Miss Jacobson's Music: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

QUOTE:
"I’m not interested in having an orchestra sound
like itself. I want it to sound like the composer."

AUTHOR: Leonard Bernstein

MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
"Music should sound as each individual composer meant it to

be played. The same orchestra can play music by different

composers and the music will sound different each time."

COMPOSER:
RALPH VAUGHAN-WILLIAMS

FANTASIA ON

GREENSLEEVES

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: My Lady Greensleeves

FANTASIA ON

GREENSLEEVES

Arie Vardi, Conductor

Philharmonia Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHgrhyLysO4#t=32

Walter Crane: My Lady Greensleeves (from "A Book of Old Songs")

FANTASIA ON

GREENSLEEVES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak85S5KZoKE#t=35

http://panflute.net/shop/songbook/songbook_songs/greensleeves/index.html

First published in 1580 (Richard Jones:

"A New Nothern Dittye of the Lady Green-sleeves"),

the beautiful traditional English folk melody of

Greensleeves dates from Elizabethan times,

perhaps even earlier, and reputedly it had less

respectable lyrics sung to it in several lyrical

settings. Actually, the tune Greensleeves has

worn a number of texts over the centuries, the

tune and the lyrics changing according to what

people wanted to use the song for, extending at

least as far back as the 16th century but its

famous association with a specific Christmas

carol is relatively late in the 19th century with

William Chatterton Dix's

text "What Child is this, who laid

to rest, on Mary's lap is sleeping"

when supposedly three stanzas of

his six-stanza poem titled "The Manger

Throne" were adapted to the Greensleeves

melody in 1865. However, some think that

does not seem to be the case. Rather, it was

most likely written as an independent

carol. Both text and tune, the latter

arranged by John Stainer,

John Stainer

were published in Bramley and Stainer's

Christmas Carols, New and Old (1871),

a widely circulated compilation.

http://www.ibiblio.org/jimmy/folkden-wp/?p=6966

WHAT CHILD IS THIS

CHARLOTTE CHURCH, VOCALIST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3PSUdW2pg

Again, Dix’s text was only one of many

set to the famous tune; the original text:

GREENSLEEVES LYRICS

Alas, my love, you do me wrong,

To cast me off discourteously.

For I have loved you well and long,

Delighting in your company.

Chorus:

Greensleeves was all my joy

Greensleeves was my delight,

Greensleeves was my heart of gold,

And who but my lady greensleeves.

Your vows you've broken, like my heart,

Oh, why did you so enrapture me?

Now I remain in a world apart

But my heart remains in captivity.

I have been ready at your hand,

To grant whatever you would crave,

I have both wagered life and land,

Your love and good-will for to have.

If you intend thus to disdain,

It does the more enrapture me,

And even so, I still remain

A lover in captivity.

My men were clothed all in green,

And they did ever wait on thee;

All this was gallant to be seen,

And yet thou wouldst not love me.

I bought thee petticoats of the best,

The cloth so fine as it might be;

I gave thee jewels for thy chest,

And all this cost I spent on thee.

Thou couldst desire no earthly thing,

but still thou hadst it readily.

Thy music still to play and sing;

And yet thou wouldst not love me.

Well, I will pray to God on high,

that thou my constancy mayst see,

And that yet once before I die,

Thou wilt vouchsafe to love me.

Ah, Greensleeves, now farewell, adieu,

To God I pray to prosper thee,

For I am still thy lover true,

Come once again and love me.

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/greensleeves.htm

a song that Henry VIII

is often credited to have written

as a lover’s lament for Anne Boleyn

is a good but unfounded story.

Several other versions

were adapted for lute,

GREENSLEEVES

Thysius Lute Book Version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=10&v=pYp7IWaJMPY

and still others came to be used not only

as sacred music but also as political

ballads by the Cavaliers in the 17th century

during the English Civil War.

There were no fewer than fourteen songs

against Roundheads (the name given to

the supporters of the Parliament of England

during the English Civil War) set to it, one

of which, "The Blacksmith," a song that the

great diarist Samuel Pepys

wrote (on April 23, 1660) that he had

heard sailors singing to the tune of

Greensleeves, had as a refrain, or

the last line, "which nobody can deny."

