l1 00:00:07,920 --> 00:00:11,700 I welcome everybody to this webinar, A dance band for Playford. 2 00:00:12,090 --> 00:00:17,790 Thank you very much for being here. My name is Helen, I'm the Public Engagement Officer at the Bodleian Libraries. 3 00:00:18,270 --> 00:00:23,729 Just to let you know a few practical things before we start. We are recording the event but as 4 00:00:23,730 --> 00:00:27,090 this is a Zoom webinar your video and audio are turned off. 5 00:00:27,900 --> 00:00:33,240 Today's event features some fascinating manuscripts from the Bodleian Library, and we'd love to hear what you think. 6 00:00:33,600 --> 00:00:35,280 So if you'd like to ask a question, 7 00:00:35,370 --> 00:00:41,880 please type it in the Q&A window throughout the event and your questions will be put live to the speakers during the session. 8 00:00:42,450 --> 00:00:46,740 You can also vote for questions you are interested in by clicking on the thumbs up. 9 00:00:47,370 --> 00:00:55,140 If we don't have time to answer all your questions today, we'll collect the most popular ones and do our best to answer them in our follow up email. 10 00:00:55,800 --> 00:01:00,420 We really value your feedback, so please do fill out the short questionnaire after the webinar. 11 00:01:00,780 --> 00:01:07,170 The link is in your booking email. This helps us to continue to offer and improve free events like this for everyone. 12 00:01:08,280 --> 00:01:15,780 This webinar is linked to a wonderful display, The Dancing Master, at the Bodleian Weston Library until Sunday, the 21st of January. 13 00:01:16,080 --> 00:01:24,650 Do you come and see it if you can. Our presenter today is Dr. Alice Little, Research Fellow at the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments, 14 00:01:24,860 --> 00:01:28,680 part of the Music Faculty of the University of Oxford. Alice's 15 00:01:28,740 --> 00:01:35,240 research focuses on collectors and collecting particularly 18th century tunebooks and their compilers, 16 00:01:35,720 --> 00:01:40,030 looking at what sources the collections were gathered from and what the selection 17 00:01:40,030 --> 00:01:44,060 of music says about the people and cultures that collected and used them. 18 00:01:44,690 --> 00:01:50,110 So I'll hand over now to Alice. Welcome to this evening's talk. 19 00:01:50,120 --> 00:01:55,310 I'm so pleased to welcome Jeremy Barlow to speak to us tonight on the topic of A dance band for Playford. 20 00:01:55,850 --> 00:01:58,400 I first came across Jeremy's work, as many of you did too, 21 00:01:58,760 --> 00:02:06,050 with this book, his edition of Playford's Dancing Master, which incorporates all 18 editions and shows how the tunes vary from book to book. 22 00:02:06,620 --> 00:02:10,850 I was pleased to have him among my guests on the podcast, Folk tunes and Englishness, in 2021, 23 00:02:11,060 --> 00:02:13,460 which is still available to hear online if you'd like to look it up. 24 00:02:14,240 --> 00:02:19,280 Today we'll be focusing on the bands that played music for dancing between the 17th and 19th centuries. 25 00:02:19,940 --> 00:02:27,019 A little about Jeremy. Jeremy Barlow specialises in English popular and dance music from 1550 to 1750 and also has 26 00:02:27,020 --> 00:02:31,760 a particular interest in the illustration of music and social dance over the centuries. 27 00:02:32,450 --> 00:02:39,470 He has lectured on various subjects for organisations such as the Arts Society, U3A, the Art Fund and the National Trust. 28 00:02:40,010 --> 00:02:47,120 He is president of the Dolmetsch Foundation. His books include The Enraged Musician: Hogarth's Musical Imagery and The Cat 29 00:02:47,120 --> 00:02:50,450 and the Fiddle: Images of Musical Humour from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. 30 00:02:50,780 --> 00:02:55,220 Jeremy is well known for his work on Playford, and I'm delighted to welcome Jeremy to speak to us today. 31 00:02:57,700 --> 00:03:01,300 Thank you, Alice. If we can go to the next slide. 32 00:03:03,000 --> 00:03:11,730 The frontispiece to the final edition of Playford's Dancing Master, shown here, features a band of three musicians accompanying a country dance. 33 00:03:13,140 --> 00:03:17,520 My aim is to determine if the line-up - fiddle, bassoon, 34 00:03:17,520 --> 00:03:26,610 oboe - constituted a typical accompaniment for country dancers in the ballroom, not only during the period of The Dancing Master, but before and after too. 35 00:03:27,030 --> 00:03:36,359 In the first part of the talk I'll provide a little background on John Playford and on the editions of The Dancing Master that he initiated. I'll examine 36 00:03:36,360 --> 00:03:40,320 the three frontispieces that appeared over the volume's lifetime 37 00:03:40,440 --> 00:03:46,890 For further musical information and I'll also say a bit about the role of the dancing master as a person. 38 00:03:47,460 --> 00:03:55,410 In the second part, I'll compare the band here with other historic images of ballroom dance bands to see and how if they match. 39 00:03:56,310 --> 00:04:03,180 Finally, I'll investigate how musicians might have arranged country dance tunes and play a few recordings to show 40 00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:11,580 how the music might, or might not, or sounded to dancers in the 18th century. Born 400 years ago in Norwich, 41 00:04:11,850 --> 00:04:18,960 John Playford probably received musical training at Norwich Cathedral before coming to London as an apprentice stationer. 42 00:04:19,770 --> 00:04:28,590 On gaining his freedom in 1647, he started to publish tracts and following Charles I's execution two years later, 43 00:04:28,830 --> 00:04:34,410 these tracts came to include execution speeches of Royalist supporters. 44 00:04:35,220 --> 00:04:38,610 The authorities issued a warrant to arrest Playford, 45 00:04:38,880 --> 00:04:43,560 but we know nothing more except that he changed course and began to publish music books. 46 00:04:44,070 --> 00:04:48,240 In doing so, he's been called the founder of modern music publishing. 47 00:04:49,800 --> 00:04:55,020 One of his first ventures was The English Dancing Master from 1651. 48 00:04:58,610 --> 00:05:06,950 You need to go to, yes there we are. The volume comprises tunes and dance instructions for 105 country dances 49 00:05:07,250 --> 00:05:09,440 and it was the first collection of its kind. 50 00:05:10,260 --> 00:05:19,310 Playford published it in a hurry because, he wrote in the preface, quote, 'There was a false and surrepticious Copy at the Printing Presse'. 51 00:05:20,300 --> 00:05:23,990 England then was two years into Oliver Cromwell's Interregnum 52 00:05:24,200 --> 00:05:31,070 and Playford also wrote that he published the work 'knowing these times and the nature of it do not agree'. 53 00:05:32,150 --> 00:05:38,810 Puritan opposition to public music and dance is well known, but that didn't necessarily extend to private events. 54 00:05:39,260 --> 00:05:48,530 Cromwell himself organised a lavish wedding feast at Whitehall for his daughter Mary in 1657, and a guest reported that, quote, 55 00:05:48,710 --> 00:05:59,960 'They had 48 violins, 50 trumpets and much mirth with frolics besides mixt dancing, a thing heretofore accounted profane, till five in the morning, 56 00:06:00,110 --> 00:06:08,630 yes, the 5 of the clock yesterday morning'. By 48 violins, the writer meant a string orchestra of 48 players. 57 00:06:08,870 --> 00:06:13,849 That's enough for a symphony orchestra today and exactly twice the number of Louis XIV's 58 00:06:13,850 --> 00:06:18,290 famous 24 violins as copied by Charles I, 59 00:06:18,290 --> 00:06:25,400 Charles II on his restoration. More than enough to form a dance band for Playford, 60 00:06:26,300 --> 00:06:35,240 though the guest didn't indicate how many instruments accompanied the dancing or if the expression 'mixt dancing' included country dances, 61 00:06:35,480 --> 00:06:39,200 however likely that must have been. John Playford 62 00:06:39,500 --> 00:06:48,260 went on to publish many music books without any hindrance during the Interregnum, and having rushed to get The English Dancing Master into print, 63 00:06:48,530 --> 00:06:59,450 he brought out a second edition a year later, stating that it had been 'Enlarged and corrected from many grosse Errors, which were in the former Edition'. 