Dance.

Dance, like all the arts, finds expression in an apparently infinite range of styles, forms and techniques: it may satisfy the simplest inner needs for emotional release through motor activity, as in children’s singing-games, or the most complex demands of the creative artist on the professional stage; it may be profoundly subjective or philosophical, or purely decorative or virtuoso; it ranges from the ecstatically Dionysiac to the calmly Apollonian, the hypnotic to the cerebral, the totally pantomimic to the totally abstract, the completely functional – that is, serving a social or ritual purpose – to art for art’s sake. Like music, dance may be performed either in solitary privacy, or by groups for their own satisfaction, or in a concert or theatrical setting. Thus its pleasures may be gained either by direct participation or vicariously. As a theatrical art it goes hand in hand with costume and scenery, music and poetry. As such, it is frequently part of religious rites or put to the service of the state. These associations are not unusual for any art. What seems to be unique to dance, however, is that it appears never to stand alone, but always to be accompanied by musical sound, at however simple a level. For the ancient Greeks, in fact, music, dance and poetry were represented by the single term mousikē (art of the Muses).

JULIA SUTTON (1, 4(i)), E. KERR BORTHWICK (2), INGRID BRAINARD (3), REBECCA HARRIS-WARRICK (4(ii), 5), ANDREW LAMB (with HELEN THOMAS) (6–7)

Dance

1. Introduction.

Western dance music, with which this article is concerned (for folk traditions and non-Western dance, see Ethnochoreology; see also the entries on the countries concerned), comprises two major divisions: music for dancing proper, such as a waltz or a Stravinsky ballet, and dance-inspired music, as heard in Bach suites, symphonic minuets or Chopin mazurkas. Both categories range from musical simplicity to complexity, and within each there are masterpieces by some of the finest composers. With regard to dance music proper, it is essential that musicians understand the character, tempo, rhythmic needs and physical problems of the dances in order to perform the music. As for idealized dance music, recent research into the dances of the 15th to 18th centuries, for example, has aided musicians immeasurably in their attempts to transmute dance-like qualities into the music and to explore the problems of tempo, articulation, phrasing and character it presents. (For details of the choreography and repertory for specific dances, and for illustrations, see the entries on the dances concerned. For theatrical dance of the 18th to 20th centuries see Ballet.)

For lack of concrete evidence, the prehistories of music and dance are more heavily shrouded in mystery than those of the other arts. Tales of their origins, no matter how specific they appear to be, lack the corroboration that could prove them true. While known human migrations may logically be assumed to have included dance, any hypothesis in this area must be viewed with an awareness of the tendencies of conquerors to absorb artistic influences from the conquered. Even in recorded history, the problems of authenticating Western dance history are more severe than they are for Western music, because not even a rudimentary notation existed before the 15th century, and the notation systems in use since then rely on the reader’s considerable knowledge and are essentially aides-mémoires. Most of these systems are essentially shorthands in which one symbol stands for a number of movements occurring either simultaneously or consecutively. Written descriptions of these movements in dance manuals, which also first appeared in the 15th century and are certainly the best sources on dance of the past, are often ambiguous. Furthermore, both in the notations and in the manuals, exact correlations of dance with music are often elusive. Today there are still problems, for the advent of sound film, valuable as it is, and the development of accurate and complete dance notations (for example, Labanotation) have not yet resulted in a record of dance remotely comparable in extent to current musical recordings and scores. It is, therefore, still the rule rather than the exception for dances to be revived from memory, a method that is notoriously fallible. It goes without saying that non-Western dance, taught largely by rote, presents the same problems.

To flesh out the history of dance music much other evidence must be examined. Early iconographic sources tell of dance and its musical accompaniments quite clearly (Greek vases are a rich source, for example). Written records (memoirs, letters, plays, poems, tales and travellers’ accounts) document the place and functions of dance in a society, of desirable or undesirable attributes in dancing, and of instrumental and vocal accompaniments. The more direct evidence supplied by dance music and poetry intended for dancing reveals something of its metre and character. But none of these sources either provides movement sequences, or describes how music and dance were correlated, or gives clear tempo indications. Concrete modern examples may demonstrate the possibilities for movement inherent in the human body, and the many ways these may relate to music, but they must remain largely hypothetical when dealing with the past, even when there may be a basis for thinking that certain ancient traditions have been maintained through reverential rote teaching. While the utmost caution must be observed, then, in using all types of evidence, and while much primary research remains to be done, some facts of dance history are indeed certain, and there is a considerable body of information on the relationships between music and dance.

