"Greensleeves" is a traditional English folk song. A broadside ballad by the name "A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves" was registered by Richard Jones at the London Stationers' Company in September 1580, [1] [2] and the tune is found in several late 16th-century and early 17th-century sources, such as Ballet's MS Lute Book and Het Luitboek van Thysius , as well as various manuscripts preserved in the Seeley Historical Library in the University of Cambridge.
A broadside ballad by this name was registered at the London Stationer's Company in September 1580, [1] by Richard Jones, as "A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves". [2] Six more ballads followed in less than a year, one on the same day, 3 September 1580 ("Ye Ladie Greene Sleeves answere to Donkyn hir frende" by Edward White), then on 15 and 18 September (by Henry Carr and again by White), 14 December (Richard Jones again), 13 February 1581 (Wiliam Elderton), and August 1581 (White's third contribution, "Greene Sleeves is worne awaie, Yellow Sleeves Comme to decaie, Blacke Sleeves I holde in despite, But White Sleeves is my delighte"). [3] It then appears in the surviving A Handful of Pleasant Delights (1584) as A New Courtly Sonnet of the Lady Green Sleeves. To the new tune of Green Sleeves.
Henry VIII did not compose Greensleeves. [4] [5] It is a romantic myth that Henry wrote the song for his lover and future queen consort Anne Boleyn. [6] The piece is based on an Italian style of composition that did not reach England until after Henry's death, making it more likely to be Elizabethan in origin. [7]
A possible interpretation of the lyrics is that Lady Green Sleeves was a promiscuous young woman, perhaps even a prostitute. [8] At the time, the word "green" had sexual connotations, most notably in the phrase "a green gown", a reference to the grass stains on a woman's dress from engaging in sexual intercourse outdoors. [9]
An alternative explanation is that Lady Green Sleeves was, through her costume, incorrectly assumed to be sexually promiscuous. Her "discourteous" rejection of the singer's advances supports the contention that she is not. [9]
In Nevill Coghill's translation of The Canterbury Tales , [10] he explains that "green [for Chaucer's age] was the colour of lightness in love. This is echoed in 'Greensleeves is my delight' and elsewhere."
Christmas and New Year texts were associated with the tune from as early as 1686, and by the 19th century almost every printed collection of Christmas carols included some version of words and music together, most of them ending with the refrain "On Christmas Day in the morning". [11] One of the most popular of these is "What Child Is This?", written in 1865 by William Chatterton Dix. [12]
In Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor (written c. 1597; first published in 1602), the character Mistress Ford refers twice to "the tune of 'Greensleeves'", and Falstaff later exclaims:
Let the sky rain potatoes! Let it thunder to the tune of 'Greensleeves'!
These allusions indicate the song was already well known at that time.
This section may be too technical for most readers to understand.(October 2022) |
"Greensleeves" can have a ground either of the form called a romanesca ; or its slight variant, the passamezzo antico ; or the passamezzo antico in its verses and the romanesca in its reprise; or of the Andalusian progression in its verses and the romanesca or passamezzo antico in its reprise. The romanesca originated in Spain [13] and is composed of a sequence of four chords with a simple, repeating bass, which provide the groundwork for variations and improvisation.
External audio | |
---|---|
You may hear Ralph Vaughan Williams' '"Fantasia on Greensleeves" performed by Leopold Stokowski and the New York Philharmonic in 1949 Here on Archive.org |
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, also known as the Tallis Fantasia, is a one-movement work for string orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The theme is by the 16th-century English composer Thomas Tallis. The Fantasia was first performed at Gloucester Cathedral as part of the 1910 Three Choirs Festival, and has entered the orchestral repertoire, with frequent concert performances and recordings by conductors and orchestras of various countries.
The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is a primary source of keyboard music from the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods in England, i.e., the late Renaissance and very early Baroque. It takes its name from Viscount Fitzwilliam who bequeathed this manuscript collection to Cambridge University in 1816. It is now housed in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. The word virginals does not necessarily denote any specific instrument and might refer to anything with a keyboard.
The passamezzo antico is a ground bass or chord progression that was popular during the Italian Renaissance and known throughout Europe in the 16th century. The progression is a variant of the double tonic: its major mode variant is known as the passamezzo moderno.
A double tonic is a chord progression, melodic motion, or shift of level consisting of a "regular back-and-forth motion" in melody similar to Bruno Nettl's pendulum type though it uses small intervals, most often a whole tone though may be almost a semitone to a minor third.
Lovely Joan is a traditional English folk song/ballad, and the tune to which it is sung. Its melody was used as the counterpoint tune used in British composer Ralph Greaves's arrangement of Fantasia on "Greensleeves" from Ralph Vaughan Williams's opera Sir John in Love.
A broadside is a single sheet of inexpensive paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations. They were one of the most common forms of printed material between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in Britain, Ireland and North America because they are easy to produce and are often associated with one of the most important forms of traditional music from these countries, the ballad.
La Folía (Spanish), or Follies (English), also known as folies d'Espagne (French), La Follia (Italian), and Folia (Portuguese), is one of the oldest remembered European musical themes, or primary material, generally melodic, of a composition, on record. The theme exists in two versions, referred to as early and late folias, the earlier being faster.