This was the case also with "The Trimmer,"

http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Text/Chappell2/greensleeves.htm

one of the many songs to the tune and which

appeared in Pills to Purge Melancholy.

In the 1642 New Christmas Carols black-letter

edition, a variant tune of Greensleeves was

written to celebrate the New Year in the carol

The Old Year Now Away Is Fled.

THE OLD YEAR NOW

AWAY IS FLED

A Carol for New Year's Day
(to the tune of Green Sleeves)

http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/old_year_away_is_fled.htm

THE OLD YEAR NOW

AWAY IS FLED

LYRICS
The old year now away is fled,
the new year it is entered;

Then let us all our sins down tread
and joyfully all appear.

Let's merry be this holiday,
and let us run with sport and play,

Hang sorrow, let's cast care away --
God send us a merry new year!

And now with new year's gifts each friend
unto each other they do send;

God grant we may our lives amend,
and that truth may now appear.

Now like the snake cast off your skin
of evil thoughts and wicked sin,

And to amend this new year begin --
God send us a merry new year!

And now let all the company
in friendly manner all agree,

For we are here welcome all may see
unto this jolly goo cheer.

I thank my master and my dame,
the which are founders of the same,

To eat and drink now is no shame --
God send you a happy new year!

Come lads and lasses every one,
Jack, Tom, Dick, Bess, Mary and Joan,

Let's cut the meat unto the bone,
for welcome you need not fear.

And here for good liquor you shall not lack,
'twill whet my brains and strengthen my back

This jolly good cheer it must go to wrack --
God send us a happy new year!

Come give us good liquor when I do call,
I'll drink to each one in this hall,

I hope that loud I must not bawl,
so unto me lend an ear.

Good fortune to my master send,
and to our dame which is our friend,

God bless us all, and so I end --
God send us a happy new year!

http://www.lukehistory.com/ballads/oldyear.html

http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/english/theoldyr.htm

http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_
and_Carols/old_year_away_is_fled.htm

THE OLD YEAR NOW
HAS FLED AWAY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acBxQnYWek0

Shakespeare twice referred to the tune

in his 1602 play the Merry Wives of Windsor

and during the course of the play, while traitors

are hanged, the tune is played. One example of this

song's reference in the dialogue is when Falstaff

exclaims,

"Let the sky rain potatoes;

let it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves!"

Its other appearance in The Merry Wives of Windsor

is where the womanising Falstaff's words and deeds

"do no more adhere and keep pace together,

than the Hundredth Psalm to the tune of Green Sleeves."

Over a hundred years later, strains of the

melody were also heard in John Gay's

John Gay

1728 satirical ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera

William Hogarth: 'A Scene from 'The Beggar's Opera' VI', 1731
http://www.contemplator.com/history/johngay.html

in which a prisoner awaits his execution on the Tyburn

tree, and sings yet another version of Greensleeves.

Towards the end of the 17th century,

John Playford

published his

English Dancing Master,

http://imslp.org/wiki/The_Dancing_Master_(Playford,_John)
http://www.hallflutes.com/abc/HFC-5016%20Playford-Tunes.pdf

and in it included a piece that has come to be called

Greensleeves and Pudding Pies (1686).

GREENSLEEVES

AND PUDDING PIES AIRS

Grace O 'Malley Quartet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj69wLq7SGw

Dante Gabriel Rossetti:
My Lady Greensleeves, 1859

Although Vaughan Williams composed a

number of works for the Christmas season,

his Fantasia on Greensleeves was not written

with a Christmas connection at all. In the 20th

century, building on Shakespeare's reference

to the popular 16th century folk tune The Ballad

of My Lady Greensleeves in the play The Merry

Wives of Windsor, for his Fantasia the composer

combined the tune with another old folk tune

from Norfolk called "Lovely Joan"

LOVELY JOAN

Fokal Point, Vocals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=445UwbsjUn8

http://www.joe-offer.com/folkinfo/songs/61.html
http://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=3755

in the contrasting central section (begins and ends

with Greensleeves) in order to create atmospheric

music for the 1929 opera, "Sir John in Love,"

based on that Shakespeare play.

Today, Vaughan William's arrangement is
the best known rendition of the song.Because
of this piece even though the lyrics may have
been forgotten everybody knows the melody.
Greensleeves has been played and played
over for more than 400 years.