The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #126136   Message #2804760
Posted By: Mick Pearce (MCP)
06-Jan-10 - 07:42 AM
Thread Name: Tune Req: Swete Was the Song / Sweet Was the Song
Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century
Belatedly coming back to this!

As well as Ballet at Trinity, the tune appears more or less contemporaneously in two mss at the British Library - Egerton 2971 and Add 17786-91. At least one of these were for voice and 4 viols I think, and both have the same melody as Ballet. There have been versions published from these mss: Warlock's "Elizabethan Songs" (1926, reprinted more recently) (sometimes 5 Elizabethan Songs) has the version from Add 17786-91 . Clifford Bartlett published a version from Egerton 2971 (ca1979).

Attey's setting (voice and lute) is completely different. (It can be heard here (in a consort setting IIRC): John Attey - Sweet Was The Song). Attey is generally considered the last of the composers from the golden age of English lute song (dominated by Dowland), and inferior to the others. This setting is usually taken to be the only one of his worth looking at!

I can put up the abc for both melodies if anyone wants them.

Mick