Trotto / The English Dance

Two early dances joined as one medley. Trotto is an anonymous fourteenth-century Italian instrumental that survives only in a Tuscan manuscript now in the British Library; Renbourn's studio arrangement opens The Lady and the Unicorn (1970), forty seconds long and run straight into Saltarello. The English Dance is a traditional tune he arranged for The Black Balloon (1979), with Tony Roberts on flute and Stuart Gordon on tabors, and the Washington Post singled it out as a thirteenth-century English dance tune.

He kept the pairing in his live sets. Both pieces are on his 1982 concert video with Stefan Grossman, and The English Dance closes a medley on Live in Kyoto 1978 and returns on Wheel of Fortune (1993) with Robin Williamson.

The upload in the hypersongs web is Renbourn filmed live in Italy in 1977, an excerpt from the video Rare Performances 1965-1995, two years before the studio English Dance appeared.