64 00:07:00,290 --> 00:07:03,800 He also retitled the work as just The Dancing Master. 65 00:07:04,250 --> 00:07:11,390 However, not all errors from the first edition were corrected and plenty of new mistakes were introduced in the tunes. 66 00:07:12,230 --> 00:07:20,450 The Bodleian's copy, shown here, is on display as part of the exhibition showcase in the entrance hall to the Bodleian's Weston Library. 67 00:07:20,450 --> 00:07:29,990 By the time of his death 34 years later, John Playford had published seven editions of The Dancing Master. 68 00:07:30,950 --> 00:07:35,720 He added new dances to each edition to attract buyers and omitted older ones. 69 00:07:36,230 --> 00:07:40,250 This process continued when Henry Playford succeeded his father. 70 00:07:40,940 --> 00:07:48,560 He published another five editions and the Bodleian's copy of his last, the 12th in 1703, is on display. , 71 00:07:50,510 --> 00:07:55,040 And as you can see, it has a different frontispiece and I'll come back to that. 72 00:07:55,700 --> 00:08:01,490 Henry Playford was succeeded by John Young, who described himself as a musical instrument maker, 73 00:08:01,670 --> 00:08:11,930 but who nevertheless published a further six editions, the last being the 18th from the late 1720s or early thirties, the one we saw at the start. 74 00:08:15,820 --> 00:08:24,010 By that time, the volume had swollen to contain 358 dances, with just 28 surviving from John Playford's 75 00:08:24,100 --> 00:08:33,850 original edition. Young also added a further two volumes to the collection, making eventually around 900 dances in total. 76 00:08:34,990 --> 00:08:44,290 I have here my own copy of the 17th edition from 1721, bound together with the Young's volume two. 77 00:08:44,500 --> 00:08:46,540 I shall open it at random. 78 00:08:49,330 --> 00:09:03,190 You can see at the top, the tune, the title of the dance and how many dancers are required, and they're nearly all 'Longways for as many as will'. 79 00:09:03,370 --> 00:09:12,790 Then you see the line-Up of the dancers at the start, the tune beneath and beneath that you can see the dances' dance instructions. 80 00:09:14,170 --> 00:09:18,430 As I said, almost all the dances are by now 'Longways for as many as will'. 81 00:09:18,430 --> 00:09:28,960 John Playford's first edition of 1651 included many more round dances and also dances for a fixed number of performers. 82 00:09:29,470 --> 00:09:39,250 The thin oblong format meant that the slimmer early editions could go into a gentleman's tailcoat pocket, impossible with this bulky volume, 83 00:09:40,360 --> 00:09:45,499 but you can see from the worn corners to the cover that 84 00:09:45,500 --> 00:09:48,830 it's been much used. In fact, it was falling apart 85 00:09:49,040 --> 00:09:55,190 so I've had it re-backed rather smartly. I mentioned a gentleman's tailcoat pocket. 86 00:09:55,640 --> 00:10:02,540 This may seem incongruous since today many of you view country dances and their tunes as part of English folk tradition. 87 00:10:03,470 --> 00:10:11,540 The dances were certainly performed across society, but John Playford aimed his collection at the middle and upper social ranks. 88 00:10:12,020 --> 00:10:20,560 He wrote in the Preface to the first edition that quote, 'The Art of Dancing ..is a commendable and rare Quality fit for young Gentlemen, 89 00:10:20,600 --> 00:10:30,620 if opportunely and civilly used.' He took for granted of course, that in order to dance civilly, his gentlemen needed genteel women partners. 90 00:10:31,340 --> 00:10:36,800 Dance was an expected social accomplishment for the gentry and Playford's very title 91 00:10:36,950 --> 00:10:46,040 The Dancing Master describes the person who taught the gentry to dance, and more importantly, or as importantly, how to behave in the ballroom. 92 00:10:46,640 --> 00:10:53,660 I say person, although the expression Dancing Master implies that the role was exclusively male. 93 00:10:54,170 --> 00:10:57,960 female dance teachers are documented from the mid-18th century onwards 94 00:10:58,190 --> 00:11:05,389 but there is little information earlier. Playford, in a later publication, advertised the girls' boarding school run by his wife, 95 00:11:05,390 --> 00:11:11,840 Hannah, as a place where, quote, 'young, gentlewomen might be instructed... in dancing'. 96 00:11:12,620 --> 00:11:14,860 The instructor, male or female, 97 00:11:15,290 --> 00:11:23,240 would not only have taught country dances. At higher levels of society country dances took place during the latter part of the ball. 98 00:11:23,720 --> 00:11:29,360 Earlier in the evening, one couple at a time performed a French dance to the assembled company, 99 00:11:29,780 --> 00:11:35,360 principally the courante in John Playford's time and the minuet in the 18th century. 100 00:11:35,960 --> 00:11:41,120 Perhaps one reason that Playford called his first edition, The English Dancing Master, 101 00:11:41,360 --> 00:11:47,490 was to demarcate its contents from the French dances that preceded it in a high-class ball. 102 00:11:48,470 --> 00:11:54,980 Samuel Pepys described this format in a ball given by Charles II at Whitehall in 1662, 103 00:11:55,550 --> 00:12:03,950 although the king, after exile in France had opened the occasion with a branle, the French equivalent of the English country dance. 104 00:12:04,340 --> 00:12:11,750 But after the branle, Pepys wrote that quote, 'The King led a Lady, the single Coranto, 105 00:12:12,200 --> 00:12:17,929 and then the rest of the lords, one after another, other ladies; very noble 106 00:12:17,930 --> 00:12:22,670 it was and great pleasure to see. Then to country dances 107 00:12:22,790 --> 00:12:30,740 the king leading the first, which he called for; which was says he, 'Cuckolds all awry', the old dance of England'. 108 00:12:31,430 --> 00:12:39,440 That dance had appeared 11 years earlier in Playford's English Dancing Master, and it survived through all subsequent editions. 109 00:12:40,190 --> 00:12:42,080 Pepys doesn't mention the band, 110 00:12:42,380 --> 00:12:50,720 but the description dates from the time that the King was forming his orchestra of 24 violins in imitation of Louis XIV. 111 00:12:51,470 --> 00:13:00,530 Presumably the band, whatever its size, size played for the country, dances as well as for the preceding courantes or courantes, courantos. 112 00:13:01,130 --> 00:13:04,270 I want to bring Alice briefly in here again, 113 00:13:04,280 --> 00:13:07,340 I believe she has a question. Thank you, Jeremy. 114 00:13:07,850 --> 00:13:14,060 Could you say a little more about the Englishness of the tunes in the early Dancing Nasters that Playford printed please? 115 00:13:14,630 --> 00:13:18,160 You mentioned that he dropped the word English from the second edition onwards, 116 00:13:18,170 --> 00:13:21,650 and I want to know why that was and where the tunes were actually from, 117 00:13:21,770 --> 00:13:30,989 do you think? Well, perhaps Playford dropped English from the title of the second edition because he mentions country dances in 118 00:13:30,990 --> 00:13:38,810 the text below and the King's description of 'Cuckolds all awry' as 'the old dance of England' shows that even then, 119 00:13:39,030 --> 00:13:44,010 country dances were linked with Englishness and English tradition in people's minds. 120 00:13:45,150 --> 00:13:52,380 The earliest references to country dancing, which mention some of Playford's tune and dance titles, date back 100 years earlier. 121 00:13:52,860 --> 00:13:58,080 It should be said, though, that not all the tunes in the English Dancing master were English. 122 00:13:58,350 --> 00:14:03,660 Some came from Scotland, Ireland and across the channel. Not all were that old either. 