Thanks, all, for keeping this dialog going. It's a curious subject of
music history and one that I feel lutenists (Elizabethan, anyway) need
to explore.
The formal evidence certainly points to a usage that conforms to
Shakespeare's example and it points to a tradition that types and
pieces had a certain role to play in the psyche. I strongly believe
they had a stronger impact that came closer to "hail[ing] men's souls"
than we can hope for in modern times. "Psychoactive" is a word that
comes to mind. To write that the Dumpe was a form of lullaby certainly
appears naive in the face of this evidence and I'm familiar with its
understood heritage. But usage and effects change as pieces evolve in
their public life.
The Blues is an excellant example of evolution. Rev. Gary Davis talks
about the first time he as a child heard a guy playing a guitar and it
sounded like a whole brass band. The illusion in music is paramount
and what we create in our minds, playing or listening, is a timeless
conundrum. Times change and we've watched the blues turn into quite a
few art forms. Critics go on about its definitions but they change
from place to place, time to time, player to player and listener to
listener. The OED is a wonderful reference for our age and it is also
my favorite source of historically etymological anecdotes and snapshots.
I'm sure Johnson, Cotton and others playing their private collection
of dumpes for their benefactors had much of the affect we see in the
examples below and we can only guess the circumstances for which they
were requested. I can imagine also that as they got copied from
notebook to notebook, got picked up and played (and perhaps,
overplayed) over the years by professionals and amateurs, their affect
changed as well. Their formal definitions remained but their
simplistic style doesn't lend itself to the notes remaining true --
they need to sound improvised and that they could go on forever--
unlike the serious structured drama and melancholia of Semper Dolens
and Lachrima. In this loose structure I believe their formal
implications are more pliant but that is a difficult point to prove.
In the 1560's to the -90's there appear to be a lot of fodder for
repeated variation. The Phalese books are filled with hundreds of
variations on Antico and V. Gallilei, too, gets on the bandwagon with
his hundreds of Romanescas and hardly a compendium book is printed
without them. What I think I'm seeing is a need for music to fill a
space: fodder for the lutenist who needs material but nothing that
puts him in the delicate position of virtuoso compositions for the
uncaring, background music or as Brian Eno banally puts it, "a piece
that can be listened to and yet be ignored". And this is where I find
the concept of the Dumpe most fascinating. It has its ebb and flow but
no terminus. There are periodic wanderings into melody and interest
but rarely any counterpoint that draws you in; there are cadences but
you hardly feel it will end at one. Rather than a journey getting
underway, there are just waves lapping. Very nice waves, mind you, and
the effect is entirely different than anything else in the renaissance
songbook.
Thanks, Anthony, for bringing up the Roister Doister quote. It's a old
favorite that says so much to how a lutenist/citternist/guitarist was
perceived and on its own points persuaded me to read the play in its
entirety. It's easy to overlook the culture that created Shakespeare's
comedies but it's so much more than "fly-over-country". It's fecundant
soil and everyone seems to grow their vegetables a little differently.
Sean
ps There's the related phrase to "down in the dumps" of "in a funk" so
I thought I'd look that up. Oh lordy.
pps, incidently, did the dump survive into the baroque? Le Dompe du
Sonnerie de Ste. Genevieve, perhaps? :^)
On Feb 14, 2012, at 12:33 PM, Anthony Hind wrote:
A phoentician’s musings :
%
One point of view (even present in the OED) based on data in
the literature, rather than the surviving music, has it that the music
labelled as “dumps ” could be closely associated with the mood “down
in the dumps ”, (the “dumps” OED, "a fit of melancholy and
depression"), as in "The Taming of the Shrew", 1596: "Why, how now,
daughter Katharina! in your dumps? a mournful or plaintive melody or
song, much in the way, more recently, “the blues”, as a musical form,
would be related to the expression “having the blues” (see also the
same tendency for using the plural form in both, blues/dumps).
%
Notice, however, that not all Blues music actually have "Blues" in
their titles, and this could perhaps equally be true for music
referred to as "dumps " in Renaissance literature.
Indeed one in interpretation of the use of dump/dumps in Romeo and
Juliet iv.5, could be that the well known air, "Heart’s Ease" is the
consoling "merry dump", which Peter is asking the musicians to play to
relieve him from his "doleful dumps" (very much the use of a dump, as
suggested by Sean’s message below, be careful, the “doleful dumps”
refers here to the mood, and not the music, which is merry); therefore
a consoling dump, might not always be mournful, and might not even be
explicitly labelled as a dump.
