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30 Dec 09 - 03:19 PM (#2799490) Subject: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Cen From: katlaughing I heard this on Pandora Radio. It was instrumental on a Christmas Carol CD by Andrew Parrott And The Taverner Consort Choir and Players. The only info given, at pandora, was the title and artist. I'd love to have the dots or a midi to learn it on the fiddle. Anyone know of it? Thanks, kat |
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30 Dec 09 - 03:39 PM (#2799511) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: Mick Pearce (MCP) There seem to be copies on the net. eg. There's a midi you can download from here (you can refuse the ActiveX): Christmas Carols Page. Right click on the Play Midi link and Save Target As (don't use the Download button - that's to buy a quality copy). It's a piano arrangement. (I've got to go and look after some food now so I can't check out other copies!). Mick |
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30 Dec 09 - 03:51 PM (#2799521) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: GUEST,Helen, cookieless Hi Kat, Happy New Year! (it's New Year's Eve morning here.) I have a book with the dots in it for this song. I can't remember which book, and our household stuff is all packed away in storage for another month or so. When I unpack the music books I'll try to find it for you. It could be in a Renaissance harp music book by Deborah Friou, or it could be in a really old song book we had at school which had some beautiful songs in it. Do you have a music notation software programme? I use Noteworthy and I can open the midi file and then print out the dots. The free download version lets you print, but it prints an information page first, but the full programme is cheap. I paid about $25 for it about 10 years ago. Helen |
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30 Dec 09 - 03:59 PM (#2799534) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: greg stephens I have a copy(in Oxford Book of Carols). PM me if you'd like it scanned and emailed. |
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30 Dec 09 - 04:12 PM (#2799544) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: GUEST,Helen, cookieless I just found a pdf file of the sheet music. I tried searching for the modern spelling of "sweet". Sweet (sic) was the song etc Helen |
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30 Dec 09 - 04:23 PM (#2799554) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Also (now I've finished food and could look again) available here as sheet music and pdf: Sweet Was The Song.. Mick |
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30 Dec 09 - 04:28 PM (#2799559) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: katlaughing That's what I love most about Mudcat! Thank yew, all of yew! Today was the first time I'd heard this and I *knew* I wanted to learn it. Thanks, so much. Helen, Happy New Year, nice to *see* you! Good luck with your unpacking.:-) greg, that sounds like a great book. We had a fav. carol book in my family which did have some of the lesser known with Latin text, but not this one. Mick, glad you took out time to eat.:-) Thanks for the links. |
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30 Dec 09 - 06:03 PM (#2799615) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: Q (Frank Staplin) Lots of used copies of the Oxford Book of Carols available, it is well-worth having. The melody (Dr. Geoffrey Shaw) is somewhat different from the John Earwaker one linked by Mick Pierce. |
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30 Dec 09 - 06:15 PM (#2799625) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: Mick Pearce (MCP) The sheet music I linked to in my last post was from the Cowley Carol Book (1922), which is available at archive.org (Cowley Carol Book). The text and melody are from William Ballet's Lute Book (at Trinity) and there appear to be several harmonizations available (Britten did an arrangement, though I don't know if he harmonized the original melody or created a new one). Although I have transcriptions of many lute books, the Ballet book is not amongst them, and none of my usual sources for complete transcriptions seems to have it (although there are a lot of individual pieces from it available). So I'm unable to check the melody line back against the original. At a quick look the melody given there (Cowley) seems to be a G aeolian, but Dr.Wood has harmonized it in Gm. Mick |
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30 Dec 09 - 06:37 PM (#2799648) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Having said that the melody is from the Ballet book, I find I can't actually prove that! Everyone agrees that's the source of the words, but it's not obvious in things I can see that the melody is from there. The Ballet book did have some songs along with the lute music, so it's possible that the words only were there. I'll try and look into that later. Mick |
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30 Dec 09 - 06:59 PM (#2799661) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: katlaughing Thanks, Q and Mick. I will look into getting copies, esp. the Oxford one. This is so neat! I love learning about old tunes/songs like this, from all of you...incredible resources.:-) |
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30 Dec 09 - 07:16 PM (#2799680) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: Q (Frank Staplin) Was the Ballet MS. ever printed? Several references refer to the MS. |
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30 Dec 09 - 07:29 PM (#2799695) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Q - don't know if the Ballet ms was ever published. Many of the lute mss are available (courtesy of enthusiastic scholars and players) in transcriptions for the tablature programs Django and Fronimo (used for various early tablatures beside the lute). Ballet doesn't appear to be amongst them. John Attey appears to have set the song in his First Book of Ayres (1622) and I have the tablature for that. Sadly it's a pdf of the lute tablature, not source for the programs, so I'll need a while to transcribe some of it to see if it bears any relation to the other versions. I'm off to bed now, so that'll have to wait until tomorrow. I'll report back then! Mick |