123 00:14:04,140 --> 00:14:12,750 The long and complicated Gray's Inn Mask, for example, had been composed by John Coperario for an entertainment 40 years before. 124 00:14:14,100 --> 00:14:21,840 Also, some of the choreographies resemble those found in Renaissance dance treatises compiled for the Italian nobility. 125 00:14:23,040 --> 00:14:26,939 Thank you. You mentioned 'Cuckolds all awry'. It's quite a bawdy title. 126 00:14:26,940 --> 00:14:34,350 I wondered are there words that go with the tune? It surprises me that such tunes were being used for dancing by the nobility and even in court. 127 00:14:35,770 --> 00:14:41,650 Well, there is a moderately bawdy song called 'Cuckolds all' with words that fit the tune in 128 00:14:42,430 --> 00:14:47,130 Henry Playford song collection Pills to Purge Melancholy. Charles II's 129 00:14:47,150 --> 00:14:54,310 choice of 'Cuckolds all awry' fits with his reaction generally against the puritanism of the Interregnum. 130 00:14:54,760 --> 00:15:03,070 It also demonstrates a tension that had long existed in the ballroom, tension between decorum and licence. 131 00:15:03,700 --> 00:15:13,300 Sexual attraction and the rhythmic impulse of faster dances had long threatened to upset the restraints of dance etiquette, bearing and gesture, 132 00:15:13,690 --> 00:15:18,430 as talked very strictly by the dancing master to his genteel pupils. 133 00:15:19,060 --> 00:15:27,730 These restraints were threatened when the pupils got excited by a new dance from outside their milieu that threatened the propriety of the ballroom. 134 00:15:28,660 --> 00:15:36,070 Two widely separated examples of dances that had to be tamed in the ballroom include the sedate sarabande, 135 00:15:36,490 --> 00:15:43,300 originally banned by the church for its wildness in 16th century Spain, and the tango in the 20th century. 136 00:15:43,900 --> 00:15:53,320 Both originated in Latin America, but it seems that our native country dance had less restrained origins, too, before being gentrified in the ballroom. 137 00:15:54,970 --> 00:16:03,610 And that tension between decorum and license brings me to John Playford's choice of frontispiece for the English Dancing Master. 138 00:16:06,350 --> 00:16:13,670 Although Playford advocated dancing for young gentlemen if opportunely and civilly used, for its frontispiece 139 00:16:13,910 --> 00:16:19,880 he adapted an engraving originally designed for a salacious work called The Academy of Love, 140 00:16:20,150 --> 00:16:25,190 in which Cupid guides a young gentleman through that institution. 141 00:16:26,180 --> 00:16:32,419 The author describes the activities there metaphorically by using, through a series of laboured 142 00:16:32,420 --> 00:16:38,210 double entendres, the terminology of subjects studied at a proper academy such as grammar, 143 00:16:38,330 --> 00:16:45,860 rhetoric, geometry, music and so on. The frontispiece illustration shown now in better quality, 144 00:16:48,200 --> 00:16:52,100 shows Cupid, we seem to have got two slides on the screen, 145 00:16:54,020 --> 00:17:00,110 there we are, this shows Cupid with his bow, introducing the gentleman to a young woman at the academy. 146 00:17:00,770 --> 00:17:04,100 In Playford's adaptation for The English Dancing Master 147 00:17:07,980 --> 00:17:18,860 Cupid still has his wings and quiver but he no longer holds a bow. 148 00:17:19,300 --> 00:17:23,780 He plays the lute instead. But the lute doesn't constitute a band for country dances. 149 00:17:25,070 --> 00:17:29,000 To maximise instrumentalists as well as dances 150 00:17:29,270 --> 00:17:35,390 and he advertised The English Dancing Master quote 'to be played on the treble Violl or Violin.' 151 00:17:36,260 --> 00:17:40,430 The treble viol, unlike the violin, was not associated with dance, 152 00:17:41,060 --> 00:17:48,020 but the viol family formed the basis for music-making in consort among the gentleman amateurs that he chiefly targeted. 153 00:17:48,890 --> 00:17:53,660 His later publications include A Brief Introduction to the Skill of Musick, 154 00:17:53,930 --> 00:17:59,780 which gives instructions for playing the bass viol or viola da gamba. The Bodleian's copy 155 00:18:01,230 --> 00:18:09,210 is in the display case down below in the Weston Library. In the ninth edition of The Dancing Master, 1695, 156 00:18:09,450 --> 00:18:18,270 John Playford's son Henry stated in his Preface, 'most of the tunes being within the compass of the flute', meaning at that time the recorder. 157 00:18:18,870 --> 00:18:24,750 The recorder had by then largely supplanted the viol as an instrument popular with gentleman amateurs. 158 00:18:25,110 --> 00:18:28,680 But again, it was not an instrument associated with dance. 159 00:18:29,520 --> 00:18:33,330 I'll move on now to the second frontispiece of The Dancing Master 160 00:18:33,630 --> 00:18:39,870 which had appeared in the seventh edition, published in 1686, not long before John Playford's death. 161 00:18:40,560 --> 00:18:48,240 By then, Henry had taken over the business. The example here comes from the Bodleian's 12th edition, which we've already seen. 162 00:18:48,960 --> 00:18:58,110 The print is titled The Dancing Schoole, a more appropriate venue than the Academy of Love for a book titled The Dancing Master. 163 00:18:58,590 --> 00:19:09,120 Also, the clothes in the Academy of Love frontispiece dating from 1640 must have looked very old fashioned by 1686. In the new frontispiece 164 00:19:09,540 --> 00:19:12,630 men and women are no longer chatting together in the background, 165 00:19:12,810 --> 00:19:19,920 but are separated, and in the foreground they line up formally opposite each other for the start of a longways dance. 166 00:19:21,240 --> 00:19:31,230 Nevertheless, Cupid is still there, reminding us that behind the dancer's regimented appearance lies his potentially disruptive power. 167 00:19:31,920 --> 00:19:37,590 He's now swapped his lute for a violin. The rubric above the image which had been included on and off 168 00:19:37,590 --> 00:19:46,320 since the second edition states quote 'Directions for Dancing Country Dances with the Tunes to each Dance for the Treble of the Violin'. 169 00:19:46,920 --> 00:19:51,690 Mention of the flute i.e recorder has been dropped by this 12th addition, 170 00:19:51,990 --> 00:19:56,940 perhaps because many of the tunes don't actually fit the range of the treble instrument. 171 00:19:57,660 --> 00:20:07,620 Before John Playford, the violin had largely been preserved, the preserve, of professional musicians and had been strongly associated with dance. 172 00:20:07,980 --> 00:20:15,750 But by now amateurs have taken to it, and among them a frequent customer at John Playford's shop, Samuel Pepys. 173 00:20:16,590 --> 00:20:21,840 On the far left and right in the frontispiece, we see two further fiddlers, both men. 174 00:20:22,230 --> 00:20:31,910 I take them to represent the dancing masters who were musicians too, and taught the dances from their fiddles separated, separately to men and women who, 175 00:20:32,280 --> 00:20:37,830 although at some point in the tuition as here, the two sexes must have been brought together. 176 00:20:38,670 --> 00:20:46,170 The fiddles were often miniature kit fiddles, or pochettes, who could slip into the dancing master's tailcoat pocket. 177 00:20:46,680 --> 00:20:51,140 There's one from a private collection on the display in the Weston. 178 00:20:51,930 --> 00:20:54,660 It's odd to me that the dancing masters are sitting. 179 00:20:54,810 --> 00:21:02,570 Perhaps that's artistic license to allow a view of the company in the background and to make a contrast with the upright dancers. 180 00:21:03,450 --> 00:21:08,459 But again, these fiddlers do not constitute a band for country dances 181 00:21:08,460 --> 00:21:14,760 in the ballroom. It's in the 18th and final edition of The Dancing Master that as we've seen, 182 00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:17,580 John Playford's successor, John Young, 183 00:21:17,790 --> 00:21:25,950 replaced the stiff formality of four couples lined up for the start of a dance with four couples actually dancing 184 00:21:26,140 --> 00:21:35,850 and what's more, dancing to a band. It must be said that the event looks a pretty tame affair. 