%
Romeo and Juliet Act iv Scene 5
Musicians, O musicians, “Heart's ease,” “Heart's ease”! O, an you
will have me live, play “Heart's ease. ”
FIRST MUSICIAN Why “Heart's ease”?
PETER O musicians, because my heart itself plays, My heart is
full. O play me some merry dump to comfort
me.
(...)
FIRST MUSICIAN Not a dump we! 'Tis no time to play now.
(...)
When griping grief the heart doth wound,
And doleful dumps the mind oppress,
Then music with her silver sound,
Why silver sound? Why music with her silver sound?
(...)
I say silver sound because musicians sound for silver.
%
This could explain (see Sean), why surving music labelled as "dumps",
do not in fact have the caracteristics we now associate with the
typical Renaissance lament-like pieces such as 'Semper Dowland, semper
dolens'; Julia Craig-McFeely (in her
thesis ?) rightly says, they "indicate that the conveying of 'sad'
sentiments had by this time developed clear associations with minor
tonality, chromaticism and slow harmonic and rhythmic movement; most
lute dumps do not exhibit these features."
%
This rather puts in question Alan Brown’s over generalisation that
"The musical dump was variously described as 'solemn and still',
'deploring' and 'doleful'; there is some evidence to suggest that it
was the English equivalent of the French deploration or tombeau, a
piece composed in memory of a recently deceased person."
%
Apart from the probability that the term "dump" was not always used to
refer to doleful music, it does seem to have been used as a derisive
description of a doleful lover’s lament accompanied, or played, on the
lute, (seemingly caricaturing some
earlier more serious courtly fashion for such behaviour?):
See for example, Roister Doister, by Nicholas Udall (before 1553) Act.
ij. Scene.j.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21350/21350-h/21350-h.htm
"I trowe neuer was any creature liuyng,
With euery woman is he in some loues pang,
Then vp to our lute at midnight, twangledome twang,
Then twang with our sonets, and twang with our dumps,
And heyhough from our heart, as heauie as lead lumpess.
%
This notion of lover’s lament (always seemingly caricatured, as here)
never seems to be a potential extension of the French Tombeau, even if
Gallot’s "Tombeau for Psyché" is not explicitly a Tombeau "composed in
memory of a recently deceased person."
%
The ironical association of "love’s pang" with the dumps on a lute,
could possibly show that such lute dumps are already somewhat out of
fashion in the 16th century, and this could be confirmed when Sir
Philip Sydney, in "Must Love Lament?" (16th cent.) associates « dumps
» with Chaucer’s mistress (i.e. the 15th century).
http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/7275/
My hand doth not bear witness with my heart,
She saith, because I make no woeful lays,
To paint my living death and endless smart:
And so, for one that felt god Cupidís dart,
She thinks I lead and live too merry days.
%
Are poets then the only lovers true,
Whose hearts are set on measuring a verse?
Who think themselves well blest, if they renew
Some good old dump that Chaucerís mistress knew;
And use but you for matters to rehearse.
%
Could the "good old dump" evoke an earlier troubadour-style of courtly
love, now comically quite out of fashion ?
%
Finally, as a phonetician, interested in historical linguistic
processes, I have my doubts about a form like "dump/dompe" having but
one origin and one meaning; it is highly likely that there may have
been an Anglo-saxon as well as a Norse origin to these forms which may
further have undergone dialectal variation. It is possible that more
than one meaning is also associated with
musical dumps. In particular, the primary meaning that the OED gives
for "dump" is a stunned state of bewilderment ; and this is the
meaning present in Holinshed's "Chronicles of England, Scotland, and
Ireland" 1577, as in
"But the earle and his compa|nie, who had bÈene shut vp now two
moneths within the citie, and whose vittels failed, (...) were in a
great dumpe and perplexitie, and in a maner were at their wits end,
and wist not what to doo."
http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/texts.php?text1=1587_0404
%
It is not inconceivable that a fairly complex variation (more complex
say than a trifling "Toy"), might have become associated with this
meaning (i.e. a sort of "musical maze").
Regards
Anthony
_______________________________
De : Sean Smith <lutesm...@mac.com>
À : lute <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Envoyé le : Dimanche 12 février 2012 18h51
Objet : [LUTE] Re: Dumps and Downes
The dumpes question seems to have settled down again but I have to
wonder, could they simply be a lullabies? The repetitive, hypnotic
character is like no other kind of composition and they never really
get what you could call exciting. I'm thinking of the earlier ones
pivoting on C and Bb; not the bergamask variations. (They may have
gotten the lumped in with dumps due to their seemingly endless strains
and may even be as hypnotic but they don't have that "Gooo tooo
sleeeep" feel.) I just looked at the two Goodnights in Dd 2.11 and
they are both just beautiful and boring --a great trick to pull off
and if done at their best you should never hear any applause!
That many appear by J. Johnson in service to the queen suggests they
had a use perhaps in the same sense as dances for dancing and songs
for engaging poetry.
Just my cent and a half.
Sean
On Feb 9, 2012, at 3:44 PM, Leonard Williams wrote:
Bernd sent me the following (I don't think it got to the whole list):
------ Forwarded Message
From: "Bernd Haegemann" <b...@symbol4.de>
Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:38:51 +0100
To: "Leonard Williams" <arc...@verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [LUTE] Dumps and Downes
I have only 2 dumps and thought them to be quite humpty-dumpty, but read
this:
**
Dump.
A type of instrumental piece occurring in English sources between
about 1540
and 1640. Some
20 examples are known, more than half of them for lute and most of the
remainder for
keyboard. The word is of uncertain derivation. In the 16th century it
denoted mental
perplexity or a state of melancholy. The musical dump was variously
described as 'solemn and
still', 'deploring' and 'doleful'; there is some evidence to suggest
that it
was the English
equivalent of the French déploration or tombeau, a piece composed in
memory
of a recently
deceased person.
16 dumps are listed in Ward (1951): all are anonymous except for two
by John
Johnson. A few
more are included in the catalogue in Lumsden, among them a relatively
ambitious work in the
Marsh Lutebook (IRL-Dm Z.3.2.13) labelled 'Dump philli' (ed. in Ward,
1992,
ii, no.4; the
piece is unlikely to be by either Philip van Wilder or Peter Philips
as was
formerly
thought). The earliest known dump, My Lady Careys Dompe (in GB-Lbl
Roy.App.58; MB, lxvi,
1995, no.37), is familiar as an early example of idiomatic keyboard
writing.
It is written
over an ostinato bass, a simple alternation of tonic and dominant
(TTDD).
Most other dumps
share this type of construction, using similar bass patterns (DTDT,
TTDT) or
standard
grounds such as the bergamasca, passamezzo antico and romanesca. Some
later
examples have
different formal schemes, such as The Irishe Dumpe in the Fitzwilliam
Virginal Book (ed.
J.A. Fuller Maitland and W.B. Squire, Leipzig, 1899/R, rev. 2/1979-80
by B.
Winogron,
no.179), which is a simply harmonized melody of three strains. An
isolated
late example is
An Irish Dump, an instrumental tune printed in Smollet Holden's A
Collection
of Old
Established Irish Slow and Quick Tunes (Dublin, c1807) and reproduced in
Grove5; Beethoven
arranged it for voice and piano trio, to words by Joanna Baillie, in his
collection of 25
Irish songs woo152 no.8 (London and Edinburgh, 1814).
Bibliography
J.M. Ward: 'The "Dolfull Domps"', JAMS, iv (1951), 111-21
D. Lumsden: The Sources of English Lute Music, 1540-1620 (diss., U. of
Cambridge, 1955)
J. Caldwell: English Keyboard Music Before the Nineteenth Century
(Oxford,
1973)
J.(M.) Ward: Commentary to The Dublin Virginal Manuscript (London, 1983)
J.M. Ward: Music for Elizabethan Lutes (Oxford, 1992)
Alan Brown
***
best wishes
Bernd
----- Original Message -----
From: "Leonard Williams" <arc...@verizon.net>
To: "Bernd Haegemann" <b...@symbol4.de>
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 11:23 PM
Subject: Re: [LUTE] Dumps and Downes
Bernd--
Nothing from Grove's--or else I didn't notice the citation.
Leonard
On 2/8/12 3:43 PM, "Bernd Haegemann" <b...@symbol4.de> wrote:
Dear Leonard,
I suppose someone sent you the article from Grove's dictionary?
best wishes
Bernd
----- Original Message -----
From: "Leonard Williams" <arc...@verizon.net>
To: "Lute List" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2012 1:49 AM
Subject: [LUTE] Dumps and Downes
What can the collective wisdom share about a style of
composition
called down(e) or dump? I have four of these: two from Holmes
(ff. 12, 94)
and two from Marsh (ff. 124, 426). Questions: Are they basically
divisions
on a ground? Does one follow a strict rhythm with them?
I enjoy playing (in some cases simply attempting) these.
Are there
others, perhaps by different names/titles?
Thanks and regards,
Leonard Williams
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------ End of Forwarded Message
