This is the entry from Grove's On-Line....Really it's just a short piece.
The term presumably comes from the verb "to toy (with)" which just means to
play as you might do with a toy..........
An unpretentious piece for lute or virginals, simple in form and light in
texture. More than 50 examples survive in English sources from about 1590 to
about 1660. Named composers of toys include, for keyboard, Bull, Gibbons and
Tomkins (but not Byrd), and, for lute, Dowland and Francis Cutting. Most,
however, are anonymous in the sources. There are over a dozen such toys in
Jane Pickering's Lutebook (1616; GB-Lbl Eg.2046), and of the five pieces
called 'toy' in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, three are anonymous. Another
large keyboard manuscript (US-NYp Drexel 5612; written c1620-60) includes 12
toys, eight of them anonymous.
Many toys have the character of the shorter dances of the period such as the
alman, coranto and jig. Indeed, one keyboard piece by Gibbons (MB, xx,
1962/R, no.34) is called in four different sources Toy, Aire, Maske and
Alman; another, by Bull (MB, xix, 1963, 2/1970, no.97), is variously called
The Duchess of Brunswick's Toy, Coranto and Most sweet and fair. Others are
no more than simple statements of popular tunes: for example, one in Jane
Pickering's book (f.24) is a version of the tune Barafostus' Dream. Almost
all toys are very straightforward in style, with melodies regular in phrase
structure and with a minimum of contrapuntal elaboration. An interesting
exception is Tomkins's A Toy: made at Poole Court (MB, v, 1955, 2/1964,
no.67). The first section consists of an attractive four-bar tune in the
usual style, but the second section breaks off from this and 'toys' in
mock-academic fashion with two rather conventional imitative points. This
perhaps was intended as a gentle parody, like that of Giles Farnaby's His
Humour. In Musick's Monument (1676) Thomas Mace wrote that 'Toys, or Jiggs,
are Light-Squibbish Things, only fit for Fantastical, and Easie-Light-Headed
People; and are of any sort of Time', but by that date they are not found in
sources of keyboard or lute music, and Mace himself wrote none.
Bibliography
J.A. Fuller Maitland and W.B. Squire, eds.: The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book
(London and Leipzig, 1894-9/R, rev. 2/1979-80 by B. Winogron)
D. Lumsden: The Sources of English Lute Music, 1540-1620 (diss., U. of
Cambridge, 1956-7)
Alan Brown
----- Original Message -----
From: "David van Ooijen" <[email protected]>
To: "lutelist Net" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 1:33 PM
Subject: [LUTE] A Toy: meaning?
I found my looking glass, sorely needed for the 'compact' edition of
the OED (nothing compact about that except the size of the letters
..), and am bedazzled with the many meanings of the word 'toy'. Any
meaning in particular that I should think of when talking about the
frivolous, diminutive, caressing lute compositions from the English
Renaissance?
David
--
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David van Ooijen
[email protected]
www.davidvanooijen.nl
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