185 00:21:36,570 --> 00:21:39,870 Again, a major reason for changing the frontispiece 186 00:21:40,170 --> 00:21:55,530 must have been to update the clothes. Notice how, for example, in the late 1720s tricorns replaced the boater style of 1686 for men. 187 00:21:57,940 --> 00:22:05,170 And then we go to the next slide. In the second part of this talk, we'll see if the line up here 188 00:22:06,490 --> 00:22:12,550 was typical for ballroom dancing generally, not only in the early 18th century, but before and after, too. 189 00:22:12,850 --> 00:22:21,820 And as you look at the images below, I'd like you to try and identify a feature of this band that's not present in any of the other illustrations. 190 00:22:22,180 --> 00:22:26,940 We'll have answers in the next break. So time now for questions and comments. 191 00:22:29,020 --> 00:22:36,129 Thank you, Jeremy. So there is only one question in the Q&A box, so I shall start with that for you. 192 00:22:36,130 --> 00:22:38,020 This is from Ann, it's lovely to have you with us Ann. 193 00:22:39,700 --> 00:22:45,700 She says if Playford intended to present country dances as comparatively decorous and for the gentry, 194 00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:50,410 why did he include easy romps like Half Hannikin, Jack a Lent, Goddesses, 195 00:22:50,590 --> 00:22:56,260 An Old Man is a bag full of Bones, etc. Such dances don't really need instructions, do they? 196 00:22:58,180 --> 00:23:09,310 Well, I'm not an expert on the dances, but of course, these dances can be danced in many ways, decorously or indecorously. 197 00:23:09,580 --> 00:23:17,620 And I imagine that any dancing master worth his name would want to make sure his genteel pupils behaved themselves in that dance. 198 00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:26,260 Thank you. And a second from Mike, welcome, Mike. Can you comment on how the musicians are holding their violins in 1703 image? 199 00:23:26,590 --> 00:23:32,230 Are they fiddlers rather than violinists? The 1703, 200 00:23:33,250 --> 00:23:38,860 I'll have to look at my volume. Would you like me to share again 201 00:23:38,860 --> 00:23:42,480 briefly? Well, I can do that quickly. 202 00:23:42,490 --> 00:23:46,120 I hadn't really looked at that. And thank you for asking the question. 203 00:23:47,290 --> 00:23:52,690 Well, that is. Oh, yes. They're holding them down sort of below, by their armpits. 204 00:23:52,990 --> 00:23:56,530 That is how people held baroque fiddles at that time. 205 00:23:57,100 --> 00:24:03,280 And the more folky they were or the more informal, the lower they sometimes held them. 206 00:24:04,800 --> 00:24:12,080 There you go the 1703 image should be on the screen now. There is a kind of 3 to 4 second delay every time I click your 207 00:24:12,090 --> 00:24:15,730 proceed slide, I'm sorry about that, Jeremy. Don't worry, it's fine, don't 208 00:24:16,370 --> 00:24:24,270 worry. You can see they are holding them quite low, but that was just a little higher, 209 00:24:25,260 --> 00:24:29,040 that was the normal holding position for baroque violinists. 210 00:24:31,290 --> 00:24:35,909 Perfect. Thank you. So that's all that's in the Q&A box at the moment 211 00:24:35,910 --> 00:24:39,420 so do keep them coming for next time. Back to your slide. 212 00:24:39,660 --> 00:24:47,910 So let me just progress forwards. The question is, does the instrumentation shown here show a typical dance band for Playford? 213 00:24:48,780 --> 00:24:54,990 If we take the essential components of two treble instruments and a bass, the answer is yes. 214 00:24:55,590 --> 00:25:02,910 But what's more, it had been so in the ballroom for nearly 200 years and continued to be so until the end of the 18th century 215 00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:04,980 and not only in England. 216 00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:15,450 The two treble instruments might be violins or oboes or one of each as here, and the bass might be a cello, a bass viol, a double bass or a bassoon. 217 00:25:16,930 --> 00:25:24,100 Forces were expanded to special occasions. The earliest example I found of a dance band was two treble instruments, 218 00:25:24,100 --> 00:25:32,020 and a bass, dates from around 1550, nearly 200 years before the final edition of The Dancing Master 219 00:25:32,710 --> 00:25:39,640 and it features one of two contrasting strips of dancers by the Flemish-born engraver Theodor de Bry. 220 00:25:40,030 --> 00:25:44,470 The top strip shows sedate, courtly dancers, lavishly dressed, 221 00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:52,840 performing indoors to music from a band, far left, which consists of two fiddles and a bass viol plus a lute. 222 00:25:54,460 --> 00:26:04,000 We go back to the dancers. In contrast, the lower strip displays peasants dancing outdoors with complete abandon. 223 00:26:04,570 --> 00:26:09,790 This is rustic dancing, but not country dancing as envisaged by John Playford. 224 00:26:10,270 --> 00:26:14,740 The music comes from a duo playing a raucous shawm and bagpipes, 225 00:26:15,340 --> 00:26:18,940 both double reed instruments that carry well outdoors. 226 00:26:21,670 --> 00:26:26,410 The next print from a little later in the 16th century, 227 00:26:26,650 --> 00:26:34,630 and probably French, shows two high ranking couples performing to a band similar to that playing the courtly dancers just seen. 228 00:26:35,020 --> 00:26:35,680 In fact, 229 00:26:35,890 --> 00:26:46,510 it's so similar not only in the instruments but in the clothes and disposition of the players that it looks as if the artist had copied Theodor de Bry's band. 230 00:26:48,210 --> 00:26:56,940 Artists did copying each other. And that fact should caution one against taking iconographic evidence too literally. 231 00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:06,070 I'm moving on now half a century to a print that shows a classy French ball in the 1630s. 232 00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:12,340 Such were the restraints imposed by the dancing masters on the upper ranks of society 233 00:27:12,580 --> 00:27:16,660 that the couple approaching us down the centre of the ball might be walking, 234 00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:21,670 not dancing. But the band in the background on the left and the verses underneath 235 00:27:21,820 --> 00:27:26,500 remove any doubt. As in Pepys's description of Charles II's ball, 236 00:27:26,860 --> 00:27:31,300 we have one couple at a time performing to the assembled company. 237 00:27:32,830 --> 00:27:37,480 The line-Up of the band again consists of two violins and a bass instrument. 238 00:27:37,780 --> 00:27:40,900 There's no lute this time or any of the later images. 239 00:27:41,650 --> 00:27:49,880 I can show several more illustrations of people dancing to the same line-up from the years before the 18th edition of The Dancing Master. 240 00:27:50,470 --> 00:27:53,560 But I'm going to move forward now to the period that followed. 241 00:27:54,280 --> 00:28:01,510 John Young, the publisher of that final edition, faced increasing competition from rival country dance publications 242 00:28:01,840 --> 00:28:09,940 and after his death in 1732, new collections appeared in quantity year by year to the end of the 18th century. 243 00:28:10,810 --> 00:28:15,220 The Bodleian display includes this example from 1744. 244 00:28:16,980 --> 00:28:26,730 Here we see five couples dancing while to the left of them, a woman seems to be facing off competition from two gentlemen pestering her to take part. 245 00:28:27,300 --> 00:28:29,580 Above them top left is the band. 246 00:28:30,780 --> 00:28:39,960 The basic line-up remains the same, two treble instruments and the bass, but it's expanded now with two oboes reinforcing the two violins. 