Annotation:Sicilian Dance (1) (The)
X:1 T:Sicilian Dance [1] or T:Mignionette, La M:6/8 L:1/8 R:Jig Q:"Allegretto" B:Thomas Wilson - Companion to the Ball Room (1816, p. 123) Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:G G>AG BAG|d2d d2c|Bdg d2c|B2A G2D| GAG BAG|d2d d2g|fgf ed^c|d3 d3|| a2d c'2b|agf {a}gfg|a2d c'2b|agf {a}gfg| ec'c' dbb|caa g2B|cBA d2F|G3 G3|| B3 BcA|G2G GBd|d3 cdc|B2B B2g| g2f f2e|e2d d2c|Bcd dcB|B3 A3|| g3 ge^c|ded d3|c'3 c'af|gag g3| ec'c' dbb|caa g2B|cBA d2F|G3 G3||
SICILIAN DANCE [1]. AKA - "Sicilian Quickstep." AKA and see "Mignonette (1) (La)," “Royal Albert (1).” English, Jig (6/8 time). F Major: G Major (Riley, Wilson). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABC. There was a vogue for period in the early 19th century for Sicilian melodies, or faux-Sicilian melodies, and “Sicilian Air,” “Siciliano Dance,” “The Sicilian Peasant,” “Sicialian Mariner’s Hymn,” “Sicilian Waltz,” etc. appear in various publications and musicians’ manuscripts of the last decade of the 18th century and the beginning decades of the next. Interest in Sicily intensified during the Napoleonic Era due to its strategic location. At the beginning of the 19th century the Kingdom of Sicily and Naples encompassed the entire southern part of the Italian peninsula, under the rule of Ferdinand IV, of the House of Bourbon, an opponent of the French. He made an alliance with the Third Coalition against Napoleon in 1805, but lost the Neapolitan portion of his Kingdom after the battle of Austerlitz. Ferdinand fled to the island of Sicily and managed to stem attacks from the French throughout the Napoleonic wars, until Napoleon’s defeat. However, this did not bring about an immediate return of his former empire, which Napoleon had entrusted to his capable commander Joachim Murat. It took an alliance of Tuscany, Austria and the United Kingdom to finally restore the Kingdom of Naples to Ferdinand, who, in 1816 united the two in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which lasted until 1860 and Garibaldi’s Italian unification. The post-Napoleonic re-arranging of European territories under the leadership of an emergent Britain, is likely responsible for the vogue in popular music for ‘Sicilian’ (i.e. Italian) sounding airs and the inclusion of “Sicilian Dance” in Burk’s manuscript.
Early 19th century London dancing master Thomas Wilson revealed the tune's origins in his Complete System of English Country Dancing (c. 1820, p. 24):
This popular and pretended new dance for 1816 called the 'Sicilian Dance' was "The Mignionette Cotillion, published around the year 1770 and only altered by putting 2 bars of Kammel's[1] Rondo at the conclusion of both strains, and to go further, the first strain is copied almost note for note from "Happy Clown (The)" published about 100 years ago.'
The melody by this title is also contained in a few other English musician’s manuscripts, including those of Joseph Kershaw and George Spencer. Kershaw was a fiddler who lived in Slackcote, Saddleworth, North West England, in the 19th century, and his manuscript dates from around 1820 onwards. The same melody and title appears in the George Spencer (Leeds, Yorkshire), dated 1831. Burk and Spencer’s versions are nearly identical and have extended melodic material: Burk as an extension of the third part, Spencer with an added fourth part. The melody (as “Sicialian Dance”) was printed in Riley’s Flute Melodies, vol. 2, published by Edward Riley in New York around 1817 (p. 126), and in Thomas Wilson’s Companion to the Ball Room, published in London in 1816. The latter volume gives the alternate title “Mignonette (1) (La)” (The Sweet Flower). The melody has been associated with the Scottish country dance Royal Albert, and is printed with that title in Kohler’s Violin Repository (1881-1885).
The music manuscript of John Burk (1821) ascribes the tune to a “Mr. Fisher,” the only attribution ever found with the melody. Unfortunately, nothing is known of Burk although he may have been from the north of England. It is possible it was a composition of German composer Johann Christian Fischer (1733 1800), a friend of Mozart's, or one James A. Fishar, a musical director and ballet master at Covent Garden during the 1770's who published Sixteen Cotillons, Sixteen Minuets, Twelve Allemands, and Twelve Hornpipes (John Rutherford, London, 1778). There was also an 18th century English fiddle player named J.W. Fisher. However, all of these individuals seem to predate Burk’s era, although the tune may be older.
- ↑ Antonin Kammel (1730-1784) was a Bohemian composer and violinist who worked in London from 1765.