A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Windsor
WINDSOR or ETON TUNE. This is first found in Damon's music to the Psalms, 1591, harmonised in four parts, and set to Ps. cxvi. It is not in Damon's earlier work of 1579.[1] As no complete set of parts is known to exist, the melody only can be quoted:—
This affords an example of Damon's method of prolonging a tune by repetition, of which Hawkins speaks.
In 1592 the tune appears in Este's 'Whole Booke of Psalmes,' containing the Church Tunes, and 'other short tunes usually sung in London and most places of the Realme.' It is marked as being one of the latter, and must therefore have been in use for some little time previously. In Este's Psalter it is harmonised by George Kirby as follows, the melody in the tenor:—
Damon and Kirby merely harmonised the melody, but whoever was its composer, it is only an adaptation of the tune set by Dr. Tye to the third chapter of his curious work, 'The Actes of the Apostles, translated into Englyshe Metre … with notes to eche Chapter, to synge and also to play upon the Lute,' 1553. Here we find the first, third, and fourth strains of Windsor, and a fragment of the second. For the sake of comparison Dr. Tye's tune is subjoined, reduced into score in modern clefs.
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In Este's Psalter the tune has no distinctive name, but in 1615 it was inserted in the Scottish Psalter published by Andro Hart, as 'Dundie.' In Ravenscroft's Psalter, 1621, it is marked as an English tune, and is doubly named 'Windsor or Eaton.' The tune was popular in Scotland,[2] and this, coupled with the Scottish form of its earliest name led to the belief that it was indigenous to that country.
In Hart's Psalter of 1615 the melody alone is given:—
Dundie Tune.
Here a slight variation occurs in the second strain, and the leading note is omitted in the first, third and fourth strains, thus giving the melody a modal form. This may have been done to assimilate its character to that of other tunes in the collection; but however this may be, the accidental was restored to the penultimate note of the last strain in Raban's Psalter, Aberdeen, 1633:—
IX. Dundie Tune.
and throughout the hymn in the harmonised Scottish Psalter of 1635:—
Dundie Tune.
[ G. A. C. ]
- ↑ For an account of this extremely scarce work see Hawkins. Hist. of Music, chap, cxvii.
- ↑ Burns, in his 'Cottar's Saturday Night,' refers to this tune:—
'Perhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise,
O plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name.'Care must be taken not to confound it with the 'Dundee' of Ravenscroft, which is the 'French tune' of the Scottish Psalter.