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490 ITALIAN AND SCOTCH MUSIC.
" After supper I made the boy play upon his lute, and so, my mind in mighty content, to bed."
Pepys evidently selected servants that could both sing and play, but it is certain that there was no great difficulty in procuring them. If further proof were required, I might quote the dramatists of the time, who, as in Shirley's Court Secret, commonly attribute to the servants in their plays the ability to sing " at first sight." Pepys' own taste was not fashionable, for on hearing a celebrated piece of music by Carissimi, he says, " Fine it was indeed, and too fine for me to judge of." And again, on hearing Mrs. Manuels sing with an Italian, he says, " Indeed she sings mightily well, and just after the Italian manner, but yet do not please me like one of Mrs. Knipp's songs, to a good English tune, the manner of their ayre not pleasing me so well as the fashion of our own, nor so natural."
• . He first speaks of Scotch music in the year 1666, and it would seem to have
been then a novelty. In January he hears Mrs. Knipp, the actress, sing."her
little Scotch song of Barbary Allen" at Lord Brouncker's, and he was "in
perfect pleasure to hear her sing" it. In the following July, he says, "To my
Lord Lauderdale's house to speak with him, and find him and his lady, and some
Scotch people, at supper. But at supper there played one of their servants upon
the viallin some Scotch tunes only; several, and the best of their country, as
they seem to esteem them, by their praising and admiring them: but, Lord! the
strangest ayre that ever I heard in my life, and all of one cast." His third and
last notice of Scottish music is in June, 1667. " Here in the streets I did hear
the Scotch march beat by the drums before the soldiers, which is very odd."
The first Scotch tunes that I have found printed in England are among the
" Select new Tunes and Jiggs for the Treble Violin," which were added to The
Dancing Master of 1665. These are " The Highlanders' March," " A Scotch
Firke," and " A Scots Rant.'* They are not included among the country-dances
in that publication; neither do they appear in any other edition. The " Select
new tunes " were afterwards transferred to Apolb's Banquet for the Treble Violin."
In The Dancing Master of 1686 we find the first Scotch tune arranged as a
country-dance." This is " Johnny, cock thy beaver," which had been rendered
popular by Tom D'Urfey's song, " To horse, brave boys, to Newmarket, to horse,"
being written to it. On the other hand, the first collection of secular music
printed in Scotland, Forbes' Cantus, consists entirely of English compositions,
and songs to English ballad-tunes. The first edition was published in 1662,
the second in 1666, and the third in 1682. " Severall of the choisest Italian
songs and new English Ayres in three parts " were added to the last, and, with
that exception, all are for one voice. Forbes was a printer at Aberdeen, and
this was the only secular music published in Scotland during the seventeenth
century. |
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