Annotation:Hop Ground (The): Difference between revisions

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HOP GROUND, THE. English, Country Dance Tune (6/8 time)). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The title refers to the cultivation of hops, the essential ingredient that differentiates beer from ale. Graham Christian, writing in his "Tell Me More" column in CDSS News, explains that hop cultivation, along with adding hops to malt, was an import from the Low Countries, and was initially resisted in England. As with many innovations, traditionalists clung to their ways, even, as Christian says, decrying beer as a cause of melancholy and male impotence. However, it's benefits to malt as a balance to the sweetness of malt, and its mild preservative qualities, was clearly an improvement and gained wide acceptance in the 17th century. The county of Kent was the locus of a good portion of English hop-growing.

Interestingly, Christian points out the the tune is "one of the last of its breed--it is a 'round-o', which by derivation is an English corruption of the French rondeau or the Italian rondo." The structure is song-like, verse and chorus style, with one part repeatedly returned to, while the alternating ones introduce new melodic material, as in ABACADA structure, for example. It was a popular dance form in the 17th century, but by the time of London publisher Thomas Preston's publication at the end of the 18th century the form was a decided anachronism, seldom employed. [see Graham Christian, CDSS News No. 206, Jan./Feb. 2008].

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Preston (Preston's Simons (Kentish Hops: A Collection of Country Dances Mainly from the 18th & 19th Centuries), 1990-91.

Recorded sources:

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-'''HOP GROUND, THE.''' English, Country Dance Tune (). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The title refers to the cultivation of hops, the essential ingredient that differentiates beer from ale. Graham Christian, writing in his "Tell Me More" column in CDSS News, explains that hop cultivation, along with adding hops to malt, was an import from the Low Countries, and was initially resisted in England. As with many innovations, traditionalists clung to their ways, even, as Christian says, decrying beer as a cause of melancholy and male impotence. However, it's benefits to malt as a balance to the sweetness of malt, and its mild preservative qualities, was clearly an improvement and gained wide acceptance in the 17th century. The county of Kent was the locus of a good portion of  English hop-growing.
+'''HOP GROUND, THE.''' English, Country Dance Tune (6/8 time)). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The title refers to the cultivation of hops, the essential ingredient that differentiates beer from ale. Graham Christian, writing in his "Tell Me More" column in CDSS News, explains that hop cultivation, along with adding hops to malt, was an import from the Low Countries, and was initially resisted in England. As with many innovations, traditionalists clung to their ways, even, as Christian says, decrying beer as a cause of melancholy and male impotence. However, it's benefits to malt as a balance to the sweetness of malt, and its mild preservative qualities, was clearly an improvement and gained wide acceptance in the 17th century. The county of Kent was the locus of a good portion of  English hop-growing.
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