247 00:28:40,740 --> 00:28:45,570 The oboe is a refined descendant of the raucous shawm that we saw earlier. 248 00:28:46,590 --> 00:28:51,270 The bass instrument is indistinct, but there appears to be the neck of a cello or double bass. 249 00:28:52,740 --> 00:28:59,520 Notice that the text above the image markets the collection to appeal across a wider social spectrum. 250 00:29:00,330 --> 00:29:09,780 A Choice Collection of two, 200 Favourite Country Dances performed at Court, Bath, Tunbridge and all Public Places. 251 00:29:10,170 --> 00:29:13,770 Balls were no longer exclusive private occasions. 252 00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:23,739 Moving forward to 1760, we have another collection from the Bodleian that claims to be, have been performed at Court, Bath, Tunbridge, 253 00:29:23,740 --> 00:29:28,840 etc., with the tunes apparently playable not only on the violin and flute, 254 00:29:29,050 --> 00:29:35,290 but by now the transverse, that's the transverse flute now, but on the oboe too, another 255 00:29:35,290 --> 00:29:39,820 instrument that like the violin had earlier been the preserve of professionals. 256 00:29:40,390 --> 00:29:46,330 However, the line-up of the band upsets my two melody instruments and a bass theory. 257 00:29:47,950 --> 00:29:53,440 We have two fiddlers, but instead of a bass player, there's a man on pipe and tabor. 258 00:29:54,130 --> 00:30:01,150 Renaissance imagery shows the pipe and tabor accompanying dance for the gentry and nobility but by now the 259 00:30:01,150 --> 00:30:08,680 instrumental combination had moved down the social scale and had come to be associated with outdoor rustic dance. 260 00:30:09,310 --> 00:30:17,890 It's impossible to rule out such a line up in the ballroom, but it would have sounded thin without a bass instrument to provide harmonic foundation. 261 00:30:18,370 --> 00:30:27,430 I suggest that the pipe and tabor maybe be there symbolically to demonstrate that country dancing still had rustic, rustic associations. 262 00:30:27,910 --> 00:30:36,910 If I had time, I could show more images from the period in which the pipe and tabor may be interpreted as an emblem of rusticity, 263 00:30:37,060 --> 00:30:41,040 not as an actual instrument playing for the scene 264 00:30:41,050 --> 00:30:51,940 shown. There is written evidence that the two melody instruments and the bass remained the essential line-up for ballroom dancing, 265 00:30:52,120 --> 00:31:02,259 at least to the end of the 18th century. When Haydn came to London in 1791, he went to a Lord Mayor's lunch in the City, after which 266 00:31:02,260 --> 00:31:10,420 he noted there was dancing to quote, 'a wretched dance band consisting of two violins and a cello.' In another room 267 00:31:10,540 --> 00:31:17,380 quote, 'the music was a little better because there was a drum to drown out the misery of the violins'. 268 00:31:17,980 --> 00:31:24,520 Although to my knowledge, no functional dance arrangements survive for two violins and a bass 269 00:31:24,940 --> 00:31:29,050 there are collections of more ballroom minuets for that combination 270 00:31:29,230 --> 00:31:34,620 and as said, minuets would have preceded country dances in a high-class ball. 271 00:31:35,500 --> 00:31:42,520 After 1800, collections of country dances appeared less frequently, and from 1815, 272 00:31:42,670 --> 00:31:47,380 the quadrille increasingly took over as the dance for groups of couples. 273 00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:58,210 A valiant attempt to keep the country dance going came from dancing master Thomas Wilson and his book, An Analysis of Country Dances from 1811. 274 00:31:58,750 --> 00:32:06,730 It's on display in the Weston. Notice that the figures on the left demonstrate the five positions of classical ballet and that 275 00:32:07,420 --> 00:32:11,260 the book includes, quote, The Complete Etiquette of the Ballroom. 276 00:32:11,830 --> 00:32:17,440 Thomas Wilson was determined to maintain the dancing master's rigorous standards. 277 00:32:18,490 --> 00:32:24,100 Although the country dance dwindled in popularity it didn't die out entirely in the ballroom 278 00:32:24,310 --> 00:32:34,830 and there's one that survives right through to my adolescence in the 1950s, when after waltzes, quicksteps, and foxtrots at local dances, 279 00:32:35,290 --> 00:32:43,990 the 'Roger the Coverley' sometimes ended the evening as Thomas Wilson himself had recommended 150 years earlier. 280 00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:49,630 The tune remained recognisable from the version in the ninth edition of The Dancing Master 281 00:32:49,990 --> 00:32:55,810 but the band, line, band line-up, was usually sax, piano, double bass and drums. 282 00:32:56,380 --> 00:33:04,030 We're coming up to another pause now, so let's return to that unique feature of the band in the 18th edition of The Dancing Master. 283 00:33:04,390 --> 00:33:07,880 Has anyone spotted it? Here's the image again 284 00:33:07,900 --> 00:33:10,900 bottom right along with the other bands we've seen 285 00:33:11,110 --> 00:33:27,420 for comparison. So, Jeremy, you have got one person's got it in the, in the chat it was Ann, trust Ann, she says 1728 band have sheet music, correct. 286 00:33:27,860 --> 00:33:34,000 Oh brilliant, well done. The answer is it's the only band playing from music. 287 00:33:35,140 --> 00:33:38,360 Musicians in all the other bands appeared to be playing from memory. 288 00:33:39,070 --> 00:33:48,010 When Charles II asked for 'Cuckolds all awry' would the musicians have shuffled quickly through their parts to find it? I very much doubt it. 289 00:33:48,370 --> 00:33:54,430 They'd have known the tune. Just as jazz musicians today have a huge repertoire of standards from memory. 290 00:33:55,120 --> 00:34:01,300 I mentioned earlier that no scores or parts survive for functional dance music, country dance music. 291 00:34:01,720 --> 00:34:07,330 The nearest we get is John Young's tantalising statement beneath his frontispiece, 292 00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:16,780 that where his books are sold are, quote, 'also to be had, the Basses to all the Dances contain'd in this First Volume'. 293 00:34:17,770 --> 00:34:21,610 But sadly the basses were not to be found or were never published. 294 00:34:22,890 --> 00:34:28,160 Given the absence of surviving scores, parts or basses, after the break I'll 295 00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:33,780 ask how dance musicians might have arranged and harmonised the tunes and with a 296 00:34:33,780 --> 00:34:38,970 few recordings demonstrate how their arrangements might or might not have sounded. 297 00:34:39,390 --> 00:34:42,660 Time now for more comments and questions. 298 00:34:44,620 --> 00:34:49,380 Lovely. So we do have a few more in the chat and pouring in. It's lovely to see some familiar names. 299 00:34:50,460 --> 00:34:57,180 Rhodri Davies asks Jeremy, I believe you said that your copy of The Dancing Master had volumes one and two bound together. 300 00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:01,380 So do you want to clarify that first. And the question is, was that normal? 301 00:35:03,020 --> 00:35:17,450 I think I've seen other copies in libraries where volumes one and two were bound together. I don't know if I can show, it's far too thick for 358 dances but 302 00:35:17,990 --> 00:35:21,350 if I can go through, the last pages 303 00:35:22,750 --> 00:35:32,140 we then get the last dance in the first volume and then we get the frontispiece to volume two, which is the same as for volume one. 304 00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:36,580 So yes, I think it did occur more than once. 305 00:35:38,380 --> 00:35:44,860 Thank you. Marelli Elize would like to know, was dancing in schools a way of socialising among young people, 306 00:35:45,010 --> 00:35:54,530 young people at the time? Well, Hannah Playford, that's to say John Playford's wife taught in, had a girls' school, 307 00:35:54,860 --> 00:35:59,030 so it would have only been girls that were taught to dance. 