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310 ENGLISH SONG AND BALLAD MUSIC. |
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WHAT IF A DAT, OR A MONTH, OR A YEAR?
Copies of this song are in the Roxburghe Collection, i. 116 and ii. 182, and in The Golden Q-arland of Princely Delights, third edition, 1620. In the Roxburghe Ballads it is entitled " -A Friend's Advice, in an excellent ditty, concerning the variable changes in this world " (printed by the assigns of Thomas Symcocke) ; in The Golden Garland, " The inconstancy of the world."
The music is in a volume of transcripts of virginal music, by Sir John Hawkins; in Logonomia Anglica, by Alexander Gil, 1619; in Friesche Lust-Hof, 1634; in D. R. Camphuysen's Stichtelycke Hymen, 4to., Amsterdam, 1647 ; in the Skene MS.; in Forbes' Cantus; &c. The same words are differently set by Richard Allison, in his Howrys Recreation in Musiche, 1608.
Gil (or Gill), who was Master of St. Paul's School, refers to the song twice in his Logonomia. Firstly, " Hemistichium est, duobus constans dactylis, et choriambo;" and secondly, " TJt in illo perbello cantico Tho. Campaiani, cujus mensuram, ut rectius agnoscas, exhibeo cum notis."
Thomas Campian, or Campion, to whom the poetry, and perhaps also the music, is here ascribed, was by profession a physician; but he was also an eminent poet and admirable musician. He flourished during the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth and the greater portion of that of James I. Neither the words nor music are, however, to be found in his printed collections.
According to the registers of St. Dunstan's in the West, "Thomas Campion, Doctor of Physicke," was buried there on the 1st of March, 1619."
In Camphuysen's Stichtelycke Hymen the song is entitled " Esseafs Lamentation, or What if a day."
Ritson, in a note to his Historical Essay on Scotish Song, p. 57, says, "In a curious dramatic piece, entitled Philotus, printed at Edinburgh in 1603, by. way of finale, is Ane sang of the foure lufearis (lovers), though little deserving that title. It is followed by the old English song, beginning,' What if a day, or a month, or a year?' alluded to in Hudibras, which appears to have been sung at the end of the play, and was probably, at that time, new and fashionable."
Mr. Halliwell, in a paper read before the Society of Antiquaries in Dec., 1840, says, " It is a curious fact that one of the songs in Ryman's well-known collection of the fifteenth century, in the Cambridge Public Library, commences— ' What yf a daye, or nyghte, or howre, Crowne my desyres wythe every delyglite;' and that in Sanderson's Diary in the British Museum, MSS. Lansdowne 241, fol. 49, temp. Elizabeth, are the two first stanzas of the song, more like the copy in Ryman, and differing in its minor arrangements from the later version. Moreover, that the tune in Dowland's Musical Collection, in the Public Library, Cambridge, is entitled ' What if a day, or a night, or an hour ?' agreeing with Sanderson's copy." Mr. Halliwell has reverted to the subject in Beliaum Antiquce, i. 323, and ii. 123.
* Haslewood supposed him to have died in 1621. It does not notice his four books of "Ayres," printed in
Is strange that tie name of so eminent a man should 1610 and 1612, which, with some others, are described in
have been omitted in the usual Biographical Dictionaries Rimbault's Bibliothica Madrigaliana. He composed the
and Universal Biographies. A short account of him is Psalm tune, called "Babylon's streams," which is still
given, with the reprint of his " Observations in the art in use. His AH of Descant is contained in Playford's
of English Poetry," in Haslewood's "Ancient Critical Introduction. |
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