Music for dance may be supplied entirely by the dancer by clapping, stamping, snapping the fingers, slapping the body or singing. These musical means may be extended by wearing bells, shells, Lederhosen or boots, by striking sticks, swords or shields, or by playing castanets, finger cymbals, tambourines or drums hung on the body. Except for the voice, these devices are largely percussive in nature, providing basic metrical and rhythmic accompaniments and accents for the dancer. Dance music may also be supplied by non-dancing singers or instrumentalists, or both. Here too there is great variety, for the accompaniment may use the resources listed above, may be assigned to one or many, to amateurs or to professionals; it may be improvised on a basic pattern or composed, and may extend from the pure ‘mouth music’ of nonsense syllables to the sophisticated musical resources of a symphonic ensemble or electronic tape. The manner of accompaniment varies widely in other respects as well. The ‘accompanist’ may, in fact, direct the dances, as in the case of the 18th-century dancing-master with his pochette violin; alternatively he or she may compete with the dancer, as in some of the German Zwiefacher which change metre rapidly in a guessing-game between dancers and musicians, or may both follow and lead, as when a musician pauses for a dancer’s leap before resuming command of the beat. In short, the union between musician and dancer is achieved through multiple means.

The term ‘dance music’ usually implies strong pulses and rhythmic patterns that are organized into repeated metric groupings synchronizing exactly with those of the dance. Rhythmic accents and phrase lengths normally coincide with those of dance also, as does the mood of the music. It should be pointed out, however, that significant exceptions to these norms can easily be found which result in dance and music relating to each other in a contrapuntal manner (as in the hemiola minuet step, which is not always duplicated in the music, or as in some Balkan dances in which dance phrase and musical phrase do not coincide until the final cadence). Such elements as form, melody, harmony and texture can perhaps be more independent of the dance, as may be illustrated by 18th-century binary dances in which the form, the melodic material and the tonic–dominant–tonic harmonic movement are not mirrored by the footwork or dance paths, although each repetition of the music does encompass each dance figure. Nevertheless, it is entirely possible for musical form and dance form to coincide more closely, or for a choreographer to duplicate many other aspects of a pre-existing musical work, or, on the other hand, for music to be composed to mimic and support totally the structure of a pre-existing choreography. The multiplicity suggested here is balanced, however, by one seemingly immutable constant: the association of slow tempo with either a solemn or a tragic mood and of fast tempo with gaiety or dramatic climax. The corollary to this, that excitement is engendered by a speeding up of the basic pulse, seems to be found in all Western dance.

Dance

2. Western antiquity.

In ancient Greece dancing played a prominent role both in private life and in public ceremonial and ritual. Group dancing, more often than not by members of the same sex, was commonest, but solo dancing, usually of an expressive or blatantly imitative character, developed particularly in connection with the stage, though also at private entertainments. The most striking difference from modern Western society is the absence of evidence for dancing in pairs of opposite sexes. The Greeks regarded the whole body as being involved in the movements of the dance, especially arms and hands (for which the term cheironomia is frequently found), but even head and eyes. Literary evidence for the dance is supplemented by that of art, especially vase painting, but the latter must be used with caution because of artistic conventions in the portrayal of action.

The earliest references in Homer are to dancing of youths and maidens at country festivals and weddings, or as entertainment in royal palaces. When Odysseus (Odyssey, viii, 206ff) is entertained by the Phaeacians, who boast their pre-eminence in dancing, he witnesses a dance in which athletic movements and ball-throwing are part of the performance. The mention (Iliad, xvi, 183) of maidens dancing in the choir of Artemis shows that the cults of Olympian divinities then, as in later classical Greece, featured song and dance rituals which became stereotyped in various poetic genres (e.g. the partheneia, maiden songs, composed by Alcman, Pindar and others for performance in the appropriate shrine, hymeneals, epithalamia, paeans, dithyrambs etc.). The pannuchis (‘all-night’ festival) was a common setting, and deities such as Dionysus, Apollo, Artemis and (in Sparta) the semi-divine Helen were invoked as patrons of the choirs. The word thiasos was used of the company of votaries of a particular god, and such groups were widespread in mainland Greece and islands like Delos, Lesbos and Crete.

