[SCA-Dance] Music for Glory of the West?

White, John white at drexel.edu
Wed Aug 25 18:25:26 EDT 2010


>From:  Charlene Charette [charlene281 at gmail.com]
>
>>On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Tim McDaniel <tmcd at panix.com> wrote:
>> After being in a class with "Glory of the West" and seeing Playford's
>> instructions <http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/playford_1651/101small.html>
>> and Dafydd Cyhoeddwr's reconstruction
>> <http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~white/ECD/GloryWest.htm>, I'm pretty
>> sure that the music I have, with the pattern ABBABBABB, and the
>> Terpsichore booklet don't fit the dance in Playford and my own
>> notions.  Dafydd appears to agree:
>>
>>     Glory of the West
>>         for two couples facing (square).
>>         Reconstructed by Dafydd Cyhoeddwr, music fix suggested by Lady
>>             Grainne.
>>     Music:
>>         Aleyn, by June Tabor (structure is wrong, but I love the
>>             cellos),
>>         Popular Tunes in 17th Century England, by Jeremy Barlow
>>             (structure still wrong, tempo great)
>>         Country Capers, by the New York Renaissance Band (structure
>>             wrong again, tempo rather fast)
>>
>> I think what I want is music with AABBAABBAABB (and maybe that's the
>> fix mentioned but not described).  Anyone have a source, by chance?
>>
>> Danielis de Lincolnia
>> --
>> Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com
>
>Jeremy Barlow and New York Renaissance Band both seem to be:
>
>AABB x 3 where A=8 beats and B=20 beats
>
>(I did a quick listen so it's possible I mis-counted).
>

In all cases, A = 4 measures, 16 beats.  Glory of the West is fast - normally,
you would count it in half-time (so that it becomes A = 2 measures or 8 beats),
but then you only have time to do the basic move (up a double and back, that
again, fits into a total of 16 beats, but there are 32 beats worth of instructions.
Probably Henry had the correct reason this works - the quarter note gets the beat,
rather than the half-note, but I'm not enough of a musicologist to fully internalize
that explanation.

If I didn't make it clear in my reconstruction (and i guess I didn't, though looking
at the actual reconstruction it becomes clear), the proper repeat structure for
Glory of the West (in my opinion) is AAB x3.  I know of absolutely no recorded 
professional music with that structure - apparently, every musical arranger,
even the otherwise excellent Jeremy Barlow and Sally Logemann, believe that
you simply MUST repeat the B part.

To continue (though I did elsewhere), the B part is 10 measures, or 40 beats -
again, quarter note gets the beat and every measure has 4 beats.  

>I'm unfamiliar with the June Tabor version.
>
Aleyn, by June Tabor, is from 1997.  Track 11 is Johnny o'Bredislee - glory of the west -
the glory of the west part of the medley is wonderful cellos with a great tempo, but
still the incorrect AABB structure.

>I like many of the pieces on this LP:
>http://time-has-told-me.blogspot.com/2009/12/va-john-playford.html .
>Their Grimstock is a big strange.
>
>--Perronnelle

          \\Dafydd Cyhoeddwr



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