Nonesuch: A Song History

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"Nonesuch" goes back to the very first edition of John Playford's The English Dancing Master (1651), where it was printed as a dance for four couples.[1][2] That same edition also contains "A la mode de France," a longways dance whose tune and figures are substantially the same, so the two appear as separate entries rather than as one dance with a double title.[1][3][4] "Nonesuch" stayed in the second and third editions and turned up again in the eleventh and fourteenth, while "A la mode de France" ran through every edition of the book.[2][4] Playford also printed the tune, as "A la mode de France," in his collections for cittern and for lyra viol, where it is sometimes given in a major key.[1][3]

Needlework picture of villagers dancing around a maypole among cottages and trees, about 1700

Needlework Picture with Maypole Scene, silk and wool on canvas, about 1700. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Dancing around a maypole, some fifty years after Playford’s first edition; the needlework is not connected to this tune.

The word itself means something without equal.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive's notes on the tune also recall Henry VIII's Nonsuch Palace in Surrey, quoting an account of country dances performed there before Elizabeth I. The archive does not claim that the tune was named for the palace, however, so any connection remains speculation.[1]

The tune had a long life in print. It appears in Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859).[1] Cecil Sharp arranged it, under the combined title "Nonesuch or A la Mode de France," in his Country Dance Tunes, issued in sets by Novello between 1909 and 1922.[1][5] It is also in Brody's Fiddler's Fakebook (1983), and in 1979 the group Trapezoid recorded it for Rounder on Three Forks of Cheat.[1] Among mountain dulcimer players, it appears in Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam, a book of jam-session favorites arranged with melody and chords.[6]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Nonesuch (1)".
  2. Country Dance and Song Society, Dancing Master e-library (Robert M. Keller): "None such [#1]".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: A la Mode de France".
  4. Andrew Swaine: "Nonesuch / A la Mode de France".
  5. IMSLP: "Country Dance Tunes (Sharp, Cecil)".
  6. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam DAD Tuning".