It was commonly held by the Greeks themselves that Crete had once made an important contribution to the development, even ‘invention’, of dancing, and archaeological evidence confirms that dancing in groups or circles played some part in Minoan religious ceremonies and entertainments, the executants sometimes ornately dressed, or engaged in athletic tumbling and somersaulting for which Cretans were famed and which the Greeks regarded as part of the dance. The agility in battle of the Cretan Meriones, one of the minor Achaean heroes of the Iliad, is attributed to his dancing skill, and the description of battle as ‘the dance of Ares’ becomes a traditional poetic motif. Among prominent Cretan myths is the legend that the infant Zeus was protected at birth by the beating of feet and clashing of weapons by the Curetes, which drowned his cries. (Some scholars would associate this with a well-established primitive belief in the magical ‘apotropaic’ powers of dancing.) Armed dances continued to be popular both in Dorian Sparta, where disciplined dance forms recalling tactical manoeuvres were prominent in the education of young men and were thought to contribute to the martial excellence of classical Sparta, and in Athens, where at the panathenaic festival the so-called Pyrrhic dance, sometimes said to have been invented by Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus), son of Achilles, was performed in honour of Athena by youths naked except for helmet, shield and spear, and consisted of a traditional series of movements and gestures mimicking offensive and defensive postures of combat (fig.1). References in Aristophanes, Demosthenes and others show that the dancing class, attended by youths according to their local tribe, was an important feature of education and social life.

Another dance said to be of Cretan origin was the hyporchēma, a lively dance of a pantomimic nature with instrumental accompaniment. This was occasionally danced at emotional moments in the lyrical passages of Attic tragedy, in which artistic choreography was greatly developed. The chorus punctuated the spoken dialogue of the play with songs and dances, accompanied by music of the double aulos, which varied in mood and metre according to the unfolding of the plot. The origins of tragedy are controversial, but one tradition, held perhaps erroneously by Aristotle, saw it as an extension or development of the dithyramb, originally sung and danced spontaneously in honour of Dionysus, god of fertility and wine. Certainly the association of Dionysus with both these poetic genres remained traditional, but in Athens the dithyramb itself continued to develop, and in the 5th century was a circular dance of 50 participants, and a prominent element in competitions between the tribes at Dionysiac and other city festivals. The tragic chorus numbered first 12, then 15, and seems to have danced formally in rectangular patterns in the so-called stasima, or choral odes, performed in the orchēstra (‘dancing-place’), where it remained throughout the play, from its first entrance (parodos) until its exit (exodos) to a marching anapaestic rhythm. The dances of Phrynichus and Aeschylus, the earliest notable tragedians (who traditionally wrote their own music and arranged their own choreography), were much admired. Sophocles, said to have been an elegant dancer, is known to have written a handbook ‘On the chorus’, which unfortunately has not survived. In his plays and those of Euripides the actors occasionally join with the chorus in lyrical exchanges, but seem not to have been called on to engage in the dancing.

Performed along with the tragedies were ‘satyr plays’, with the chorus masquerading as attendants of Pan or Silenus in grotesque caricatures of the tragic dances, and there is evidence of indecent dances such as the sikinnis and kordax. (Much terminology of specific dances is found in compendious works of later antiquity, particularly the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus, e.g. books i and xiv, and the lexicon of Pollux, iv, 99ff.) The kordax was associated also with Attic comedy, and many plays of Aristophanes end with scenes of violent revelry where the chorus and actors indulge in the energetic, whirling dances appropriate to the kōmos (revel). Another striking feature of his plays is the dressing of the chorus as animals, birds or insects, which may hark back to popular charades in which participants dressed in animal costume and imitated animal behaviour (fig.2). That such dressing up could also be used more seriously in ritual contexts is shown by another tradition of classical Athens, that of young girls at puberty dressing as bears and dancing in honour of Artemis at the neighbouring township of Brauron.

