Touch And Take: A Song History

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Touch And Take is an English country dance tune that John Playford printed, together with directions for its dance, in the second edition of The Dancing Master in 1652.[1] Playford's book went through eighteen editions between 1651 and 1728, published at first by John Playford and later taken over by his son Henry, and it gave both the melodies and the figures of the dances.[2] The Traditional Tune Archive describes Touch And Take as a single-part tune in 6/8 time and notes that it was kept in the editions of 1657 and 1665.[1]

Seventeenth-century etching of couples dancing in a long hall while onlookers sit along the walls

Abraham Bosse, The Ball, etching, ca. 1634-35. A French ballroom of the 1630s, shown for the dancing of the generation before Playford printed the tune in 1652; the etching has no connection to the tune.

Cecil Sharp and George Butterworth described the dance in the third part of The Country Dance Book, as a longways dance "for as many as will," citing the 1652 edition.[3] In their reading, the first couple crosses to stand behind the next couple, rests their hands on those dancers' shoulders and turns them halfway round, and because of the way the progression works, each couple travels down the set on the wrong side and returns up it on the proper side.[3] Sharp issued the tune itself in Set 6 of his Country Dance Tunes, published by Novello.[4] The Tune Archive also lists it in several later printed collections of English country dance tunes, the earliest of them dating from 1951.[1]

Touch And Take appears in Mark Gilston's English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2, a book of dulcimer arrangements whose listing stresses tunefulness and playability alongside the history of the pieces.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Touch And Take"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Touch and Take".
  2. Bodleian Libraries: "Playford's Dancing Masters: how to learn English country dances".
  3. Internet Archive: "The Country Dance Book, Part III" (Cecil J. Sharp and George Butterworth).
  4. IMSLP: "Country Dance Tunes (Sharp, Cecil)".
  5. Mark Gilston: "English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2".
  6. Image: Abraham Bosse, The Ball, etching, ca. 1634-35. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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