Annotation:Mr. Staggin’s Jig

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MR. STAGGIN'S JIG. AKA - "Staggins's Jig." English, Country Dance TUne & Jig. D Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AA'BB'. The tune and country dance directions were first printed by London publisher John P8layford in the Supplement to the 6th edition of the Dancing Master (1679). It was retained in subsequent editions through the 18th and final edition of 1728 (published at that time by John Young, heir to the Playford publishing concerns). The dance and tune were also published by John Walsh in The Compleat Country Dancing Master (1718, and subsequent editions of 1731 and 1754). Sir John Hawkins (A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, 2nd vol., 1853) remarks:

The title honors Nicholas Staggins [1] (c. 1650-1700), a violinist and son of a musician of the royal household. According to Rimbault (Notes on North's Memoires, p. 99), both the elder and younger Staggins were in a list of King Charles II's private musicians of 1674. By 1675 Nicholas was appointed 'master of his majesty's musick', and served as composer to James II and master of the band of music for William III.

In the year 1664, more by the favour of Dr. James, the vice-chancellor (of Cambridge), than any ..ert of his own, he attained to the degree of doctor of music. His exercise should have been a vocal composition in five or six parts, and also one for instruments, but the former, as being the more difficult task, was dispensed with. The partiality shown to the man seems to have occasioned great murmuring and to silence them the following advertisement was published in the Gazette for the year 1664...'Cambridge, July 6. Dr. Nicholas Staggins, who was some time since admitted to the degree of Dr. of music, being desireous to perform his exercise upon the first public opportunity for the said degree, has acquitted himself so much to the satisfaction of the whole university this commencement, that by a solemn vote they have constituted and appointed him to be a public professor of music here.'

The appointment was not endowed and was honorary. Only a few of Staggin's compositions survive.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Barlow (The Complete Country Dances from Playford's Dancing Master), 1985; No. 235, p. 61. Walsh (Complete Country Dancing-Master, Volume the Fourth), London, 1740; No. 135.

Recorded sources:




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