Here are two tunes that are thematically linked, even though they are very different from each other. The link is that each tune celebrates a great comic actor who worked with Shakespeare. Kemp's Jig has been occasionally (and unpersuasively) attributed to Dowland. It was first recorded in Playford's Dancing Master, but seems to have been contemporary to Kemp, who was Tarleton's successor as a great comic and performer in Shakespeare. This is not, in fact, a jig in the musical sense, but is in 4/4 time. It is usually said to refer to Kemp's sponsored dance from London to Norwich (a sort of Elizabethan GoFundMe, with the beneficiary one W. Kemp), which he undertook after a fairly acrimonious departure from Shakespeare's company. But a jig was also a comic turn on the Tudor stage, a mix of music, jokes and impressions. I wonder if the tune title refers to this. Richard Tarleton was the greatest comic actor of his age and is said to have been the model for Shakespeare's Yorick in Hamlet ("a fellow of infinite jest"). The graveyard scene is a memento mori - even the jolly Yorick must die in the end - and Dowland's memorial for Tarleton is in the same vein. Written early in the composer's career, Tarleton's Resurrection was described by Diana Poulton as "one of Dowland's small-scale masterpieces." Oh, woe is me, I omitted an apostrophe in the title of the thread, and since it is in the title it will remain forever as a rebuke to my punctuation skills.
Although I've known Kemp's Jig for a long time, you are now coincidentally the second person to have told me the story behind it within just a couple of weeks. But the other person was making some kind of connection with the king of the day, not with Shakespeare. I trust your research more, so I'm grateful for the explanation. The second tune is new to me. You have brought them together very nicely. Kemp's Jig featured in an older thread about Playford tunes (https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/g...cussionid=4576). There's even a second tune of the same name. There's also an unrelated mini-thread of Bill Kilpatrick playing Kemp's Jig: https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/g...scussionid=262
A fine pairing of the two tunes, Richard, and very well played and recorded as usual.
Two fine Renaissance pieces you recorded brillantly as you always do, Richard.
Thank you all. Dennis, I don't know about the connection to the king (Kemp died in the same year as Elizabeth I, 1603, so if he ever lived under a king it was only for months at most). Most accounts mention the morris dance from London to Norwich. The idea that it might be the jig (or gig) on stage is my own speculation and may be wrong. Thanks for pointing out the earlier threads. I didn't find them when I searched - the Playford one in particular looks like a treasure trove and I shall explore further.
I must confess that I love that sound produced by the fingers sliding over the frets... that guitar is magnificent, the sweet mandolin, both pieces work very well...
Thanks Jairo - and there I was trying to minimize that sound! Actually, I rerecorded the guitar part on Tarleton's Resurrection for precisely that reason. I have taken to playing with a capo on the guitar for a couple of reasons - one is that I like the sound of the reduced scale length; the other is that it helps my old fingers to make the stretches, especially on these lute pieces. (One effect of this is that Tarleton is actually played in the original key of C, rather than the more usual one of A.) But an unforeseen effect is that it seems to create more of those sliding sounds - I don't know if that is because my left hand is positioned slightly differently.
Very scholarly and authentic (did you play from that score looking like Sumerian cuneiform?)
Thank you, Bertram. Whenever anyone says that tab is the easy option you can show them that Sumerian cuneiform. Seriously, not only is it inconceivable to play directly from that, but I am lost in admiration for those who transcribe this code into usable musical notation.
