Tune Add: a tune for November

Subject: Tune Add: a tune for November
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 12:06 PM

If all goes well, a MIDI file for an old country dance (1650 or before) will appear here. It's a good tune for November (November in the northern hemisphere, I mean.) It's sad and wistful, and when I play it, I picture a cold mist outside and cold, gray walls inside. It is called Dissembling Love, and it has been used as a dance tune, but I doubt if that was the original purpose for it.

I found this song because I had been ruminating on Greensleeves. The version of Greensleeves which our gang plays is from 1595, and it has the unusual feature that it employs both G and G# in the tune. I decided to look in Peter Barnes' book of country dances and see if other tunes did anything like that. I found "Dissembling Love", which uses both D and D#. In other words, these are both tunes which are afraid to commit.

The bass part is absurdly simple, but I don't have time to polish it. When I try, the results are null, because the basic sound is so simple. So don't be put off by it - get out your instruments and start working on cold, misty fields and stone walls.

The chords are:

Em Em G/Am B
repeat the above
Em/Am G   Am/B Em
repeat the above

Since MIDI doesn't seem to store repeat signs, let me say that the A part consists of 2 sets of four measures plus a pick-up beat, and they are identical. The B part has four measures plus two pick-up notes (sixteenths) and they are also identical. Somebody wrote a dance which requires the B part to be played three times, but I think that is too repetitious, so I decided to drop the third repeat.

I hope that the MIDI shows up and that people will play it.

PS I refuse to enter into any debates about whether it is Italian. Get our your instruments instead.

Oh yeah - there was a twiddle in the penultimate measure which just wouldn't come no matter how much I practiced, so I re-wrote it to something more natural. I suspect it was a misprint from 1650. (I remember an editor remarking that the second edition of Playford corrected the errors of the first edition and introduced many new ones.)

Subject: RE: Tune Add: a tune for November
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 02:21 PM

Perhaps it would be easier to post abc. Here is the transcription from Andrew Kuntz's Fiddler's Companion, which is taken from Cecil Sharp, Country Dance Tunes, 1909, 65. Notation from Playford, with a short description of the dance figures, can be seen at The Dancing Master 1651-1728: An Illustrated Compendium.


X:1
T:Dissembling Love, or, the Lost Heart
L:1/8
M:6/8
S:Cecil Sharp, Country Dance Tunes, 1909, 65.
N:Playford, Dancing Master, 1651
Z:Andrew Kuntz/Fiddler's Companion
K:D Minor
D|D2E F2G|A3 A2d|c2A B2G|(A3 A2)D|D2E F2G|A3 A2d|c2A B2G|(A3 A2)||
|:B/c/|d2A A B2|c3 F>GA/B/|GAF/G/ E>DE/F/|(D3 D2):|B/C/| d2A A B2|
c3 F>GA/B/|GAF/G/ E>DE/F/|(D3 D2)||


The uncomfortable phrasing in places is partly down to the way midi interprets note values. On a fiddle, you would need to use short, single strokes for those bits. It's a little tricky (probably also on other instruments) but with practice can be made to sound fluid and natural: you may find it helps to visualise what the dancers would be doing at that point.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: a tune for November
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 01:38 AM

Here's Leeneia's tune:

---

Click to play

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Tune Add: a tune for November
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 03:50 AM

Ah, I see. I was a bit puzzled by the midi thing; I thought that you were trying to post it yourself, and hadn't realised that it had gone to Joe to be put up on the midi pages. It will be interesting to see how your adaptation varies from the original.

It's a curious and interesting little tune, and I'm glad that you brought it to our attention. I shall have to learn it, and see how long it takes me to get it to sound right; the discipline will do me good.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: a tune for November
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 04:10 AM

Cross-posted with Joe, more or less. Leeneia's redaction works rather well, though I won't be able to see how the notation compares without a lot of fiddling about, as the midi was made in Noteworthy.

Please would somebody re-set the MIME definitions on the Mudcat server so that those of us who don't use IE can play (as we used to be able to) the midis without first having to save them to disk?

Subject: RE: Tune Add: a tune for November
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 10:15 AM

Thanks for the kind words, Malcolm. I'm glad that to hear that someone wants to play it.

The only change I made was to the next-to-last measure of the B part, where I turned an eighth note into two sixteenths.

O wait - I've thought of another. Try ending the song by repeating the first line, but change the last chord from B to Em.

That's one of the beauties of these old tunes. They must have been played any number of different ways to suit different uses and sets of words. It is fun to experiment with them and see what's pleasing to one's self.