Arcadian Nuptials

X:1 T:Arcadian Nuptuals M:9/8 L:1/8 B:Thompson’s Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 3 (London, 1773) Z:Transcribed and edited by Fynnian Titford-Mock, 2007 Z:abc’s:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:F F3 AFA cAc|F3 dBd G3|F3 AFA cAc|def gfe f3:|
 * a3 afd afd|efg gec|gec|a3 afd gec|def gfe f3:|
 * cAF cAF Acf|dBG dBG Bdg|cAF cAF Acf|cBA GFE F3:||



ARCADIAN NUPTIALS. English, American; Country Dance Tune (9/8 time). F Major. Standard tuning. AABBCC. Charles and Samuel Thomson's 200 Country Dances, volume III (London, 1773, pg. 100) contains one of the earliest printings of this melody, however, it is perhaps quite a bit older since the piece by this title was recorded as having been one of the melodies danced to at a 1752 "turtle frolic" at Goats Island, near Newport, Rhode Island (a turtle frolic was a special event when West Indes turtles, towed astern from the Carribean, arrived in port). “Arcadian Nuptials” was reprinted in the Thompson’s 200 Country Dances, vol. IV (London, 1780), and was also published in Longman and Broderip’s Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances (London, 1781). It appears in America in a Connecticut MS by Asa Willcox from 1793, and in the 1788 music copybook of fiddlers John and William Pitt Turner (Norwich, Conn.). Country dance figures appear in the Thompsons' Twenty-Four Country Dances for the Year 1765 (London), Select Collection, printed in Ostego, New York, in 1808, and in an anonymous country dance book dated 1795 from New Hampshire (see EASMES for detailed information). The Arcadian Nuptials was a masque by renowned English composer Thomas Arne (1710-1778), written in 1764 in celebration of the marriage of Princess Augusta and the Prince of Brunswick. The work marked a high point in his career, after which it declined despite some success with stagings of his works in the last decade of his life. Knowles (A Northern Lass), 1995; pg. 7. Thompson (Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 3 (London, 1773; No. 195. Tune annotations __NORICHEDITOR__