Annotation:Grays Inn Masque

Tune properties and standard notation

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GRAY'S INN MASKE. AKA and see "Poor Tom," "Mad Tom," "New Mad Tom of Bedlam." English, Air and Country Dance Tune (4/4 and 6/4 time). G Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABCDEF. Gray's Inn [1] was one of the four great Inns of the Temple Barr to which lawyers allied themselves in 17th century England. Prior to the Commonwealth, Gray's Inn, along with Inner Temple, Lincoln's Inn and Middle Temple, held annual revels which included music and dancing. During the reign of James I the inns, singly or in pairs, presented masques at the royal court. The Gray's Inn structure was built in 1545 and lasted until World War II, when it became the victim of the Blitz and burned to the ground. Luckily, however, key features of the interior were rescued and the building was rebuilt along original lines. Chappell (1859) remarks that the air was used, as the name implies, as accompaniment to a suite of dances in a Masque, though he admits there is no way of knowing whether it was written for that purpose or rather as a song. He does believe it to be "considerably older" than the 1650 Dancing Master date because one of the ballads was directed to be sung to the tune of "Mad Tom" which was "lately sung at the Curtain, Holywell;" the Curtain Theatre was all but closed by 1625, and "Mr. Collier, in a note to Heber's catalogue, even gives the date of one of the performances of the tune at that theatre as 'about 1610.'" He further states that the air has been ascribed variously to the famous composer Henry Purcell and to Henry Lawes, however, these assertions are speculative and, in fact, the music was in print before Purcell was born. Lawes was said by Sir J. Hawkins to have been mentioned as the composer in Choice Ayres and Antidote against Melancholy, however Chappell finds no reference to him in those works. The air appears in the first edition of John Playford's English Dancing Master (1651), his Antidote against Melancholy (1669), and his Choice Ayres' (1675). It also appears in the ballad operas Penelope (1720) and The Bay's Opera (1730). A record exists which reports on a Gray's Inn Christmas celebration in 1594, at which a court of mock royalty was chosen and :

...his Highness [the Prince of Purpoole] called for the Master of Revels, and willed him to pass the time in dancing so his gentlemen-pensioners and attendants, very gallantly appointed, in thirty couples, danced the old measures, and then galliards, and other kinds of dances, reveling until it was very late.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Barlow (Compleat Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master), 2005; No. 30, p. 23. Barnes (English Country Dance Tunes, vol. 2), 2005; p. 53. Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Times), vol. 1, 1859; p. 179. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 47.

Recorded sources: Familiar Records 59, Pyewackett - "The Man in the Moon Drinks Claret" (1982).

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Tune properties and standard notation