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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The discovery of Henry Lawes' musical setting for Lovelace's poem A loose Saraband not only brings to light some interesting variants of the text of the lyric and an old dance tune, but dispels a slight doubt which Mr. C. H. Wilkinson in his recent edition of Lovelace's poems, cast upon the first editor of Lucasta. As Mr. Wilkinson could not locate the music, he suggested that perhaps the words Set by Mr. Henry Lawes which appear beneath the title A loose Saraband on page 26 of the 1649 volume should have been placed below To Ellinda. The existence of the Lawes' score, however, exonerates the original editor.
1 C. H. Wilkinson, The Poems of Richard Lovelace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925). 2 volumes with musical illustrations. This two-volume edition is the one referred to throughout this article. The 1930 one-volume edition is without musical illustrations.
2 Ibid., i, notes to pp. 27–30.—“I have not been able to find the setting to this song. It is noticeable that Dr. Cooper Smith's MS. includes the three other songs which are said to have been put to music by Henry Lawes and a fourth as well, the poem To Ellinda. It is possible that this song was attributed to Lawes in mistake for the other.”
3 Among these songs are several by Lovelace which I hope to discuss in forthcoming articles.
4 Many of Rimbault's volumes found their way into the Drexel Collection, among them Rimbault's commonplace book in his own hand, which I have compared with the marginalia here indicated; also, item 1388 of the Rimbault sale catalogue (1877) describes aptly the volume under discussion, though the details are not complete enough to offer absolute proof. These two bits of evidence seem to point to Rimbault as one of the previous owners of the manuscript.
5 Information concerning this dance can be found in Grove's Dictionary of Music and in Wilkinson's notes to A loose Saraband, op. cit., i, 27–30. The most complete general discussion of the origin and history of the dance is found in Curt Sachs' World History of the Dance (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1937), with translation by Bessie Schönberg. Directions for dancing the saraband as Lawes and Lovelace probably saw it performed can be found in Playford's The English Dancing Master (London, 1652), p. 17. Playford's instructions call for couples to be arranged “Longwayes for as many as will”; the dancers step first forwards, then backwards, and repeat this figure, completing the first series of movements with an S turn. “Then the first on each side” take hands and the couple proceeds to the end of the line. After various repetitions, crossing over steps, and exchanging of positions, the dance closes with all the couples, turning about in repeated S figures. There is nothing in Playford's set of instructions to suggest that Lovelace had the motions of the dance in mind when he composed his poem.
6 Jeffrey Pulver, “Ancient Dance Forms,” Proceedings of the Musical Association (London, 1912–13).
7 The musical score for Herrick's song is found in Henry Lawes' manuscript songbook which Wilkinson refers to as Dr. Cooper-Smith's. I examined this manuscript by the kind permission of the late Miss Margaret Smith and her heirs.