(Fr.; It. carola).
The principal social dance in France between the 12th and 14th centuries and in England throughout the 14th century. The word is derived from the Greek choraules (denoting a musician accompanying a chorus on a reed pipe), by way of the medieval Latin form corolla or carolla. Alternative derivations from the Latin corolla (‘little garland’) and kyrie eleison are now discounted.
The term first appeared in the early 12th century as a translation of the Latin chorus in certain versions of the Psalter, and it is found in vernacular French texts in the second half of the 12th century. However, it is only in French texts of the 13th and 14th centuries (romances and other narratives, moral and satirical writings) that detailed information about the choreography and music of the carole is found. Because these sources are often in verse, their statements about the characteristics of the dance should be treated with caution. They do, however, enable us to establish fairly confidently the basic choreography of the carole. The dancers (typically men and women alternately, or women only) held hands and formed a circle facing inwards. They stepped to the left, then joined the right foot to the left, repeating this step as the circle moved clockwise. The carole is frequently depicted, albeit inadequately, in miniatures from the 13th to 15th centuries, notably in manuscripts of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun's Roman de la rose (written 1225–78; see illustration).
There is some difficulty in distinguishing the carole from other related dance terms in the sources. The ‘tresche’ was apparently identical to the carole except that it was performed in a straight line: this is supported by the occasional synonymous use of both terms, as well as by the collocation of ‘tresche’ with such phrases as ‘par la maison’ (through the house), ‘parmi les rues’ (through the streets) and ‘le sentele les le bos’ (along the path by the wood). The Italian ‘carola’ (used by Dante, Boccaccio and later writers) is merely a borrowing from the French. The Latin ‘chorea’ signifies in some contexts a dance in a general sense and in others the carole in particular. The interchangeable use of these apparent synonyms may owe more to literary convention than to choreographical reality; indeed, the demands of metre or rhyme may explain the occasional use of ‘tresche’ for a circular dance and ‘carole’ for a linear one. The term ‘carol’ is found in English texts from about 1300; usually it signifies dancing, but in at least three instances between about 1300 and 1350 it clearly refers to singing alone.
Although the term ‘carole’ refers to a dance and not a song form, the sources clearly show that the dancers accompanied themselves with their own singing. The songs are usually designated by the verb chanter or the noun chançon or, less frequently, chançonette or chant, and it is possible to trace several well-defined stages in their formal development. Their texts are found as interpolations and quotations in narratives and other literary works. Renaus et s'amie (quoted in Jean Renart's Guillaume de Dole), possibly the earliest example, suggests that carole songs might originally have had three-line texts; but of the six other carole songs in Renart's romance (which dates from before 1230) four have a six-line text rhyming aAabAb (capitals indicate a repeated line), thus forming a kind of proto-rondeau. In fact the term ‘rondet’ appears as a synonym of cançon de carole in rare instances after about 1250, when the rondeau proper, in the form of a stanza rhyming ABaAaAB, began to emerge; this form (or a variant of it) is occasionally seen up to the end of the 14th century. Some time after 1300, however, a form of virelai may have largely replaced the rondeau, and later in the century examples of caroles with virelai texts are found in works by Machaut and Froissart. The majority of extant lyrics are simply short refrains, however. From the few English references to specific songs (Equitabat Bovo/By the leved wode and Maiden in the mor lay), it is obvious that for most of the 14th century the word ‘carol’ in the context of singing did not indicate any particular form of dance-song, although by the end of the century it had sometimes come to indicate a specific vocal form unconnected with dancing.
The music of about two dozen songs and refrains specifically identified in the sources as carole (or, rarely, tresche) songs can be found in literary or related musical sources from about 1250 to about 1350; this represents the earliest exant corpus of western European dance music. The tunes are all monophonic and, except for a few of the earliest ones (F-Pn fr.844, F-Pn fr.12615), in mensural notation (F-MO H196, F-Pn fr.25566). The recurring pattern of long–breve denotes a characteristic trochaic rhythm, which indicates that the music should be transcribed not in 3/4 time but, following the two-movement step of the dance, in 6/8. Complete songs are consequently seen to consist of 16 bars, but most examples are simply four-bar refrains. Anacrusis and triplet rhythms are frequent. There are no readily identifiable English sources for the music, but the rare surviving dance texts (e.g. Maiden in the mor lay) show a strong duple rhythm in their stress patterns. The music was usually sung by a soloist or a succession of soloists. Instruments were not used in courtly performances, but they had a role in less sophisticated ones, and in late 14th-century versions of earlier texts.
In the second half of the 14th century the carole in both France and England was joined by the hove danse (‘court dance’), a couple-dance accompanied by wind instruments. By the early 15th century, however, both had given way to the basse danse.
S. Wenzel: ‘“The Moor Maiden”: a Contemporary View’, Speculum, xlix (1974), 69–74
M.V. Fowler: Musical Interpolations in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century French Narratives (diss., Yale U., 1979)
R. Mullally: ‘Cançon de Carole’, AcM, lviii (1986), 224–31
R. Mullally: ‘Dance Terminology in the Works of Machaut and Froissart’, Medium Aevium, lix (1990), 248–59
ROBERT MULLALLY