Greensleeves Improvisation

visit my webpage - www.joolsscott.co.uk This is an improvisation based on "Greensleeves", a traditional English folk song and tune, basically a ground of the form called a romanesca. Live at the Pump Rooms, Bath. A broadside ballad by this name was registered at the London Stationer's Company in 1580 as "A New Northern Dittye of the Lady Greene Sleeves". It then appears in the surviving A Handful of Pleasant Delights (1584) as "A New Courtly Sonnet of the Lady Green Sleeves. To the new tune of Green sleeves." It remains debatable whether this suggests that an 'old' tune of "Greensleeves" was in circulation, or which one our familiar tune is. Many surviving sets of lyrics were written to this tune. The tune is also found in several late 16th century and early 17th century sources, such as Ballet's MS Lute Book and Het Luitboek van Thysius, as well as various manuscripts preserved in the Cambridge University libraries. A widely-believed (but completely unproven) legend is that it was composed by King Henry VIII (1491--1547) for his lover and future queen consort Anne Boleyn. Anne, the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, rejected Henry's attempts to seduce her. This rejection is apparently referred to in the song, when the writer's love "cast me off discourteously." However, it is most unlikely that King Henry VIII wrote it, as the song is written in a style which was not known in England until after Henry VIII died. It is widely acknowledged that Lady Green Sleeves was at the very ...



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