Annotation:Foot's Minuet
X:1 T:Foot's Minuet M:3/4 L:1/8 R:Minuet B: William Clark of Lincoln music manuscript collection (1770) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:D a2f2a2|g4f2|e2d2e2|(fe)(fg) f2|a2f2a2| Tg4f2|e2d2e2|f4::f2f2f2|(ed)(ef) e2|g2g2g2| (fe)(fg) f2|(de)(fg)(ab)|a2g2f2|(3bag f2Te2|d4:|]
FOOT'S MINUET. AKA and see "Charley's Dragoons." English, Minuet (3/4 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. A very popular tune from the mid-18th century on. Some of the earliest printings are in John Simpson's The Delightful Pocket Companion, vol. 2 (c. 1745), David Rutherford's Sixteen of the most favourite Minuets with their Basses (London, c. 1750), and Peter Thompson's The Compleat Tutor for the French Horn (London, c. 1755), but the tune appears in a great many instrumental collections and tutors, and was frequently entered into musicians' copybooks and commonplace music collections. An easy tune, it was frequently one of the first taught to those first learning an instrument. wikipedia:Charles_Dibdin, in his memoirs, mentions that learning it as a routine part of his musical initial of 1754, so it was already standard then. It was still used for the same purpose during the Regency 60 years later[1]. Presuming that the title refers to a person, Chris Partington suggests a possible association with wikipedia:Samuel_Foote (1720-1777), wit, playwright, and actor.
It was often heard played on the chimes of musical clocks and country churches by the end of the 18th century, prompting some to complain that a secular dance tune was being played instead of a more pious hymn (see letter to the editor, The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle (volume 79, Part 1, 1809). The writer relates the (perhaps apocryphal) anecdote:
The following humourous occurrence took place at a village in the North of England, where the Church Chimes play the tune I have first alluded to [Ed. i.e. "Foot's Minuet"]. A young girl had been persuaded by her friends to marry an old man for the sake of his property: the old man shortly afterwards died; the 'disconsolate' widow, as is usual in that part of the country, followed the corpse to the ground; and just as the funeral service finished, the church clock struck, and the Chimes played the usual tune of "Foot's Minuet," li tol derol, to the great divertizement of several of the merry mourners.
Popular English songwriter and stage composer Charles Dibdin mentions the tune in his autobiography (The Professional Life of Mr. Dibdin, vol. 1), when he explains his early musical mentoring:
I have said nothing yet that can give an idea that I did not learn music regularly like anybody else; it will be proper here to explain the truth. Mr. Fussel, who is now organist of Winchester cathedral, when I was nine years old, taught me the gamut, and the table which points out the length of the notes, and the divisions of the time; and, this is so correct, that five or six common tunes, among which are "God Save the King," and "Foot's Minuet," which I have by me in that gentleman's hand-writing, are the only exercises I ever received from a master.
In fact, "God Save the King" and "Foot's Minuet" are often linked in the same sentence in period accounts as among the first tunes a young musician learned.
- ↑ Bernarr Rainbow, "The Miseries of Muscik Masters," The Musical Times, Vol. 127, No. 1718 (Apr., 1986), p. 202.