While dancing at festivals and religious rituals tended to produce stereotyped patterns, there was also the uninhibited ecstatic dancing, particularly in honour of Dionysus, but also of divinities from the East such as the Asiatic mother goddess (sometimes called Cybele) and various fertility demons (Attis, Sabazius etc.), whose cults infiltrated Greece. The dancing associated with these rites resembled the outbursts of dancing mania that have periodically occurred in Europe and given concern to civic authority by the social disorder they aroused. Women were especially prone to such effects, and there is much literature (notably Euripides’ Bacchae) about maenadism (called after the female votaries of Dionysus), while in art these dances are characterized by poses showing the tossing head, bulging throat and startled eyes of the devotee in a ‘possessed’ state. Much too is said of corybantism, called after the male devotees of Asiatic cults, whose excited dancing apparently induced hallucinatory states.

The contrast between such emotional and orgiastic dancing and the traditional use of the dance in education, and to some degree as a form of gymnastics, impelled Plato (in the Republic, and in more detail in the Laws) to recommend strict state control over forms of dancing permitted to free Hellenic citizens, who should concentrate on stately dances such as the emmeleia which imparted grace to body and soul alike, or on warlike dances in the Dorian tradition, allowing the more licentious dances to be performed, if at all, for entertainment by slaves and foreigners. (There are descriptions in Xenophon’s Symposium of the sort of dances that might be provided by professional entertainers and enjoyed at Athenian dinner parties, where hetaerae might also be engaged to dance for the company; fig.3.) Elsewhere Socrates himself is quoted as saying that ‘those who are best at dancing are also best at war’, alluding of course to such dances as the Pyrrhic described above. Plato’s views on music and dancing were much influenced (via Socrates) by Pericles’ friend and adviser Damon, the musician and educationist, who held firm beliefs in the effect of melody and rhythm on ‘soul’ and character; and, also, much subsequent literature on dancing, by for example Plutarch, Lucian and Libanius (the latter two being authors of extant treatises ‘On the dance’), and by musical writers such as Aristides Quintilianus, concentrates on the ethical influences of dance rhythms.

In the Greco-Roman world also, literary sources include much censorious condemnation of dancing (Cicero, Seneca) or devastating satire (Juvenal) against what was now mostly a professional art; but needless to say the dances of prostitutes in the taverns were popular with the masses, to say nothing of the more artistic theatrical displays of Greek dancers like the famous Bathyllus and Pylades. The real virtuosos were the pantomimi, who interpreted a series of different roles during the spectacular choreography of mythical scenes, and attracted public lionization, large incomes and the favour of the imperial courts. The theatrical excesses of the reign of Nero, and his patronage of dancing among the other arts, were notorious; and indeed later a dancer, the celebrated Theodora, by her marriage to Justinian, actually became Empress of Rome. Inevitably the unremitting censure of moralists, pagan and Christian, directed against salacious women and effeminate men dancers, became a literary commonplace, and a far cry from the art idealized by the classical Greeks as the god-given gift of Apollo, Terpsichore and her sister Muses, and even, Lucian (De saltatione) declared, as the mortal imitation of the concord and rhythm manifested in the dance of the stars.

Dance

3. Middle Ages and early Renaissance.

It would of course be absurd to talk about the dance history of the Middle Ages as if there had been no changes of style, no development of technique, no evolution of philosophical attitude and aesthetic approach towards the art of dancing during the nearly 1000 years of medieval cultural history. However, only the roughest subdivision of the whole period is possible. The reason is the absence of primary dance sources before the great instruction manuals of the 15th century. Up to about 1420, the year given on the first page of the Domenico treatise, knowledge of medieval dance must be gathered from literary references, from musical evidence and from iconographic representation. There is, happily, an abundance of these. However until the emergence of the medieval instruction book, or of eyewitness accounts such as those in the flyleaves of Nancy (1445), Cervera (c1496) and Salisbury (1497), or of the pratica collections of Foligno (mid-15th century), the Il Papa manuscript (early 16th century) and the Nuremberg manuscript (1517), information is limited to the mere mentioning of names and technical terms at worst and to the delineation of shapes at best.

(i) The Middle Ages.

