Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Ballads Transformed
- 2 Arias Domesticated: The Ladys Entertainment and Other Early Eighteenth-Century Anthologies
- 3 With Their Symphonies: William Babell and The Ladys Entertainment Books 3 and 4
- 4 Opera Remix: Babell's Suits of 1717
- 5 After Babell: Arrangements for Ladies and Gentlemen
- 6 Afterthoughts
- Appendix The Ladys Banquet (Second Series): Contents, Concordances, and Dissemination
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Ballads Transformed
- 2 Arias Domesticated: The Ladys Entertainment and Other Early Eighteenth-Century Anthologies
- 3 With Their Symphonies: William Babell and The Ladys Entertainment Books 3 and 4
- 4 Opera Remix: Babell's Suits of 1717
- 5 After Babell: Arrangements for Ladies and Gentlemen
- 6 Afterthoughts
- Appendix The Ladys Banquet (Second Series): Contents, Concordances, and Dissemination
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
One must know the original music and words.
—Szumowska, Well-Known Piano SolosWe have reviewed, through a series of snapshots, the repertoire of arrangements played on the harpsichord or other keyboards from the age of the virginalists to the death of Handel. Although the histories of keyboard music tend to bypass this large repertoire, arrangements were central to amateur keyboard playing, and brought into the home new versions of popular ballad or dance tunes, arias, and other stage music. In seventeenth-century personal and teaching manuscripts such keyboard arrangements were copied and recopied; editions of Playford's Musick's Hand-maid (1663–78, 1689) are likewise filled with keyboard settings of non-keyboard pieces. Although these simple arrangements abound, they make up only part of the story. Among the virginalists, more challenging intabulations, recompositions, and sets of variations based on well-known tunes gave professional or advanced players a way of demonstrating their prowess within the confines of the familiar. In the early eighteenth century, the story is much the same. William Babell played his own virtuosic arrangements of arias in public and published them in The Ladys Entertainment (books 3 and 4) and in his collection of Suits, whose movements were drawn from contemporary operatic productions. Just before the turn of the century John Walsh had begun to publish The Harpsichord Master, which provided simple arrangements for amateurs in fifteen volumes (1697–1734), and The Ladys Banquet (books 1 and 2), whose contents were also much indebted to music composed for the stage and arranged for the keyboard. Such arrangements were quickly copied into manuscripts, often directly from the prints, such as “Reading's Book of Lessons” (Mp BRm710.5Rf31, dated 1728) and “Ms. Alice Maud her Musick book” (Tyson, early 1730s).
The Amateur Player, the Collector, and John Walsh Junior
During the 1730s the balance between arrangements for amateurs and more challenging ones for virtuosos seems to have shifted toward the amateur side. The virginalists and William Babell had been central contributors of virtuoso arrangements, but it's likely that amateurs made up a larger and more typical market for this derived repertoire. How should we understand Walsh's growing focus on amateurs? For one thing, more and more original keyboard music was available in print for those who desired more of a challenge, reducing the need for arrangements suited to advanced players.
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- Songs without WordsKeyboard Arrangements of Vocal Music in England, 1560–1760, pp. 189 - 198Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2016