(It.: ‘dance’, ‘ball’; Fr. bal; Sp. baile; Ger. Ball, Tanz).
(1) A generic term meaning a social gathering for the purpose of or with the emphasis on dancing.
Although the verb ‘ballare’, the noun ‘ballatio’ and related terms can be traced back to classical antiquity (for the complex etymology see Aeppli), the noun ‘ballo’ did not appear until the late Middle Ages. French narrators and chroniclers of the 12th and 13th centuries used it, together with ‘danserie’, to indicate a dance activity in the most general sense. Writers of the Italian Renaissance period from Boccaccio to Castiglione reported ‘gran balli’ for every festive occasion, and this meaning has remained unchanged throughout the history of social dancing at all levels (court, town and country), becoming more specific as time progressed and as distinctions were made according to occasions, places and dress: public dances (balli pubblici, bals publics); court balls (balli di corte, Hof-Ball, Grand bal du Roi) for invited guests of rank; balls at famous opera houses (Budapest, London, Milan, Paris, Vienna); and masked and costume balls.
(2) A choreography of varying elaborateness invented by a professional dancing-master and performed either at a social gathering or on the stage.
From the 13th century a distinction was made between the ballo (or bal) and other types of dance, indicating that the term had a specific choreographic meaning whose precise nature, known to the contemporaries, now eludes scholars (e.g. ‘Danses, baus et caroles veissiez commencier’, Adenès li Rois: li roumans de Berte aus grans piés, ed. A. Scheler, Brussels, 1874, p.12, l.302). Andrea da Tempo (Trattato delle rime volgari, 1332) testified to the existence of balli in the round (‘cantantur in rotunditate choreae sive balli’), while the Italian trescone (a rustic dance) ends with a pantomimic sequence called ‘il ballo’ (Ungarelli, 64ff). All types of entertainers (e.g. jongleurs, Spielleute) contributed to the invention and development of these balli, but it was not until the advent of the professional choreographers of the early 15th century that the ballo assumed a definite shape. On the basis of the extensive information given in the dance instruction books of Domenico da Piacenza, Antonio Cornazano and Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro, the 15th-century court ballo can be defined. It was a dance piece created by a professional artist for a specified number of performers, composed of a sequence of choreographic events (misure) based on the four common musical metres (bassadanza, saltarello, quadernaria and piva; see Saltarello), using all the movimenti naturali (particularly the various forms of salto – leaps, hops, jumps) and the embellishing movimenti accidentali, and ranging from purely ornamental dances to highly dramatic, narrative creations. (The three most explicitly pantomimic choreographies of the known 15th-century repertory are called ballettos; see Balletto, §1.)
Whether they are for couples, or alla fila, or in the round, all balli follow the same structural pattern: they begin with an intrada (usually a saltarello or a piva pattern, occasionally a quadernaria), followed by the ballo proper and ending with either a repeat of the entire dance or a reprise of the intrada during which one set of performers moves out of the centre of the ballroom to make room for the next. (The same sequence, called ‘Intrada’, ‘Figuren’, ‘Retrajecte’, was described by Michael Praetorius, 1618, p.19.) Where musical accompaniment is given, its single melodic line (labelled ‘in canto’ or ‘in canto da sonare’) follows and supports the choreographic configurations in the minutest detail.
During the next century of its history, culminating in the choreographic works of Fabritio Caroso (1581) and Cesare Negri (1602), the main characteristics of the social ballo remained essentially the same: it was a performance piece to be danced by well-trained amateurs; it still consisted of sections, although these had grown larger, lending the ballo as a whole a suite-like dimension. Pavans, pavaniglie and bassas replaced the old bassadanza and quadernaria metres; gagliarde, cascardas, tordiglioni and canaries replaced the piva and saltarello. In the 18th century minuets and contredanses were occasionally called balli (Gennaro Magri, Trattato del ballo nobile, 1779), but by this time the specific connotation of the term had been lost.
Outside the repertory for the courtly ballroom the ballo figured prominently in the theatrical entertainments of the 1600s; intermedi, early operas and even plays all featured at least one extensive dance-number of this name; Monteverdi’s Ballo delle ingrate is centred on a large dance-suite. As the professional performer replaced the courtly amateur, the term ‘ballo’ gradually gave way to ‘balletto’; both had been used interchangeably up to about 1600.
(3) A musical composition inspired by or directly related to the art of dancing.
