The King's Delight 72:43

The King's Noyse
with
David Douglass, director
Paul O'Dette, lute and cittern
and Ellen Hargis, soprano

Album Notes

1. The King's Delight 1:29 2. All in a Garden Green 2:26 3. Gathering peascods 0:46 4. Blew-cap for me 3:50 5. Fortune my foe 7:38 6. Browning 4:45 7. Jog on 2:10 8. Courante - Packington's Pound 1:21 9. Daphne 4:43 10. Huntsuppe 2:32 11. The lovely northerne lasse 7:39 12. Tantz 1:29 13. O Nachbar Roland 6:03 14. Dulcina 1:03 15. As att noone Dulcina rested 6:33 16. Grimstock 1:14 17. Robin is to the greenwood gone 0:54 18. Ricercar - Bony sweet robin 3:30 19. A light hearts A jewell 2:44 20. Child Grove 1:49 21. Easter Thursday 1:33 22. The Beggar Boy 1:19 23. Mr. Isaac's maggot 1:28 24. The little barley-corne 3:32

Album Notes

Years ago it was standard practice for the lowly, vibrato-laden violin to be scorned by would-be players of Renaissance music as soon as they could obtain viole de gamba. The idea of using the violin as a bona fide Renaissance instrument did not become acceptable until recently, even though the instrument developed within a decode or so of the viol and both enjoyed an active 16th-century career. In fact, the vibrant, irrepressibly dance-inducing violin was probably more popular than the viol among at least some segments of society. So why has the Renaissance violin been denied its own renaissance? One reason is that, unlike the viol, the violin was the province of the professional musician, and so we have neither instructive treatises nor music actually specified for it until - for all practical purposes - the 17th century. Fiddlers learned their craft the old-fashioned way, master to apprentice, with nothing written down.

The violin bands played mostly dance music. They also undoubtdly played the repertory we associate with viols and recorders, and we know that violins were active in at least one ducal capella (Lasso's, at the Bavarian court), playing vocal pieces, both with and without the voices. Sometimes the players even seem to have done without using any music at all, either playing from memory or improvising on popular tunes or standard basses such as the passamezzi. There is a painting of a 16th-century couple dancing la volta, now in the museum at Rennes and reproduced in David Boyden's History of the Violin and Violin playing from Its Origins to 1761. Although the identity of the painter remains unknown, the scene is almost certainly that of a ball at the court of Valois, and the band, which seems to consist of two violins, a viola, and a 'cello, is jamming away without a note of music in sight: an idea that would come as no surprise to rock and country musicians today, with whom the early fiddlers undoubtedly would have felt a kinship.

For Thomas Mace the violin made a "High Priz'd Noise fit to make a man's Ear Glow, and fill his brains full of frisks." It's frisky, all right, and ideal for playing dance tunes. But the most characteristic and vital sound of the early violin comes when several are playing together, especially in a matched set. The instruments melt into each other as with any good consort, yet there is an edge to the sound that projects each instrument through the texture evenly. It's impossible to know just what Mace had in mind when he wrote the sentence above, but the word "glowing" describes the sound of a violin band about as well as anything.

In the 14th century the Welsh poet Iorweth Beli, in high eisteddfod-ish dudgeon, declared that certain English melodies were "ear-splitting noises." Either he was merely jealous or else British music changed significantly in the next three hundred years, for the country dances and ballad tunes that suffused England between the time of Byrd and Purcell constitute one of the richest veins of tunestock in all of Western tradition. Equal parts fragile melancholy and foot-stomping jollity, the tunes possess an appeal that is, as with all the best of art, deliciously intangible. They began filtering into print during the 16th centtury and would seem to be no older than that. "Browning" is perhaps the earliest tune heard here; later ones include "Child Grove" and "Easter Thursday." The tunes for the broadside ballads were generally named by the writer or printer but not actually included on the sheets, and so we must seek them out in contemporary instrumental settings. The dance tunes are also found in period settings, but most of them were published as well in John Playford's Dancing Master, a popular tutor that saw eighteen editions between 1651 and circa1728. Several of the tunes served double duty for both ballads and dances (e.g. "Beggar Boy", "All in a Garden Green") while two of them, "Browning and "Huntsuppe", are neither. In fact this "Huntsuppe" is actually an untitled lute piece by Whitfield, found in Cambridge MS Dd 2.II and bearing a strong resemblance to a piece bearing the title "Huntsuppe" also by Whitfield, found in Jane Pickering's Lutebook. "Browning" was set by several composers of the time, including William Inglott (for virginals), Henry Stonings and Clement Woodcock (consort settings), and Thomas Ravenstock, who extended the melody and printed it as a round.

The pieces by Praetorius, Schultz, Brade, and Simpson are a convivial amalgamation of English tunes and spirit with the robust Hausmusik sound of early 17th-century German consort dances, while Scheidt's "O Nachbar Roland" is a lengthy st of variations, similar in form if not in style to Byrd's "Browning." Tunes crossed the Channel in different ways. They went with English publishers like Brade and Simpson, who came to northern Germany seeking a more favorable business climate. They also came with the English troupes of actors who toured among German towns in these same decades. A stable of traveling players was the English stage jig, a bit of buffoonery with minimal plot sung to ballad tunes and accompanied by slapstick farce and dancing. "Roland" is actually the "title" song" for the most popular of the jigs - which in fact remains only in a period German translation.

Many of the texts may be found in the Roxburghe collection of broadside ballads, nearly 1500 items assembled from 16th- and 17th-century sources. They make a perfect literary complement to the tunes they carry, being wistful and saucy by turn. In the ballad revival of the late 19th century they were haughtily dismissed; the only positive thing that Francis Child could say was that some "very moderate jewels" were to be found among them. But he missed the point: the unprepossessing quality of these pieces is one basis of their great appeal. Further, Child has a serious blind spot in his otherwise exemplary scholarship on the English and Scottish popular ballds: he declined to attach more than passing importance to the music. Leaving aside for now the question of how big a part of a ballad is its music, it remains only to say that the tunes are jewels - for light hearts and sad ones - of considerable worth.

-- Jack Ashworth

The unattributed setting of country dances at the beginning and end of the program are by David Douglass. Several of his arrangements were inspired by similar ones made some years ago by David Hart, a player of Baroque flute and other instruments, whose spirit is truly mirrored in these tunes. David Hart was lost to the AIDS epidemic in 1988. Hart's dance settings, never published, are now in informal circulation among his friends

harmonia mundi usa, inc. 3364 S. Robertson Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90034 (p)(c) 1993

Recording: November 3-5 1992, Campion Center, Boston, MA
Executive Producer: Robina Young
Engineer: Brad Michel (SOUND/MIRROR, Inc.)
Producer and Editing: Paul F. Witt

Cover: "Queen Elizabeth Dancing with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester." (Detail)
Reproduced by permission of Viscount De L'Isle, from his private collection
Layout and design: Dimitri Radoyce
Recorded and produced in the USA


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