Greensleeves

In fifth grade, my class studied the Middle Ages, which my fantasy-nerd self adored. I have a memory from that time of playing “Greensleeves” on the recorder. This memory is probably not accurate, though, because “Greensleeves” was much too hard for me to play. There are some tricky non-diatonic notes, and the two halves of the tune are connected by a leap of a minor seventh. On the other hand, those same features make it an ongoing object of fascination for me as an adult musician. Before we dig into the harmony, first let’s clear up some of the mythology. Sorry to be a buzzkill, but no, Henry VIII didn’t write the song, and, no, Lady Greensleeves was not a prostitute.

Here’s a plausible-sounding period rendition of the tune, with some anachronistic anime graphics.

Like any centuries-old folk song, there is no single definitive version of “Greensleeves.” Instead, there are endless variants, all of which emerge from an undocumented aural tradition. (From Ian Pittaway’s invaluable blog, I learned that there was a 17th century version called “Greene Sleues and Countenaunce in Countenaunce is Greene Sleues.” That wins.) Most variants of the tune use broadly the same melody, but with one key difference: sometimes they use the boring scale, and sometimes they use the cool scale. I explain what I mean by that below.

The anime video above uses the boring version of the melody. The many lute renditions of “Greensleeves” on YouTube all use the boring version too. (I do appreciate that this guy decided to go full Tolkien for his performance.)

By contrast, the orchestral arrangement of “Greensleeves” that Ralph Vaughan Williams included in his opera Sir John in Love  uses the cool version of the melody.

Folk singers tend to do the boring version. I much prefer James Taylor’s solo guitar arrangement, because he does the cool version, with some sweet jazz and ragtime flourishes thrown in underneath. It’s easy to forget how good a guitarist he is.

Jethro Tull uses the cool version of the melody too, but they put it in a prog-rock odd-time-signature setting that is very… Jethro Tull.

Most Americans grow up learning “Greensleeves” as a Christmas song, which was news to my secular Jewish self. Mahalia Jackson absolutely slays the Christmas version, though sadly her recording uses the boring scale.

Okay. Now it’s time for me to explain what I mean by the “boring” and “cool” scales. The difference comes down to one note, the sixth degree of the minor scale. In the boring version, this note is flatted. In the chart below, I have marked the flat sixth in blue.

In the cool scale, that sixth is raised or natural (same thing in this context.) I’ve marked it here in green:

The proper name of the boring scale is natural (diatonic) minor. It follows the conventions of Western tonal theory and sounds like most minor-key European music of the past several hundred years. Here’s the D natural minor scale:

The cool scale is more properly known as Dorian mode. This scale feels more “exotic”, somehow both more ancient and more modern than natural minor. Dorian mode long predates the major/minor system in European musical history, but it fell into disuse during Bach’s era. In the 20th century, jazz musicians picked it up, and Miles Davis and John Coltrane used it for some of their most iconic tunes. Dorian mode has since become ubiquitous in funk, soul, R&B, and related forms of rock. Here’s D Dorian mode:

If you’re expecting regular (boring) natural minor, Dorian has some surprises for you. The natural sixth (B natural) is a sound that you customarily associate with the major scale, and in a minor-key context, it seems “wrong.” Also, the natural sixth forms a tritone with the flatted third degree of the scale (between B natural and F natural in D Dorian.) Unlike the tritones in Western cadences, the b3^-6^ one in Dorian never resolves. It just hangs there, giving the scale a bluesy edge. No wonder jazz musicians like it.

Dorian mode also throws off your sense of the key center. Each natural minor scale has a close relationship with a major scale. D natural minor is a close relative of F major. When you hear one, you expect to hear the other. However, D Dorian is more closely related to C major than F major, and that creates confusion: is the related major key C or F? Dorian also generates hipper and jazzier chords than natural minor. In measures 18 and 26 of my “Greensleeves” transcription, the B natural forms the sharp fourth against the F chord, giving it a magical F Lydian quality. That is pretty fresh for a tune that’s five hundred years old!

As you look at my charts, you will notice that I also marked a few notes in pink. These come from the enigmatic melodic minor scale. Here’s D melodic minor:

Melodic minor is strange because its “top half” (A, B, C-sharp, D) is indistinguishable from D major. There is a jarring mismatch between the top half of the scale and the bottom. Melodic minor is a very “classical music” sound in this context, but, like Dorian, it has also taken on a life of its own in jazz. That’s a subject for another post.

But so, speaking of jazz: there are many jazz arrangements of “Greensleeves.” Most of them are forgettable Christmas-album fluff, but I do love the way Oscar Peterson plays it. He uses the Dorian version of the melody, and he spikes the chords with enough dissonance to keep you on your toes.

For me, though, the first and last word on “Greensleeves” belongs to John Coltrane’s version (apparently arranged by McCoy Tyner.) Needless to say, the Coltrane quartet uses the Dorian melody, but they do so much more than that. The obvious difference from more conventional arrangements is in the long trance-like modal solos that Coltrane intersperses between statements of the melody. It’s similar to his approach to “My Favorite Things.” Here’s the towering, epic recording from Africa/Brass.

I discovered that this recording sounds incredible lined up with the Funky Drummer break.

There are many other recordings of Coltrane’s group playing “Greensleeves,” and it’s enlightening to compare them. Here’s a version that was recorded during the sessions for the Ballads album. It’s gorgeous, but you can see why it didn’t make the cut; it’s not very ballad-y.

There are also a couple of scorching live versions from the Village Vanguard in 1961.

Here are the Village Vanguard and Ballads versions lined up with the Africa/Brass one so you can compare.

What did Coltrane hear in “Greensleeves” anyway? It seems to occupy the same space as his “exotica” tunes of the period, like “India” or “Olé.” Did Coltrane hear 16th century England as being as exotic as India or Spain? Or was it just another familiar tune that he could use as a convenient launchpad into devotional modal space? By putting an English song on an album called Africa/Brass, was Coltrane making an anticolonial statement? I would be curious to find out.