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30 Dec 09 - 11:16 PM (#2799786) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Should have checked my own files more carefully - I already have Attey's setting of the song on disk as a Fronimo file (which means I don't have to convert to modern notation manually), so I'll have a look at his melody later today and maybe post the abc. Mick |
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30 Dec 09 - 11:46 PM (#2799808) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: Anglo The CD is 'The Carol Album' - Parrott made 3 CDs to my knowledge with this group, and I generally play them all on Xmas day. I did this year. From Hugh Keyte's liner notes: "Swete was the song the Virgine soong "This setting for voice and viols must be the original form of the song, which also exists in two near-contemporary arrangements. In the Ballett Lute Book in Trinity College, Dublin, is a two-part voice-and-lira-viol version from which we have taken the ornamentation of the solo line; and there is an arrangement for four voices in one of the manuscript collections of the early-seventeenth-century Norfolk amateur, Thomas Haymond, which is now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford." Keyte and Parrott publish two versions in the New Oxford Book of Carols, a four part vocal arrangement and one for voice/instrument. They cite the consort version (I assume this is the recorded version) as published in Musica Britannica vf.22, rev., no.64). A good music library will carry this. I hope this is useful. JR |
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31 Dec 09 - 12:15 PM (#2800114) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Thanks RJ - that is useful! The fact that the Ballet arrangement was for lyra-viol explains why I couldn't find it in my index for Ballet - the index I have is for the English lute mss and only included the lute portions. The Hammond (d.1662)arrangement I'd come across. Julia Craig-McFeely (whose thesis is the standard source for dating English lute mss) gives the dates for Ballet as ca 1595-1610. Of the viol stuff she says: "The viol music and other works added by the later scribes seem to date unequivocally from the second decade of the 17th century, but it is possible that all the music was copied early in the 17th century, but the layout and compilation suggests that Scribe A wrote independently in the book and the other scribes made use of it at some later date. As well as the lute music, there are a few pieces for lyra viol and some music in staff notation". I still haven't had time to see how Attey's version fits into things and probably won't until tomorrow now. Happy New Year to all. Mick |
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06 Jan 10 - 07:42 AM (#2804760) Subject: RE: Swete (sic) Was The Song: Anon 16th Century From: Mick Pearce (MCP) 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 |
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04 May 10 - 11:02 PM (#2900271) Subject: Lyr Add: SWEET WAS THE SONG (John Attey, 1622) From: Jim Dixon From Elizabethan Love-Songs, Second Set by Frederick Keel (London: Boosey & Co., 1909), page 112: [This song appears with a musical arrangement for piano and one voice.] SWEET WAS THE SONG John Attey, 1st Book of Ayres, 1622. Sweet was the song the Virgin sang, When she to Bethlehem was come; And was deliver'd of her Son, That blessed Jesus has to name. Lullaby, lullaby, "Sweet Babe," quoth she, "My Son, and eke a Saviour born, Who hath vouchsafed from on high To visit us that were forlorne. "Lulla, lulla, lullaby, sweet Babe," sang she, And gently rock'd Him, rock'd Him, rock'd Him, And gently rock'd Him, rock'd Him, And gently, gently rock'd Him on her knee. |
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15 Oct 14 - 04:16 AM (#3669253) Subject: RE: Tune Req: Swete Was the Song / Sweet Was the Song From: GUEST,Christine Hello, I`m so happy to have found this thread! But nevertheless I need help in getting the right version of this piece "Swete was the song the Virgine soong". I spend hours in the internet to find the right musical notes, but in the end I failed...i`m a singer, living in Germany and preparing a christmas program with songs all over the world concerning christmas... I`d really love to sing this song, so I need the version solo voice and piano, as it can be heard on this below mentioned Cd "The Carol Album", Andrew Parrott. As it is also mentioned below, Keyte and Parrott published two versions of this song in "The new Oxford Book of Carol`s - it takes too long for me to order it via Amazon and I can`t have a look in this Book before!!!! So, if there is someone out in space, who has the right sheets of music for me (solo voice and piano), please send it to me! (klein.christine@t-online.de)With my best regards, Christine |
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09 Dec 18 - 03:41 PM (#3965656) Subject: RE: Tune Req: Swete Was the Song / Sweet Was the Song From: Mick Pearce (MCP) I was just looking at this song again today and thought I'd add that the Ballet Lute book is online at Trinity these days: Ballet Lute Book. Sweet Was The Song is on pp80-81. You can also get a pdf (I've had it for a long time but haven't been back to this thread!). Mick |
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10 Dec 18 - 12:17 PM (#3965811) Subject: RE: Tune Req: Swete Was the Song / Sweet Was the Song From: leeneia I have tried playing both versions of this, and I can't make the music sound like anything. It's tuneless, though the 'lullay' part is a little prettier. This may explain why none of us ever hear the song. In my opinion, anybody who wants to sing these lyrics should just make up a new tune, a tune they like. |
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10 Dec 18 - 12:58 PM (#3965819) Subject: RE: Tune Req: Swete Was the Song / Sweet Was the Song From: Mick Pearce (MCP) leeneia Here are two versions on youtube, one with lute accompaniment, one with theorbo accompaniment: Valeria Mignaco(sop) & Alfonso Marin(lute) Agnes Coakley(sop) & Nathaniel Cox(theorbo) See if either of them changes your mind! Mick |
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13 Dec 18 - 11:21 AM (#3966089) Subject: RE: Tune Req: Swete Was the Song / Sweet Was the Song From: leeneia No. They sound like recitatives, not like lullabys. How is a baby supposed to be lulled to sleep by a melody which skyrockets up high as if Mum just saw a mouse and then comes back down? |