Annotation:Maid of Lodi

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MAID OF LODI, THE. English, Air (6/8 time). G Major. Standard tuning. One part. The music for "Maid of Lodi" was collected by English popular violinist and composer William Shield [1] while on a tour of Italy. It was a popular ballad in the first decades of the 19th century, a favorite of Byron and of Sir Walter Scott (according to Thomas Carlyle), that was frequently arranged in several forms for various instruments.

The tune was a favorite in America, and was frequently published and entered into musicians' copybooks and manuscript collections during the first three decades of the 19th century. Carr (Philadelphia) published variations on "The Maid of Lodi" in his Applicazione addocita: Twelve Airs & Ground with Variations, or Arranged as Rondos in the Different Major & Minor Keys Chiefly in Use (1809). There is a setting for unaccompanied flute by Nicholson in the Selection of Beauties published by Fentum, and it is also included in Riley's Flute Melodies (New York, Edward Riley, 1814).

Source for notated version: a c. 1837-1840 MS by Shropshire musician John Moore [Ashman]; the 1823-26 music mss of papermaker and musician Joshua Gibbons (1778-1871, of Tealby, near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire Wolds) [Sumner].

Printed sources: Ashman (The Ironbridge Hornpipe), 1991; No. 42, p. 15. O'Farrell (Pocket Companion, vol. IV), c. 1810; p. 92. Sumner (Lincolnshire Collections, vol. 1: The Joshua Gibbons Manuscript), 1997; p. 68 (appears as "Maid of Lodia," originally set in the key of 'C' major in the ms.). Sutherland (Edinburgh Musical Repository, vol. 1), 1818; p. 48.

Recorded sources: