This archive, containing a close to complete record of the words of songs performed on the London stage between 1600 and 1702/3 and a substantial proportion of the surviving music, was prepared by Anthony Butler under an Australian Research Council grant awarded to Harold Love. We are grateful to the ARC and Monash University for their generous support of this project. Valued assistance and support was also given by Tracey Caulfield, Peter Groves, Felicity Henderson, Carlin Payne, Chris Worth and Philip Wheatland.
The primary aim of the project was to assemble material for a projected study by Harold Love of the Restoration theatre song as a performed work, to be conducted through a combination of stage-historical, musicological and dramaturgical understandings. As such it is to be regarded as a working tool, not a finished and complete record of its subject matter. It is offered in its present form for scholars, musicians, and theatre performers for whom it may have either this or other uses.
The following aspects of the archive need to be understood:
As the primary concern was with songs performed as parts of acted plays,"Semi-operas" were usually omitted, though selected items from them have been included when of interest for other reasons.
The verbal texts, which include both the lyrics of the songs and relevant surrounding dialogue and stage directions, were located through searches of the invaluable LION and ECCO databases. The versions here presented are generally those of the first London edition of the plays concerned, and have been carefully proofread against the reproductions in the UMI, STC and Wing microfilm series or their electronic counterpart, the EEBO database, or the Readex microcard edition. Resources did not permit more than sporadic consultation of editions other than the first, of modern scholarly editions, or of contemporary printed miscellanies, song books and single-sheet prints. Further searching of these sources would undoubtedly have revealed new items and alternative versions of lyrics already listed. Variant forms of many lyrics also exist in manuscript anthologies of the period. For guides to additional sources, the user is referred to the first-line indexes described in James Woolley, `First-line Indexes of English Verse, 1650-80: A Checklist',East-Central Intelligencer, n.s. 17.3 (September 2003), 1-10 and Michael Londry, `On the Use of First-line Indices for Researching English Poetry of the Long Eighteenth Century', Library, 7th ser. 5 (2004), 12-38. Claude M. Simpson's The English Broadside Ballad and its Music contains much important supplementary information about the more popular texts and their settings.
The music texts are offered as NoteWorthy files (the extenshion for which is 'nwc'). Please note that, in order to hear these files, it is necessary for the user to download the free Download NoteWorthy Composer" Browser Plugin . Our music texts make no claim to scholarly refinement but are offered simply as a convenient first reference point for users of the archive. As with the verbal texts, only a single source could usually be consulted, which in this case was mostly the earliest available through the UMI microfilm edition mentioned above. Other sources can be located from Cyrus L. Day and Eleanore Boswell Murrie, English Song Books 1651-1702 (1940), the British Union Catalogue of Early Music(1957) and the composer entries in the New Grove. Users are warned that better versions of some settings certainly exist than are given here, and in particular that songs taken from Durfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, which gives melodies only, can often be found elsewhere with their bass lines and more accurate underlay. On the other hand, our versions of songs by well-known composers such as Henry Purcell will sometimes be closer to those actually heard in the theatres and drawing rooms of the time than those found in modern editions. Note that our transcriptions of bass lines omit all figures. Intending performers will need to retrieve these from the original sources.
The music files allow a transcription to be both heard and followed on screen. Vocal lines are assigned arbitrarily to an instrument from the MIDI palette. As it was only possible to give these files a single proofreading, they may still contain occasional unrecognized errors. Our transcriptions give the melody line together with the words of the opening stanza, the bass line with figures omitted, and obbligato instrumental lines when they exist. Editing of the sources has been restricted to the correction of gross and unmistakable errors. In an ideal world the music texts would have been held back until they had been more fully researched; however, in view of their potential value to users of the archive they have been included but with the warning that further checking is recommended before they are used either for scholarly study or for professional performance.
Songs indexed by authors ,composers ,title of play, first line of the song, or by year . The presence of a music link allows the song to be heard, sometimes in more than one setting, simply by clicking on the hyperlink marked ''nwc''.
In referring to microfilm sources, UMI(1) indicates the pre-1640 'Pollard and Redgrave' collection, UMI(2) the 1640-1700 'Wing' collection, and CT(1) eighteenth century microfilms.