Annotation:Foot's Minuet

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FOOT'S MINUET. English, Minuet (3/4 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. A popular tune from the mid-18th century on. Some of the earliest printings are in John Simpson's The Delightful Pocket Companion, vol. 2 (c. 1750) and Peter Thompson's The Compleat Tutor for the French Horn (London, c. 1755), but the tune appears in a great many instrumental collections and tutors, and was frequently entered into musicians' copybooks and commonplace music collections.

It was often heard played on the chimes of musical clocks and country churches by the end of the 18th century, prompting some to complain that a secular dance tune was being played instead of a more pious hymn (see letter to the editor, The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle (volume 79, Part 1, 1809). The writer relates the (perhaps apocryphal) anecdote:

The following humourous occurrence took place at a village in the North of England, where the Church Chimes play the tune I have first alluded to [Ed. i.e. "Foot's Minuet"]. A young girl had been persuaded by her friends to marry an old man for the sake of his property: the old man shortly afterwards died; the 'disconsolate' widow, as is usual in that part of the country, followed the corpse to the ground; and just as the funeral service finished, the church clock struck, and the Chimes played the usual tune of "Foot's Minuet," li tol derol, to the great divertizement of several of the merry mourners.

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