308 00:35:59,030 --> 00:36:07,790 And I have no idea if boys were then brought in at the last moment for a ball, or whether the girls. I think a mis-spoke slightly there and said, dancing in schools. 309 00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:11,160 I should have said dancing school, sorry. Oh sorry, 310 00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:17,990 so say this question again, can you? Were dancing schools a way for young people to socialise? 311 00:36:19,540 --> 00:36:25,689 I suppose they were, I don't know to what extent. I mean, the country dance is a way of socialising though, 312 00:36:25,690 --> 00:36:34,490 if it's, some of the longways dances involve you meeting other people of the opposite sex as you go down the line. 313 00:36:34,510 --> 00:36:39,730 So I mean, I really can't answer that question with any certainty. 314 00:36:40,510 --> 00:36:44,380 The Academy of Love certainly was a place to socialise. Lovely. 315 00:36:44,490 --> 00:36:49,530 And a final one for this section from Howard. How widespread do you think these dances were? 316 00:36:49,530 --> 00:36:54,330 Were they used by ordinary village folk? That, 317 00:36:54,650 --> 00:36:58,340 that's a question which is very hard to answer. 318 00:36:58,520 --> 00:37:09,020 All I know is that when, when Cecil Sharp started collecting dances, he claims to have collected country dances from various parts of England, 319 00:37:09,020 --> 00:37:16,340 and they are included in his first volume of country dances to tunes like Pop the Weasel, which is a 19th century tune. 320 00:37:16,790 --> 00:37:22,660 So I think the answer must be for what we know in the, way back in 1550, 321 00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:27,920 and what we know in the late 19th century, Cecil Sharp, the answer must be yes, they were. 322 00:37:28,220 --> 00:37:36,710 To what extent I don't know. Lovely thank you. And then I've got a question derived from Andy's to lead us back into your talk. 323 00:37:37,430 --> 00:37:43,549 If the standard ballroom dance band from much of the 18th century consisted essentially of two melody instruments and a bass, 324 00:37:43,550 --> 00:37:50,260 then how were these tunes arranged? Well, for me, there are two plausible options. 325 00:37:50,680 --> 00:38:00,040 Either the melody instruments play in unison to a bass that provided the harmonic outline, or the second instrument filled out the harmony. 326 00:38:01,630 --> 00:38:05,500 In this lovely painting by William Hogarth of a country dance 327 00:38:05,860 --> 00:38:10,090 the band is instantly, indistinct up in the Minstrels gallery on the left. 328 00:38:11,170 --> 00:38:14,590 But in the print that is derived from the painting 329 00:38:16,910 --> 00:38:21,380 he shows a bassoonist and part of a badly drawn fiddler. 330 00:38:24,080 --> 00:38:31,050 And you just see that. One can imagine there's an oboist or another fiddler out of sight. 331 00:38:31,650 --> 00:38:38,280 On the face of it, it seems likeliest that the second treble instrument would have played in harmony with the first. In 332 00:38:38,790 --> 00:38:46,290 surviving scores of minuets that I mentioned earlier, the violins often do play in thirds and sixths. 333 00:38:50,570 --> 00:38:55,700 Surely country dances would benefit from a similar type of arrangement? 334 00:38:57,250 --> 00:39:01,090 Lovely, thank you. I'm just going to reappear briefly to ask, 335 00:39:01,090 --> 00:39:05,950 I would love to know how the music sounded and I understand you've got some recordings to share with us. 336 00:39:06,310 --> 00:39:14,680 Yes, I do. I've got three and the first is from an album that I devised more than 30 years ago called Musick at the Wells. 337 00:39:14,950 --> 00:39:18,190 It includes several country dances. To arrange them 338 00:39:18,340 --> 00:39:25,180 I followed the fiddle-oboe-bassoon line-up from the 18th edition of The Dancing Master and had the fiddle playing 339 00:39:25,180 --> 00:39:31,390 the tune with the oboe harmonising beneath it. In the first half of the tune 'Hay to the Cooper' 340 00:39:31,720 --> 00:39:38,590 the oboe harmonises with the bass line and in the second half with the, it harmonises with the fiddle. 341 00:39:39,610 --> 00:39:43,720 I now think the first half sounds awful. 342 00:39:44,050 --> 00:39:51,760 The second half is a little better, though it would have been better still for the two melody instruments to play in unison and then diverge with 343 00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:59,380 their own extemporised embellishments and harmonies. Tunes are repeated many times in dances for as-many-as-will, 344 00:39:59,650 --> 00:40:07,630 depending on the number of couples taking part. Repetition encourages embellishment and harmonising and stops the musicians falling asleep. 345 00:40:08,230 --> 00:40:15,280 So here's my missguided arrangement of 'Hay to the Cooper' from a collection of country dances published in 1738. 346 00:40:15,820 --> 00:40:21,910 At least you can hear the instruments depicted in the 18th edition of The Dancing Master. Roddy 347 00:40:21,910 --> 00:40:26,860 Skeaping on violin with Matthew Dixon, oboe and Mike Brain bassoon. 348 00:40:31,060 --> 00:40:52,950 [music playing] 349 00:41:02,200 --> 00:41:07,660 The second tune I'm playing is Charles II's 'Old dance of England', 'Cuckolds all a row' 350 00:41:08,140 --> 00:41:11,860 and here we have the City Waites with two fiddles in unison 351 00:41:12,220 --> 00:41:18,520 and just a little divergence through embellishment. Roddy and Lucy Skeaping from their album, The English Tradition. 352 00:41:18,790 --> 00:41:52,170 For me, this is a much stronger sound. [music playinng] Thank you. 353 00:41:53,040 --> 00:41:59,550 The extent to which the melody and instruments diverged from a unison through embellishment or harmony 354 00:41:59,790 --> 00:42:06,440 would of course depend on the players' familiarity with each other and with the tune. Also players, 355 00:42:06,490 --> 00:42:15,510 then as now, would have treated the tunes in country dance collections as bare bones to be fleshed out with embellishments and their own variants. 356 00:42:15,990 --> 00:42:19,200 The process is visible in the many changes made to tunes 357 00:42:19,390 --> 00:42:21,840 in successive editions of The Dancing 358 00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:29,970 Master. My third recording comes from YouTube and has caused a little problems in getting it to play it for me. 359 00:42:30,780 --> 00:42:37,950 And it is a recording of the Warleggan Village Band who will be playing for the exhibition ball on the 13th of January. 360 00:42:38,430 --> 00:42:44,790 Here they are playing, I hope The Fox from a manuscript of 1785. Fiddlers 361 00:42:44,790 --> 00:42:49,230 Richard Heacock and Matthew Coatsworth clearly know the tunes and each other well. 362 00:42:49,650 --> 00:42:54,090 First time through, they play in unison, but the second time they harmonise. 363 00:42:54,420 --> 00:43:00,930 The guitarist is Chris Green. [music playing] 364 00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:48,350 So despite the lack of surviving functional country dance scores for two melody instruments and a bass, there is comparable material to support 365 00:43:48,350 --> 00:43:57,110 my argument that the two melody instruments in a ballroom dance band played for much time in unison for country dances, if not for minuets. 366 00:43:58,340 --> 00:44:02,030 Country dance tunes pop up frequently as songs in ballad operas. 