Annotation:Ball (1) (The)
X:2 T:Ball [1], The M:6/8 L:1/8 R:Jig S:Edward Murphy music manuscript (1790) K:G dB2G A2F|GBG D2D|E2E c2B|(B3 A2)d| B2G A2F|GBG D2D|EcB AGF|G3 G2:|| B|A2D c2A|BdB G2B|A2D c2A|(c3 B2)d| e2c A2f|g2d B2G|E2c A2F|G3 G2z||
BALL [1], THE. AKA – "The Bell." English, Country Dance Tune (6/8 time). A Major (Kidson, Trim): G Major (Callaghan, Riley). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. "The Ball" appears in several publications and musicians' manuscripts from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It can be found in print in Longman and Broderip's Twenty-Four Country Dances for the year 1790, and in The Entire New and Compleat Tutor for the Violin by Geminiani, via a MS collection by Dorset writer Thomas Hardy and his family. Frank Kidson (1890) finds it in Fourteen favourite Cotillion and Country Dances...The Fifteenth Book, for the year 1786...Thomas Budd."
An English manuscript, John Ball's music copybook of 1792, contains the melody on page 24 set in the key of G. It also appears in John Carter's 1792 British manuscript, John Clare's music manuscript (c. 1820, Helpston, Northants, appears as "The Bell"), and the 19th century Welch family manuscripts (Bosham, Sussex). "The Ball [1]" can be found as well in the mid-19th century music manuscript of William Winter, a shoemaker and violin player who lived in West Bagborough in Somerset.
William O. Adams had the tune in his music commonplace book, and although Adams was American, it appears that the book was perhaps originally purchased in London for it is inscribed "London, September 4th, 1795" and contains both English and American tunes. John Carr's 1801 American publication First Book of Cotillions contains the melody, as does Norris & Sawyer's Village Fifer (Exeter, N.H., 1808, p. 29), Edward Murphy's (Newport, R.I., 1790) copybook, William Patten's (Philadelphia, Pa., c. 1800) manuscript, Samuel Holyoke's The Instrumental Assisstant (Exeter, N.H., 1800), and J. Hewitt's Fashionable Repertory...of Country Dances & Waltzes (New York, c. 1807). Finally, dance instructions for "The Ball" are contained in several American dance publications and manuscripts[1].
- ↑ Keller, Camus, Cifraldi: Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources, 1589–1839, 2002.