Seconda pratica, Italian for "second practice", is the counterpart to prima pratica and is sometimes referred to as Stile moderno. The term "Seconda pratica" first appeared in 1603 in Giovanni Artusi's book Seconda Parte dell'Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica, where it is attributed to a certain L'Ottuso Accademico. In the first part of The Artusi (1600), Artusi had severely criticized several unpublished madrigals of Claudio Monteverdi. In the second part of this work, L'Ottuso Accademico, whose identity is unknown, defends Monteverdi and others "who have embraced this new second practice". Monteverdi adopted the term to distance some of his music from that of e.g. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Gioseffo Zarlino and to describe early music of the Baroque period which encouraged more freedom from the rigorous limitations of dissonances and counterpoint characteristic of the prima pratica.
Ballads is a jazz album by John Coltrane released in January 1963 by Impulse! Records. It was recorded in December 1961 and 1962, and released with catalogue number A-32 (mono) and AS-32 (stereo). Critic Gene Lees stated that the quartet had never played the tunes before. "They arrived with music-store sheet music of the songs" and just before the recordings, they "would discuss each tune, write out copies of the changes they'd use, semi-rehearse for a half hour and then do it". Each piece was recorded in one take, except for "All or Nothing at All". In 2008, the album was a recipient of the Grammy Hall of Fame award.
Your Hundred Best Tunes was a BBC radio music programme, always broadcast on Sunday evenings, which presented popular works which were mostly classical excerpts, choral works, opera and ballads. The hundred tunes which made up the playlist were initially selected by the creator and presenter, Alan Keith. Subsequently, tunes were suggested by requests and polls of listeners.
Dives and Lazarus is traditional English folk song listed as Child ballad 56 and number 477 in the Roud Folk Song Index. It is considered a Christmas carol and based on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The song traditionally used a variety of tunes, but one particular tune, published by Lucy Broadwood in 1893 and used in other traditional songs, inspired many notable works and appeared in several pieces composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
My Ladye Nevells Booke is a music manuscript containing keyboard pieces by the English composer William Byrd, and, together with the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, one of the most important collections of Renaissance keyboard music.
Romanesca is a melodic-harmonic formula popular from the mid–16th to early–17th centuries that was used as an aria formula for singing poetry and as a subject for instrumental variation. The pattern, which is found in an endless collection of compositions labeled romanesca, perhaps named after the Roma, is a descending descant formula within a chordal progression that has a bass which moves by 4ths. The formula was not to be viewed as a fixed tune, but as a framework over which elaborate ornamentation can occur. It was most popular with Italian and Spanish composers of the Renaissance and early Baroque period. It was also used by vihuelistas including Luis de Narváez, Alonso Mudarra, Enríquez de Valderrábano, and Diego Pisador.
Early music of Britain and Ireland, from the earliest recorded times until the beginnings of the Baroque in the 17th century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite. Each of the major nations of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales retained unique forms of music and of instrumentation, but British music was highly influenced by continental developments, while British composers made an important contribution to many of the major movements in early music in Europe, including the polyphony of the Ars Nova and laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music. Musicians from the British Isles also developed some distinctive forms of music, including Celtic chant, the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons, and the carol in the medieval era and English madrigals, lute ayres, and masques in the Renaissance era, which would lead to the development of English language opera at the height of the Baroque in the 18th century.
John Griffiths is a musician and musicologist specialised in music for guitar and early plucked instruments, especially the vihuela and lute. He has researched aspects of the sixteenth-century Spanish vihuela, its history and its music. He has also had an international career as a solo lutenist, vihuelist, and guitarist, and as a member of the pioneer Australian early music group La Romanesca. After a thirty-year career at the University of Melbourne (1980–2011), he now works as a freelance scholar and performer.
Drexel 4257, also known by an inscription on its first page, "John Gamble, his booke, amen 1659" is a music manuscript commonplace book. It is the largest collection of English songs from the first half to the middle of the 17th century, and is an important source for studying vocal music in its transition from Renaissance music to Baroque music in England. Many songs also provide commentary on contemporary political events leading up to the Restoration.
The English Pastoral School, sometimes called the English Nationalist School or by detractors the Cow Pat School, is an informal designation for a group of English composers of classical music working during the early to mid 20th century, who sought to build a distinctively English style of music by composing in a style informed by Tudor music and English folk music, and often explicitly evoking the English countryside. The leading composers associated with the school were Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frederick Delius and Gustav Holst, with other notable figures including George Butterworth, John Ireland, Frank Bridge, Edmund Rubbra, Gerald Finzi, Herbert Howells, Ernest John Moeran and Peter Warlock.
The Gloucestershire Wassail, also known as "Wassail! Wassail! All Over the Town", "The Wassailing Bowl" and "Wassail Song" is an English Christmas carol from the county of Gloucestershire in England, dating back to at least the 18th century, but may be older.
Clement Robinson was an English writer and editor of songs and ballads. He edited and probably contributed to A Boke of very pleasaunte Sonettes, 1566.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link).Media related to Greensleeves at Wikimedia Commons