367 00:44:02,390 --> 00:44:11,870 More than half of the 69 hours in The Beggar's Opera, for example, had appeared as tunes in The Dancing Master. The scoring to accompany those 368 00:44:11,870 --> 00:44:20,360 airs in The Beggar's Opera doesn't survive, but in a set of manuscript orchestral parts for three subsequent ballad operas 369 00:44:20,750 --> 00:44:24,440 first and second violins were scored in unison throughout. 370 00:44:25,390 --> 00:44:32,210 Further support comes from Mozart of all people, whose score for the ballroom scene in his opera Don Giovanni, 371 00:44:32,660 --> 00:44:38,060 in which a contredanse dance is performed to a band consisting of two violins and a bass. 372 00:44:38,480 --> 00:44:46,640 Here again, the violins play in unison throughout, yet for a minuet in the same scene, the violins harmonise. 373 00:44:47,690 --> 00:44:55,730 To conclude, I'm not suggesting that a dance band for Playford today should necessarily consist of two fiddles and a bass. 374 00:44:56,150 --> 00:45:05,060 Expectations have changed. I mentioned earlier the one country dance that survived in the ballroom through through to my youth, the 'Roger de Coverley'. 375 00:45:05,300 --> 00:45:11,840 so to finish here is a recording of the tune by The London Dance Orchestra from 1920 376 00:45:11,990 --> 00:45:17,090 even before my time. Here's the tune in the 17th edition of The Dancing Master. 377 00:45:17,450 --> 00:45:21,320 It's not quite the same in the recording, but recognisable. 378 00:45:21,770 --> 00:45:25,730 However, the fiddles still play in unison. [music playing] 379 00:45:59,560 --> 00:46:08,480 Thank you, Alice, and everybody else very much for listening to me. 380 00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:14,930 Brilliant. Thank you so much, Jeremy. Now, I believe there's a little time left for a few further questions. 381 00:46:14,930 --> 00:46:22,880 And also, very kindly, Matt Coatsworth of the Warleggan Village Band popped the link in the chat, but it's disappeared now. 382 00:46:22,910 --> 00:46:26,060 Matt did you get rid of it or is that my error. 383 00:46:27,950 --> 00:46:31,669 Ah I put it under the answered thing. I'll see, 384 00:46:31,670 --> 00:46:36,590 I'll ask you the first question, Jeremy, and then I'll see if I can load that on my computer to share it with people because 385 00:46:36,710 --> 00:46:41,750 it would be lovely to hear that recording. So the first question for you now is from Ann Kent. 386 00:46:42,380 --> 00:46:48,170 She asks, are you still of the opinion that the musicians played the first strain of the music before the dancing began? 387 00:46:49,520 --> 00:46:59,750 Yes, I am. I think, one thing I really dislike, I can't express myself too strongly on this, is the way that in country dance sessions, 388 00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:05,030 the musicians play the end of the tune as the introduction to the dance. 389 00:47:05,450 --> 00:47:13,490 Now Cecil Sharp, to bring him back in again, he noticed that if the dancers didn't hear the beginning of the tune, 390 00:47:13,670 --> 00:47:16,850 they simply did not know how to do the dance. They must have. 391 00:47:17,060 --> 00:47:19,190 So that is further back up 392 00:47:19,490 --> 00:47:27,860 for the idea that you play the first part of the tune to introduce the country dance and when you go into church and sing hymns, 393 00:47:28,100 --> 00:47:33,020 what does the organist usually play? He plays the beginning of the tune that 394 00:47:33,190 --> 00:47:38,250 you've got to to sing, because then the, the congregation know what to sing. 395 00:47:38,450 --> 00:47:48,529 Though I have to say I have noticed, lamentably, that sometimes organists who play the end of the tune, which I think is, it's a habit that's sprung up 396 00:47:48,530 --> 00:47:56,870 I think, since the Second World War in musical comedy of playing the end of the tune to introduce the thing, it simply didn't exist before. 397 00:47:56,990 --> 00:48:02,540 It doesn't exist in operas or any kind of light musical shows before either. 398 00:48:02,780 --> 00:48:07,430 Yes. So I am very much of that opinion. Sorry to sound so vehement about it. 399 00:48:10,140 --> 00:48:13,760 No, wonderful, thank you very much. And from Jane, we have another question. 400 00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:19,850 When did the musicians begin to use sets of pieces instead of endlessly repeating the same tune? 401 00:48:21,080 --> 00:48:31,670 Yeah, I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that in the 18th century, when you get overtures to light operas, you do get medleys of tunes. 402 00:48:31,940 --> 00:48:38,330 So it may, that may be following something that happened in the ballroom, but I don't know if that's the case or not. 403 00:48:38,550 --> 00:48:42,950 But you don't get medleys of tunes any earlier than that in overtures. 404 00:48:45,970 --> 00:48:53,260 Lovely. There is another question, my YouTube is just loading, so I apologise if you suddenly get a blaring of music from my end. 405 00:48:54,310 --> 00:48:58,750 So the question from Mary in the chat, in the Q&A box, she says, Jeremy, 406 00:48:58,750 --> 00:49:02,410 before my question, I'd like to thank you for the old English nursery rhythm CD, 407 00:49:02,800 --> 00:49:06,250 nursery rhyme CD, which my mum and I love listening to. 408 00:49:07,030 --> 00:49:10,510 I'm curious whether in your research of Playford and English country dance, 409 00:49:10,780 --> 00:49:18,070 if you have ever come across any writing about hurdy gurdy players or paintings or illustrations of hurdy gurdy players in music. 410 00:49:19,560 --> 00:49:27,000 Oh, well, there are certainly plenty of illustrations, particularly when you go back to the 15th, 411 00:49:27,420 --> 00:49:36,120 14th centuries and the 16th century too, you do see illustrations of hurdy gurdy players accompanying dance. 412 00:49:36,780 --> 00:49:40,740 So, yes, I mean, certainly iconography shows 413 00:49:41,070 --> 00:49:51,480 hurdy gurdy players and and there's one by Hogarth of one that's a bit satirical because she turned out to be a mistress to an aristocrat. 414 00:49:51,510 --> 00:49:54,540 So but, you know, yes, there are. 415 00:49:55,380 --> 00:50:04,380 So from Ann. Ann asks, Is there any evidence of early modern singing for dancing rather than instrumental, for example, images? 416 00:50:06,590 --> 00:50:14,270 There are, but it depends how you define the early modern period, I suppose from sort of printing up to 1800. 417 00:50:14,270 --> 00:50:24,620 But there are images of choirs, when you get a little later on, when you get the church choirs coming back, the village 418 00:50:24,620 --> 00:50:30,020 church choirs, and you see some quite satirical images of them with their mouths wide open. 419 00:50:30,260 --> 00:50:39,410 And Hogarth also did a wonderful print called A Chorus of Singers performing an oratorio, oratorio Judith by Defesch. 420 00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:46,680 So there's that. And I don't know of, I'm not, it's not my special subject, really, 421 00:50:47,130 --> 00:50:50,990 choirs, but I do know certainly of some. 422 00:50:52,980 --> 00:50:58,070 Wonderful. Mike has popped in the chat that there, in answer to a previous question, that there are 423 00:50:58,080 --> 00:51:04,520 19th century accounts of the same tune being played for 20 or 30 minutes in the dancing booths at fairs, 424 00:51:04,530 --> 00:51:13,680 goodness me. But I think my record is playing 30 times through a country dance tune for dancers, 425 00:51:13,690 --> 00:51:17,880 yes. So more than 30 minutes there is quite a long time. 426 00:51:19,050 --> 00:51:24,180 I don't see, no current questions in the chat, which gives me space to ask, to ask you to tell us. 427 00:51:24,630 --> 00:51:31,160 It's my favourite anecdote that you've told me, or Playford fact that you've told me, which is about his accidentals. 428 00:51:31,170 --> 00:51:34,050 Would you, would you share that with us? Do you know which, which one I mean? 429 00:51:34,230 --> 00:51:39,870 Why there, there's endless controversy in English folk music about the raised and lowered 430 00:51:39,870 --> 00:51:44,400 seventh of the scale in folk tunes and whether it's more authentic one way or the other. 