Upon A Summer's Day: A Song History
Upon A Summer's Day is an English country dance tune that John Playford printed in the first edition of The English Dancing Master in 1651.[1] It stands as the very first dance in that book, laid out for three couples in a longways set.[2] Playford also put the tune in his Musick's Delight on the Cithren of 1666, and editions of the Dancing Master from 1670 to 1690 retitled it "The Garland, or a Summer's-day."[3]
Wenceslaus Hollar, Summer (Aestas), etching, 1629. A country summer scene etched in 1629, shown for the tune's title; the etching has no connection to the tune.
The name comes from a ballad.[1] In his 1859 survey of England's old popular music, William Chappell noted a song of the same title in Merry Drollery Complete (1661) and thought the later "Garland" title pointed to a ballad in the Roxburghe Collection opening "Upon a Summer's time," the form of the name that ballad sheets cite most often when naming their tune.[3] He paired the melody with a different song, explaining of the original words that "it is not desirable to reprint them."[3]
Printed editions disagree about the tune's mode, some giving it in D Dorian and others in F minor, and the band Leveret recorded it on its 2015 album New Anything.[1] Dulcimer players can find it in Mark Gilston's English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 1, a printable 35-page book in which it shares space with "Jenny Pluck Pears" and "Jack A Lent."[4]
Sources
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Upon a Summer's Day".
- Library of Dance: "Summers Day".
- Internet Archive: William Chappell, "Popular Music of the Olden Time," Volume 1.
- Mark Gilston: "English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 1".
- Image: Wenceslaus Hollar, Summer (Aestas), etching, 1629. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.