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English Country Dance Tunes
for Mountain Dulcimer
by Mark Gilston
English country dances actually began life as dance music for the courts of Renaissance
England, Scotland and France and through popularity worked their way down to the
gentry and then on to the general populace.
The first general published collection of these dances was called The English Dancing
Master. This collection of these popular dances was put together by about half a dozen
dance aficionados who remain unknown. It was then published by publisher John
Playford, a publisher with interest in both music and politics, in 1651, shortly after
Charles I was beheaded. Playford was a Royalist, and was arrested when Cromwell came
to power. It was strongly suggested to him that he cease publishing political treatises,
and so he turned to music. In addition to The English Dancing Master, he later published
several other collections of music, including Apollo's Banquet (1678) (dance tunes for
the violin), The Musical Companion (1667) (songs and catches - a type of round),
Musick's Handmaid (1678) (songs for the virginal and harpsichord) and The Division
Violin (1685). which has the reputation of containing some very technically advanced
violin music for its time.
By the time The English Dancing Master was published, this style of dances was
immensely popular and it is likely that a number of dances were composed specifically

for the book. References to specific English country dances show up in many works of
English fiction throughout the 17 th and 18 th centuries. There have been many
subsequent editions of The English Dancing Master with revisions and enlargements until
the final edition which was published in 1728. John Playford published the first seven
editions, and, after his death in 1686, his son, Henry, published the next five. There
were seventeen editions in all.
Illustration from The Dancing Master: Vol. The First... The 18th Edition
London: Edward Midwinter and John Young, [1728].
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
The dances in The English Dancing Master represent a delightful cross-section of the
popular music of the late 17 th and 18 th centuries and generally have the flavor so typical
of the late English Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Although they can be quite
chromatic and have a tendency to modulate at least once in their brief appearance,
many of them still lend themselves well to the light touch of the chord-melody style of
mountain dulcimer playing. The dulcimer is well able to capture that lute-like quality
which so enhances these pieces. By plucking close to the bridge and then moving away
from it on the repeats, one can imitate one of the typical sound techniques used in
Elizabethan lute music.
Many of the tunes in Playford are meant as an outline, and the style of the day was to
play them once as written and then to embellish and improvise. My tablature is a
compromise with emphasis given to the tunes as written, but a certain amount of
embellishment is occasionally included, particularly in the simpler tunes. The original
manuscript shows melody only, so chords and countermelodies are left up to the
performer. I have tried to include counterpoint and chordal harmonies which would have
been appropriate to the period while following the rules of voice leading as best as the
dulcimer will allow.

Above is an example of how one of the dances actually appeared in The English Dancing
Master. The melody is given in the popular print notation of the time, with dance
instructions underneath. The instructions are in a sort of shorthand which is explained at
the beginning of the book.
“Woodycock” is the old spelling, coming from a time when spelling was often
inconsistent. “Woodycock” refers to the Middle English “wodecok” (from old English
‘wuducoc’), a common game bird. Today, the bird is known as a woodcock, and the tune
is generally spelled “Woodicock.”
Below is my basic arrangement of the tune, though in performance I embellish it with
several improvised variations in keeping with the style of playing in the 17 th century.
Listen to Mark playing “Woodicock” here:
http://www.markgilston.com/music/Woodicock.m3u
My convention is to write the basic melody of the tune in the music notes and write out
the full tablature below. This enables other musicians to read the music along with the
dulcimer player without being confused by the extraneous notes. It should help guide
the dulcimer player as to which of the notes are critical and which can be left out if
simplification is desired. The chords are those implied by the tablature. Other options
are possible, but they would be likely to clash with the arrangement. For the best effect
when playing the tablature, play only the notes that are specifically indicated. Only
strum across all the strings, when the tab indicates that all the strings are played. Use a
rhythmic strumming pattern and pluck the individual strings when so directed. Strum
away on the main beats and pick up the individual unaccented beats on the return
strokes unless specifically instructed otherwise in the tab.

I have added a minimal amount of ornaments, but those added are appropriate to
proper English styling. The tradition in this music is to play the piece simply the first
time through and then to embellish and create variations on subsequent repeats.

About the Author
Photo by Dale Rempert
Mark Gilston has been performing traditional folk music for forty years. His vast
repertoire encompasses songs and instrumentals from North America and most of
Europe, particularly the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the Balkans.
Mark was born and raised in New York City. Both of his parents were steeped in the folk
music revival scene of the 1950's. He grew up listening to 78's and LP's of American,
Russian, Spanish, Caribbean and Israeli folk music. His sister was a professional harpist.
Learning guitar and taking piano lessons starting at age 5, he was constantly immersed
in music.
His interest in Balkan music developed in his early teens when he began folk dancing. A
good friend sent him back a goat-skin bagpipe from Bulgaria and he began to teach
himself how to play the instrument in 1969. In 1970 he moved to Montreal to go to
college and became a regular at the Yellow Door Coffeehouse where he bought his first
own dulcimer. He started playing concertina two years later.
After earning a Bachelor's degree in Folklore, Mark went to graduate school at SUNY
Binghamton and ended up settling there until 1994. In May of 2002, Mark moved to
Austin, Texas and in 2004, Mark won the Oklahoma State Mountain Dulcimer
Championship.

Mark has given concerts for numerous colleges, folk music organizations and clubs and
performed and given workshops at festivals throughout the United States, as well as
England and Canada.
Mark has written two books of English Country Dance tunes for mountain dulcimer, each
which comes with a CD with all the tunes played in a concert style performance. The
books with CDs are available at http://www.markgilston.com/ and the CDs without the
books as well as his other 7 CDs can be purchased at
http://www.cdbaby.com/all/markgilston .
If you enjoyed this article and music you might also like the following from Steven K.
Smith entitled “Elizabethan Music for Mountain Dulcimer”:
http://www.dulcimersessions.com/feb04/Elizabethan.html