Fair Phyllis

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Fair Phyllis (also Fair Phyllis I saw, Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone) is an English madrigal by John Farmer. The music is polyphonic and was published in 1599. The madrigal contains four voices and uses occasional imitation. It also alternates between triple and duple beat groupings in different parts of the song.

This is an English madrigal. An English madrigal is different fro m an Italian madrigal because it uses nonsense syllables like fa la la la la to characterize the piece. Farmer uses clever word painting. For example, in the opening line "Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone", Farmer had only the soprano sing since she was all alone. In the next line "Feeding her flock near to the mountain side", all the voices sang since it was her flock. Additionally, the second phrase, which begins with "Up and down he wandered" and ends with "then they fell a-kissing" repeats, causing the elision "kissing up and down."

Contents

[edit] Story

The song describes a person who saw a young shepherdess sitting alone feeding her sheep near a mountain. The other shepherds did not know where she was at the time. Her boyfriend, Amyntas, goes looking for her and wanders through the hills playing hide and seek. Eventually he finds her, and when he does, they kiss.

[edit] Lyrics

Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone
 Feeding her flock near to the mountain side.
 The shepherds knew not,
 they knew not whither she was gone,
 But after her lover Amyntas hied,
 Up and down he wandered
whilst she was missing;
 When he found her,
 O then they fell a-kissing.

note: 'hied' is a form of the archaic verb 'hie' which means 'to hasten or hurry'; see The Oxford Book of English Madrigals for text and full score.

[edit] Media

[edit] External links