set (woo83) by making the
second strain of each of the six dances identical. Chopin’s three écossaises
(op.72 no.3) are structurally somewhat exceptional.(Fr.: ‘Scottish’).
A kind of contredanse popular during the first part of the 19th century. It was quick and energetic, and the music was generally in 2/4 time. There were usually four figures danced in progressive combinations by the couples involved; in its later stages waltz-like turns were introduced (see Schottische).
The history of the écossaise is obscure. On the one hand it has been argued that its prototype was among the oldest Scottish dances performed to bagpipe accompaniment, originally of serious character and moderate movement. On the other hand Scottish origins have been denied and it has been described simply as a French conception of what a Scots dance ought to be. The écossaise was familiar in 18th-century France as one of the favourite contredanses adopted by fashionable society. It came to rival even the minuet in popularity, but its character changed, and by the 19th century the quick form had replaced the earlier moderate-paced variety.
As a
ballroom favourite in Vienna it elicited music from such composers as
Beethoven, who wrote a number of écossaises for piano, orchestra and wind band
between 1806 and 1810, and from Schubert, who contributed many sets for piano,
including those in the dances published as opp.18, 33 and 67. Weber dedicated
his set of six écossaises (1802) ‘to the beautiful sex of Hamburg’. Six was the
usual number of dances in a set, each a binary movement of two balanced
eight-bar strains. Beethoven unified his E set (woo83) by making the
second strain of each of the six dances identical. Chopin’s three écossaises
(op.72 no.3) are structurally somewhat exceptional.
The word ‘écossais(e)’ also appears in titles simply to indicate that a piece is supposedly Scottish in origin or in some feature of style (e.g. Glinka’s Thčme écossais varié, based on the Irish tune The Last Rose of Summer, and John Field’s Rondeau écossais). The écossaise in Jeremiah Clarke’s Suite in D, however, simply belongs to the popular post-Restoration genre of the Scotch tune.
MGG2 (W. Litschauer, W. Deutsch [incl. further bibliography])
C.F. Förster: Ecossaisen-Lehre, oder Die Kunst, 16 verschiedene Ecossaisen mit allen dazugehörigen Pas und Touren in kurzer Zeit anständig tanzen zu lernen (Breslau, 1831)
C.J. Sharp and A.P. Oppé: The Dance: an Historical Survey of Dancing in Europe (London and New York, 1924/R)
C. Sachs: Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes (Berlin, 1933; Eng. trans., 1937/R)
MICHAEL TILMOUTH