Until the beginning of the 16th century compositions called ‘ballo’ rarely appeared in purely musical sources. Dance pieces, wherever they did occur, were either given their specific titles (e.g. ‘estampie’, ‘danse royale’, ‘ballata’, ‘moresca’) or text incipits, depending on whether they came from an instrumental or a vocal tradition. Collections of balli began to appear around 1520 and by the middle of the century most used the term in their title: Intabolatura nova di varie sorte de balli da sonare per arpichordi (1551), Bendusi’s Opera nova de balli (1553), Intavolatura de liuto di varie sorte di balli (1554) and Mainerio’s Primo libro de balli (1578). In all these collections the term ‘ballo’ covers a variety of fashionable dances: pavans, galliards, branles, saltarellos and canaries for instrumental performance or, less frequently, ‘da cantare e sonare’ (Bendusi). Balli also occur in more general collections of music such as the organ tablatures of Jakob Paix (1583). Most of these dances are short compositions with evenly balanced phrases, clear rhythmic patterns and comparatively simple harmonies. Frequently sections in contrasting metres were inserted or added at the end, apparently reflecting the suite-like structure of balli in contemporary dance manuals (e.g. those of Caroso and Negri).
Some 17th-century sources contain music for multi-movement balli that were actually presented as court entertainments (Lorenzo Allegri’s Il primo libro delle musiche, 1618, for example, contains eight complete balli performed at the Medici court between 1608 and 1615); the term ‘ballo’ was also often applied to the first dance in a group. Such opening dances were formal introductory numbers followed by a series of dances presented in much the same order as they would have had in the ballroom. Thus Antonio Brunelli’s ‘Balletto a cinque’ (in Scherzi, arie, canzonette, e madrigali, libro terzo, 1616) presents the dances in the order ballo grave, gagliarda, corrente; B.G. Laurenti’s 12 suonate per camera a violino, op.1 (1691) in the order introdutione, ballo, corrente, minuetto; and Cazzati’s Trattenimento per camera (1660) in the order aria, ballo, corrente. In 18th-century instrumental music the term ‘ballo’ was used only occasionally to indicate the dance-like character of a composition.
BrownI
ES (G. Tani)
MGG2 (S. Dahms and J. Sutton; also ‘Suite’, §II, T. Feilen)
PirrottaDO
PraetoriusSM, iii
ReeseMR
SolertiMBD
G. Ungarelli: Le vecchie danze italiane (Rome, 1894/R)
F. Aeppli: Die wichtigsten Ausdrücke für das Tanzen in den romanischen Sprachen (Halle, 1925)
F. Blume: Studien zur Vorgeschichte der Orchestersuite im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1925/R)
W. Merian: Der Tanz in den deutschen Tabulaturbüchern (Leipzig, 1927/R)
C. Sachs: Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes (Berlin, 1933; Eng. trans., 1937/R)
F. Ghisi: ‘Ballet Entertainments in Pitti Palace, Florence, 1608–1625’, MQ, xxxv (1949), 421–36
I. Brainard: Die Choreographie der Hoftänze in Burgund, Frankreich und Italien im 15. Jahrhundert (diss., U. of Göttingen, 1956)
L.H. Moe: Dance Music in Printed Italian Lute Tablatures from 1507 to 1611 (diss., Harvard U., 1956)
H. Spohr: Studien zur italienischen Tanzkomposition um 1600 (diss., U. of Freiburg, 1956)
D. Heartz: Sources and Forms of the French Instrumental Dance in the Sixteenth Century (diss., Harvard U., 1957)
I. Herrmann-Bengen: Tempobezeichnungen, Ursprung: Wandel im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Tutzing, 1959)
O. Kinkeldey: ‘Dance Tunes of the Fifteenth Century’, Instrumental Music, ed. D.G. Hughes (Cambridge, MA, 1959), 3–30, 89–152
K. Jeppesen: ‘Ein altvenetianisches Tanzbuch’, Festschrift Karl Gustav Fellerer zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. H. Hüschen (Regensburg, 1962), 245–63
K. Jeppesen: Preface to: Balli antichi veneziani per cembalo (Copenhagen, 1962)
H. Beck: Die Suite, Mw, xxvi (1964; Eng. trans., 1966)
P. Aldrich: Rhythm in Seventeenth-Century Italian Monody (New York, 1966), esp. 77ff
