Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T00:25:19.351Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Scocca pur: Genesis of an English Ground

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert Klakowich
Robert Klakowich*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Henry Playford's The Second Part of Musick's Hand-maid, the famous collection of keyboard pieces published in London in 1689, contains an anonymous and untitled ground in C minor which has today become well known both for its beauty and for its fine exemplary qualities as a post-Restoration English ground. It also presents us with an interesting study both in authenticity and in compositional evolution, inasmuch as its early history is as engaging as its more recent scrutiny has been controversial. The first half of the piece is reproduced in Figure 1.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 116 , Issue 1 , 1991 , pp. 63 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The Second Part of Musick's Hand-maid, ed Thurston Dart, Early Keyboard Music, K10 (London, 1969), additional notes to no 20Google Scholar

2 Hawkins, Sir John, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1853, repr New York, 1963), ii, 718Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 701Google Scholar

4 Dart, Thurston, ‘The Cibell’, Revue belge de musicologie, 6 (1952), 24–30Google Scholar

5 All have been transcribed in Giovanni Battista Draghi Harpsichord Music, ed Robert Klakowich, Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 56 (Madison, 1986)Google Scholar

6 The Second Part of Musick's Hand-maid, ed Dart, no 20, Early English Keyboard Music An Anthology, ed Howard Ferguson (London, 1971), ii, 40–3Google Scholar

7 Lessons and Ayres (Trevor Pinnock, harpsichord) CRD records, CRD 1047Google Scholar

8 Schneider, Herbert, Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Werke von Jean-Baptiste Lully, Mainzer Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, 14 (Tutzing, 1981), 505Google Scholar

9 J L Le Cerf de la Viéville, Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la musique française (Brussels, 1705–6; repr. Geneva, 1972), ii, 200Google Scholar

10 Ibid., 144Google Scholar

11 Quoted from Madame de Sévigné, Correspondance, ed Roger Duchêne, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 112 (Tours, 1974), ii, 8.Google Scholar

12 For a full discussion and inventory of this manuscript, see Ford, Robert, ‘Nicolas Dieupart's Book of Trios’, Recherches sur la musique française classique, 20 (1981), 45–75Google Scholar

13 Add. MS 30930Google Scholar

14 Zimmerman, Franklin B, Henry Purcell His Life and Times (2nd rev edn, Philadelphia, 1983), 82Google Scholar

15 Westrup, Jack, Purcell (London, 1965, rev edn 1980), 121Google Scholar

16 I use the term ‘measure’ (rather than ‘bar‘) here, and later in this article when discussing the length of ground bass patterns outside the context of specific examples, to refer to musical units of regular length, since barlines are not always regularly placed in original sources of this periodGoogle Scholar

17 For a discussion of the descending tetrachord bass pattern and its variants as it relates to the lament in Italian music of the early to mid-seventeenth century, see Rosand, Ellen, ‘The Descending Tetrachord An Emblem of Lament’, The Musical Quarterly, 65 (1979), 346–59Google Scholar

18 The history of both the words and tune of Liliburlero are traced in William Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time (London, 1859; repr New York, 1965), ii, 568–74, and Claude M Simpson, The Broadside Ballad and its Music (New Brunswick, 1966), 449–55Google Scholar

19 Zimmerman, for example, noted that the upper part of the instrumental dance in Act 2 of The Tempest is the same as that of the ‘Entrée de l'Envie’ from Cadmus (Franklin B Zimmerman, Henry Purcell An Analytical Catalogue of his Music, London, 1963, 337) However, most of the music for the Davenant/Dryden adaptation of the play (c 1695) cited in Zimmerman's catalogue has since been repudiated as Purcell's (see Price, Curtis, Henry Purcell and the London Stage, Cambridge, 1984, 19–21) Another oft-cited connection is the Frost Scene in King Arthur, which may owe something to that in Act 3 of Isis (parodied numerous times in English sources), but obviously this would constitute an influence rather than a borrowingGoogle Scholar