Note 16 — Introduction

A real defect of this system of cataloguing inheres in the difficulty, sometimes the impossibility, of determining the proper key signatures of gapped tunes. And the difficulty is augmented by the tendency of all the old recorders to regard dorian tunes as natural minor ones (or aeolian). I have reproduced all such doubtful tunes here just as I found them. I have catalogued them, however, (and inserted them here serially according to that catalog arrangement) in an order which is determined by what has seemed to be their proper modal form. Among the songs which are touched by this modal (and hence key-signature) uncertainty are Nos. 20, 21, 22, 37, 51, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 97, 115, 144, 148, 236, 237, 249, and 250.