Annotation:Padlock (1) (The)

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PADLOCK, THE. English, Scottish; Reel. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. John Glen (1891) finds the earliest appearance of this tune in print in Robert Ross's 1780 collection (p. 31), however, it was earlier published in Charles and Samuel Thompson’s Compleat Collection, vol. 3 (London, 1773). It was entered into the music manuscript collections of Northumbrian musician William Vickers (1770), and, in America, in the copybook of Norwich, Conn., fiddlers John and William Pitt Turner (1788). Numerous tunes from the Thompson’s 1773 collection were penned by the Turners into their manuscript. “The Padlock” probably takes its name from The Padlock [1], a 1768 two-act afterpiece comic opera with words by Isaac Bickerstaff (1735-1812) and music by Charles Dibdin, first performed at Drury Lane. The opera features a character named Mungo, a blackface caricature of a West Indian servant.

Ira Aldridge as Mungo. Painted c. 1833 by Thomas Wageman (1787-1863)

Source for notated version: William Vickers' 1770 music manuscript collection [2] (Northumberland) [Seattle].

Printed sources: Seattle (Great Northern/William Vickers), 1987, Part 3; No. 417. Thompson (Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 3), 1773; No. 114.

Recorded sources:

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