A type of instrumental piece occurring in English sources between about 1540 and 1640. Some 20 examples are known, more than half of them for lute and most of the remainder for keyboard. The word is of uncertain derivation. In the 16th century it denoted mental perplexity or a state of melancholy. The musical dump was variously described as ‘solemn and still’, ‘deploring’ and ‘doleful’; there is some evidence to suggest that it was the English equivalent of the French déploration or tombeau, a piece composed in memory of a recently deceased person.
16 dumps are listed in Ward (1951): all are anonymous except for two by John Johnson. A few more are included in the catalogue in Lumsden, among them a relatively ambitious work in the Marsh Lutebook (IRL-DM Z.3.2.13) labelled ‘Dump philli’ (ed. in Ward, 1992, ii, no.4; the piece is unlikely to be by either Philip van Wilder or Peter Philips as was formerly thought). The earliest known dump, My Lady Careys Dompe (in GB-Lbl Roy.App.58; MB, lxvi, 1995, no.37), is familiar as an early example of idiomatic keyboard writing. It is written over an ostinato bass, a simple alternation of tonic and dominant (TTDD). Most other dumps share this type of construction, using similar bass patterns (DTDT, TTDT) or standard grounds such as the bergamasca, passamezzo antico and romanesca. Some later examples have different formal schemes, such as The Irishe Dumpe in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (ed. J.A. Fuller Maitland and W.B. Squire, Leipzig, 1899/R, rev. 2/1979–80 by B. Winogron, no.179), which is a simply harmonized melody of three strains. An isolated late example is An Irish Dump, an instrumental tune printed in Smollet Holden’s A Collection of Old Established Irish Slow and Quick Tunes (Dublin, c1807) and reproduced in Grove5; Beethoven arranged it for voice and piano trio, to words by Joanna Baillie, in his collection of 25 Irish songs woo152 no.8 (London and Edinburgh, 1814).
J.M. Ward: ‘The “Dolfull Domps”’, JAMS, iv (1951), 111–21
D. Lumsden: The Sources of English Lute Music, 1540–1620 (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1955)
J. Caldwell: English Keyboard Music Before the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1973)
J.(M.) Ward: Commentary to The Dublin Virginal Manuscript (London, 1983)
J.M. Ward: Music for Elizabethan Lutes (Oxford, 1992)
ALAN BROWN