431 00:51:44,670 --> 00:51:47,879 And Jeremy, I know, has a theory about this, which I'd love for you to share with everybody, 432 00:51:47,880 --> 00:51:53,370 would you mind? Well it applies to the first edition of The Dancing Master. 433 00:51:54,000 --> 00:52:04,649 I mean, Playford being the first person to get publishing going again after the, after the Civil Wars and even before that, 434 00:52:04,650 --> 00:52:12,690 it had really fallen into abeyance. So he managed to get, is his name East, the man who did the printing? 435 00:52:13,680 --> 00:52:18,000 He had these old fonts and they, I think they must have been incomplete. 436 00:52:18,180 --> 00:52:25,290 Well, I know they were because there are a lot of flattened sevenths without sharps. 437 00:52:25,680 --> 00:52:30,330 In the first edition of The English, the first edition, The English Dancing Master, 438 00:52:30,840 --> 00:52:36,630 and then in the second he must have got some more sharps because he sharpens these leading notes. 439 00:52:37,080 --> 00:52:44,640 So I think that is the case. But some of the tunes did remain what we call modal. 440 00:52:44,880 --> 00:52:56,010 I mean, I don't know if you notice that score of 'Roger de Coverley' in the second half was a C natural, which sounds quite, quite modal. Actually 441 00:52:56,010 --> 00:53:01,440 it's a slightly Scottish tune and that was much more accepted in Scottish tunes that they should be modal, 442 00:53:01,650 --> 00:53:05,310 but whether they were, always were in English tunes 443 00:53:05,530 --> 00:53:16,769 I don't. There's an amusing description of a choir from the 17th century trying to sing hymns and some of them sung the sharper leading note 444 00:53:16,770 --> 00:53:22,290 you know, and some of them sang a flatter leading note which produced the most hideous results. 445 00:53:22,860 --> 00:53:34,379 So you know I think it was, I think it probably might have been a kind of social rank distinction that the higher up you were and were learning from posh music, 446 00:53:34,380 --> 00:53:44,760 from printed scores and so on, the more likely it was that you sharpened the leading note, but lower down, singing folk songs and so on, 447 00:53:45,150 --> 00:53:49,380 then it was less likely that you did. Fantastic 448 00:53:49,390 --> 00:53:55,560 thank you. So if there are no more questions in the chat, it only falls to me to say thank you so much to Jeremy. 449 00:53:55,760 --> 00:53:58,770 There's one more snuck in at that very moment. Ah, it's 450 00:53:58,770 --> 00:54:04,950 Ann again, brilliant, thank you Ann. She says, varying tunes by harmony, 451 00:54:05,160 --> 00:54:17,460 do you think rhythm would also vary? For example, playing just the first beat and then rest, or third / off-beat as the Warleggan Village Band did on 'Fox'? 452 00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:21,510 Shall I read that again? So. 453 00:54:22,290 --> 00:54:26,430 Say it again. Do you mean Ann, you can clarify if you can. 454 00:54:28,970 --> 00:54:36,260 So varying tunes by harmony. So in the Warleggan Village Band, in that example, did the first time through in unison and 455 00:54:36,260 --> 00:54:40,670 then harmony the second time and Ann asked Do you think the rhythm would also vary? 456 00:54:40,910 --> 00:54:50,990 For example, playing just the first beat and then rest. So like de der de de de de der, that sort of thing. The successive editions, 457 00:54:51,720 --> 00:55:00,240 sorry, can you hear me? Yeah. The successive editions of The Dancing Master shows tunes that, you know, are varied in meter you know, 458 00:55:00,510 --> 00:55:08,459 as if some people heard it in 6/8 and others in 4/4. The one thing, the one thing that, you know, you get 459 00:55:08,460 --> 00:55:13,070 Da da da, da da da, da da da, you get da da dum, da da dum, da da da daladum 460 00:55:13,290 --> 00:55:17,080 in common time happening with the few tunes. 461 00:55:17,130 --> 00:55:21,510 Well, I think, as I'm sure you did and and probably, well and in the same way 462 00:55:21,510 --> 00:55:28,500 with a jig well you know, dadala, dadala, dadala, dadala can finish something that's quite a lot slower. 463 00:55:30,270 --> 00:55:33,329 You find that in scores of, of tunes. 464 00:55:33,330 --> 00:55:40,440 So yes, I think I'm sure they did as well as varying the harmony and embellishments, 465 00:55:40,440 --> 00:55:48,750 I'm sure they would have varied rhythms probably with a signal to each other to go into a jig-type rhythm as they were getting really bored at the very end. 466 00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:58,440 Even during a dance with, I once went to a ceilidh. It may even have been Boldwood playing, which is a band that both Matt and Richard used to play in. 467 00:55:59,580 --> 00:56:04,410 And they went from, was it 9/8 into 3/2? 468 00:56:04,440 --> 00:56:07,410 They warned us in advance that they were going to do this. 469 00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:13,830 And it was very, it was very interesting, but it would have thrown us if we hadn't been warned as dancers, I would have thought. 470 00:56:14,140 --> 00:56:21,030 So you think they did vary the rhythm that much in the middle of a dance? Well rhythm, but perhaps not tempo, 471 00:56:21,030 --> 00:56:26,930 you know, you can, you can play a tune that's in 4/4 and where dum 472 00:56:27,240 --> 00:56:30,910 pom pom pom, pom pom, becomes da da da, da da da, da da da. 473 00:56:31,320 --> 00:56:33,360 You still keep the beat the same. 474 00:56:33,510 --> 00:56:40,590 I think that, that could have happened and I think there's some evidence of that in successive editions of The Dancing Master. 475 00:56:41,580 --> 00:56:46,700 Yes, so Rhodri's come in on this very same thing and says, is it possible to change times during the dance? Done right 476 00:56:46,700 --> 00:56:50,149 it gives the dance a real kick. Sometimes it's done in modern contras. 477 00:56:50,150 --> 00:56:54,560 Yes. So that's the same experience I had many years ago with Boldwood. Yeah, 478 00:56:54,590 --> 00:57:01,100 so it can. I, I believe it is possible. And Jeremy saying it would have happened historically as well, so 479 00:57:01,310 --> 00:57:05,150 yeah, fantastic. And anything further to add on that, Jeremy, before we close up? 480 00:57:06,460 --> 00:57:14,910 No, I don't think so, but I very much enjoyed the questions, I must say, and they make me think and I'm sorry I couldn't answer them. 481 00:57:14,950 --> 00:57:18,760 Lovely, no, you did it excellently. Thank you very much. 482 00:57:19,360 --> 00:57:24,670 So thank you to you all for your questions. Thank you to Jeremy for his paper this evening. 483 00:57:24,700 --> 00:57:28,179 I'm just going to hand it back to Helen for the closing notices. Thank you. 484 00:57:28,180 --> 00:57:31,479 I'll just add my thanks firstly to everyone for joining us today. 485 00:57:31,480 --> 00:57:39,100 I know that people booked from all over the world, so it's wonderful to have you with us and to have your curiosity and enthusiasm for this talk. 486 00:57:39,370 --> 00:57:44,019 But thank you, of course, to Alice Little and Jeremy Barlow for a wonderful talk. 487 00:57:44,020 --> 00:57:47,169 And also to our behind the scenes technical team 488 00:57:47,170 --> 00:57:54,970 Karen. And please do take a moment, everyone, to fill out the quick feedback form so we can continue to offer free events like this in the future. 489 00:57:55,390 --> 00:58:00,370 And we do have a second webinar, The Dancing Master in Context on the 28th of November. 490 00:58:00,370 --> 00:58:09,129 So if you haven't already booked for that, do sign up via our website and that's with Professor Rebecca Herissone and Alice again and otherwise, 491 00:58:09,130 --> 00:58:13,090 we hope to see you again soon. But for now, thank you very much and have a good evening.