D. Heartz: ‘A 15th-Century Ballo: Rôti bouilli Joyeux’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. J. LaRue and others (New York, 1966/R), 359–75
I. Brainard: ‘Bassedanse, Bassadanza and Ballo in the 15th Century’, Dance History Research: Perspectives from Related Arts and Disciplines, ed. J.W. Kealiinohamoku (New York, 1970), 64–79
F.A. Gallo: ‘Il “Ballare Lombardo” (circa 1435–1475)’, Studi musicali, viii (1979), 61–84
I. Brainard: The Art of Courtly Dancing in the Early Renaissance (West Newton, MA, 1981)
W.T. Marrocco: Inventory of 15th-Century Bassedanze, Balli & Balletti in Italian Dance Manuals (New York, 1981)
F.A. Gallo: ‘La danza negli spettacoli conviviali del secondo Quattrocento’, Spettacoli conviviali dall’antichità classica alle corti italiane del ’400: Viterbo 1982, 261–7
J.S. Applegate: ‘English Cavalier Dance-Songs: Henry Lawes and Robert Herrick’, Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars (1983), 71–83
I. Brainard: ‘The Art of Courtly Dancing in Transition: Nürnberg, Germ. Nat.Mus.MS 8842, a Hitherto Unknown German Dance Source’, Cross-roads of Medieval Civilization: the City of Regensburg and its Intellectual Milieu, ed. E.E. DuBruck and K.H. Goller (Detroit, 1984), 61–79
B. Sparti: ‘Music and Choreography in the Reconstruction of 15th-Century Balli: Another Look at Domenico's Verçepe’, Fifteenth-Century Studies, x (1984), 177–94
R. Hudson: The Allemande, the Balletto, and the Tanz (Cambridge, MA, 1986)
P. Jones: ‘Spectacle in Milan: Cesare Negri's Torch Dances’, EMc, xiv (1986), 182–96
I. Brainard: ‘Pattern, Imagery and Drama in the Choreographic Work of Domenico da Piacenza’, Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro e la danza nelle corti italiane del XV secolo: Pesaro 1987, ed. M. Padovan (Pisa, 1990), 85–96
A. Pontremoli and P. La Rocca: Il ballare lombardo: teoria e prassi coreutica nella festa di corte del XV secolo (Milan, 1987)
A. Uguccioni: ‘La danza nella pittura di cassone’, Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro e la danza nelle corti italiane del XV secolo: Pesaro 1987, ed. M. Padovan (Pisa, 1990), 235–50
L.M. Brooks: The Dances of the Processions of Seville in Spain’s Golden Age (Kassel, 1988)
P. Jones: The Relation between Music and Dance in Cesare Negri’s ‘Le Gratie d’Amore’ (1602) (diss., U. of London, 1989)
V. Daniels and E. Dombois: ‘Die Temporelationen im Ballo des Quattrocento’, Basler Jb für historische Musikpraxis 1990, 181–247
A. Francalanci: ‘The “Copia di Mo Giorgio e del Giudeo di ballare basse danze e balletti” as found in the New York Public Library’, ibid., 87–179
Y. Kendall: ‘Rhythm, Meter and Tactus in 16th-Century Italian Court Dance: Reconstruction from a Theoretical Base’, Dance Research, viii (1990), 3–27
V. Daniels: ‘Tempo Relationships within the Italian balli of the XVth Century’, The Marriage of Music & Dance: London 1991 [13 unnumbered pages]
I. Gatiss: ‘Realizing the Music in the 15th-Century Italian Dance Manuals’, ibid. [9 unnumbered pages]
J. Sutton: ‘Musical Forms and Dance Forms in the Dance Manuals of Sixteenth-Century Italy: Plato and the Varieties of Variation’, ibid. [25 unnumbered pages]
M. Esses: Dance and Instrumental ‘Diferencias’ in Spain During the 17th and Early 18th Centuries, i, History and Background, Music and Dance (Stuyvesant, NY, 1992)
N. Monahin: ‘Leaping Nuns? Social Satire in a Fifteenth-Century Court Dance’, Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars (1993), 171–9
B. Sparti: ‘Antiquity as Inspiration in the Renaissance of Dance: the Classical Connection and Fifteenth-Century Italian Dance’, Dance Chronicle, xvi (1993), 373–90
D.R. Wilson: ‘“Finita: a larifaccino unaltra uolta dachapo”’, Historical Dance, iii (1993), 21–6
B. Sparti: Introduction to Ballo della Gagliarda: Lutio Compasso (1560) (Freiburg, 1995)
B. Sparti: ‘Rûti Bouilli: Take Two “El Gioioso Fiorito”’, Studi Musicali, xiv (1995), 231–61
For choreographic information see also Domenico da Piacenza; Antonio Cornazano; Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro; Fabritio Caroso; and cesare Negri.
INGRID BRAINARD