The girls go by and they wink one eye, It's will you marry me? No, not I; I'm ninety-five, I'm ninety five, And to stay single I'll contrive. John of Paris
Jean de Paris is the title of a French comic opera with music by François Adrien Boieldieu (1775-1834), 'The French Mozart', first performed in Paris in 1812, and the connection between the march and the opera was recently uncovered in a masterly job of sluthing, recorded the 2/95 Rifles Forum [1], from which the following information is derived.
In 1814 Europe was finally at peace; Napoleon had been exiled to Elba, and the English once again could enjoy French culture.
The opera "Jean de Paris" was exported to London, where an adaptation, with music composed by Charles Horn and Samuel Arnold, was staged at Drury Lane Theatre.
It was not a success, despite prodigious talents of the composers. The New Monthly Magazine (vol. 1, 1814, p. 443), warned its readers:
If the success of this piece is adduced as an instance of public taste, we shall be under thenecessity of wishing that our theatres were completely closed, and their companies disbanded tofollow a better occupation.
However, a rival adaptation of the French opera was being performed at the same time at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden (Nov., 1814), a two-act comic opera "composed and partly selected from the original...by Isaac Pocock, composed and adapted for the English stage by Henry R. Bishop, Composer and Director of music to the Theatre Royal."
The march was found in Act ii, as a "Pastoral Dance." Pocock's and Bishop's version of "John of Paris" did not fare particularly well, either, with the Works of Sir Henry Bishop reporting that Boieldieu's "pretty Overture is omitted, which a dozen uninteresting numbers by Bishop are inserted...", the exception being the tune that became known in England as "John of Paris."
Although we are not trained musicologists and make no pretense to the profession, we have tried to apply such professional rigors to this Semantic Abc Web as we have internalized through our own formal and informal education.
This demands the gathering of as much information as possible about folk pieces to attempt to trace tune families, determine origins, influences and patterns of aural/oral transmittal, and to study individual and regional styles of performance.
Many musicians, like ourselves, are simply curious about titles, origins, sources and anecdotes regarding the music they play. Who, for example, can resist the urge to know where the title Blowzabella came from or what it means, or speculating on the motivations for naming a perfectly respectable tune Bloody Oul' Hag, is it Tay Ye Want?
Knowing the history of the melody we play, or at least to have a sense of its historical and social context, makes the tune 'present' in the here and now, and enhances our rendering of it.
Andrew Kuntz & Valerio Pelliccioni
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