The third phrase drops that octave by a step to F4-F5, while using many of the same notes (see double arrow). The second and fourth phrases drop the lower fifth and hold to the upper fourth instead, with a strong linear motion into the cadence.

Note that, overall, the lower range is extended by a step (from G4 to F4—see *) and the upper limit also by a step (from G5 to A5—see **).


A slightly more complex example: Arcadia, which was added in the seventh edition (1686). Four phrases again, marked (a) through (d), and in all of them lines (based on accented pitches) rather than spaces seem to hold sway: a third overlaps the end of the first phrase, reaching the first note of the second phrase, Bb, which then ascends into the cadence on F5; the third phrase continues from that note to an accented A5, then in the final phrase the march continues upward to close on the remarkably high note Bb5.

(If one insisted on gathering the lines into a middleground-background shape, the options would include (1) Bb: ^3 in bar 1 eventually reaching a primary ^5 in bars 7-8, then ascending in the second strain to ^8; (2) raising the pickup note F5 to background status, and holding it throughout till the final cadence completes the ascent; (3) treating the first phrase as "preliminary" [initial descent] to Bb4, which initiates a rising octave line to Bb5; and (4) reading a line of the sixth beginning with Bb4 in bar 4, ascending to F5 by the end of the strain, then further up to Bb5 in the second strain.)

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.