What If A Day Or A Month Or A Year (Thomas Campion, c. 1600)

[Martin Jonas]

Thomas Campion (1567-1620): "What if a day or a moneth or a yeare"

Arranged by Steve Hendricks:
http://sca.uwaterloo.ca/Hendricks/eballad2/whatifa.pdf

This is a well-known late Elisabethean madrigal, usually attributed to Thomas Campion, but sometimes to John Dowland.

I've recorded the treble melody on my nylon-strung bowlback mandolin (the "Baroq-ulele"), which has a soft organ-like tone. On the repeat, the Baroq-ulele takes the treble harmony, swapping parts with the Embergher bowlback which has a quite different tone.

"Baroq-ulele" nylgut-strung mandolin
1915 Luigi Embergher mandolin
1925 Zimmermann waldzither
Ozark tenor guitar
Suzuki MC-815 mandocello



Martin

[jso]

How lovely! Since you provided the dots, I enjoyed playing along with you!

[stevenmando]

Me to , what a wonderful piece , I so enjoyed playing along with it plus learning a new piece of music

[stevenmando]

Would love to hear some more pieces by Thomas Compion with the music to play along ,he is someone that I have not heard before and am fascinated with his music

[Martin Jonas]

Steven,

The site I linked in my original post has similar arrangements for another 15 of Campion's songs. I suggest you try a few of them to see which ones make good mandolin pieces!

Link

Martin

[stevenmando]

Martin thanks , I having so much fun playing along and now learning some more of his pieces , there is not to many where I live ( Texas ) that is in to his music , let alone classical ,so I will watch this site for more of your videos , I in the mean time will go to the site you directed me to , thanks Steven

[stevenmando]

La Bouree is such a great piece to play along with , goes real well with mandolin , what a treasure thanks

[Martin Jonas]

Would love to hear some more pieces by Thomas Compion with the music to play along ,he is someone that I have not heard before and am fascinated with his music

For Steven, and anybody else who likes Campion's songs, here is another one of his, "The Peaceful Western Wind". It's another very pretty melody, well-suited for playing along with.

Same instrumentation as the other recording, and again based on an arrangement by Steve Hendricks, from:

http://sca.uwaterloo.ca/Hendricks/eballad2/peaceful.pdf



Martin