(ii) The early Renaissance.

Dance, §3: Middle Ages and early Renaissance

(i) The Middle Ages.

The key words saltare (saltatio), ballare (ballatio, bal, ballo) and choreare (choreatio, chorea, choreas ducere), as they were used by the church Fathers in either a critical or an approving sense, allow some admittedly rough conclusions about dance in the early Middle Ages. The classical Latin definition of saltatio was ‘pantomime’, that is, representative dance in the hands of professional performers. This became ‘to jump’ or ‘to leap’ and, as the technical term entered into the movement repertory of social dancing, merged with the corresponding Germanic ‘springen’ and ‘hüpfen’ to form the frequently mentioned Hupfauff, Springdantz and saltarello types of the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance.

The most general of the medieval terms is ballatio (from Greek ballein) which is used in the widest understanding of dance (ballator, ballatrix: ‘dancer’) and dance festivity (bal, bau; see Ballo), as well as in juxtaposition to chorea. The latter, a classical term that eventually became identified with choraula–carola–carole, is used exclusively for group dances in line or circle patterns, while ballatio seems to imply other formations, such as the processional type of dance. Slightly overlapping in meaning with saltare is the Roman word ‘tripudiare’ (tripudium); originally the technical term for the Salian armed and victory dances (see Aeppli for etymological details and quotations), it was subsequently applied to other forms of formal dances with or without weapons and to religious dances like the two-voice Stella splendens of the 14th-century Spanish Llibre vermell which is accompanied by the remark ‘Sequitur alia cantilena … ad tripudium rotundum’ (AnM, x, 72–3), and it finally acquired the general meaning of dance, the ‘ars tripudii’ of the Guglielmo treatises of the mid-15th century. The last of the general dance terms, danzare (dancier, danser, tantzen, with their nouns), did not enter the vocabulary until the late Middle Ages. Again the meanings are varied and ambiguous: besides the most general meaning, of any kind of choreutic activity, it is most often used for a pairing of danser or tanzen with another, contrasting term: ‘Quaroler et dansser et mener bonne vie’ (Chevalier au cygne; see Godefroy, i, 786), ‘dancent et balent et querolent’ (Renart; ibid., 787), ‘tanzen unde reien’ (Stamheimer; see Sachs, Eng. trans., 269) and so on.

As time progressed, the first proper names for dances began to appear. Carole and espringale, reien and hovetantz, estampie, stantipes and saltarello, trotto and tresche are all part of the repertory from the 12th century on. German peasants danced firlefanz and hoppaldei, rìdewanz and gofenanz (Böhme), their Italian counterparts the piva; the cazzole was performed at Easter in Sens Cathedral in the 13th century (Gougaud, 232).

Of all these only the carole emerges from the writings of medieval poets as a definite choreographic shape: it was the line dance par excellence, ancestor of the farandole and the branle, with the participants holding hands; it could have figures during its course (the ‘bridge’ appears frequently in iconographic representations: see the Lorenzetti fresco of the Siena Palazzo Pubblico, fig.4); it could be stretched out over a great space (‘Tel carole ne fu pas veue/pres d’une quart dure d’une lieue’: Phelipe de Remi, La manekine; see Sachs, op. cit., 271) or contracted into a closed circle; it could be quietly stepped or performed with lively hops and jumps. When caroles or reyhen were sung, all participants would join in, either in strophic songs or responding to the intonation of a leader, who could be either a jongleur or one of the festive company. Rondeaux, virelais and ballades were most frequently used for this purpose, but whether the choreography reflected in any degree the structural complexities of these vocal forms there is no way of knowing.

While the long or circular carole is documented for all levels of medieval society, the more formal danse (danza, tantz, hovetantz) for couples or groups of three was, at least initially, the particular property of the nobility. The key words for the dance-technical execution are ‘to walk’ (Middle High Ger. gên), ‘to step’, ‘to slide’, ‘to glide’ (Middle High Ger. slîfen); the embellishing schwantzen (‘to strut’; literally, ‘to wag the tail’) is probably the medieval ancestor of the 15th-century campeggiare (Cornazano) and the pavoneggiare of the 16th century (Caroso, Negri), just as these elegant processional dances themselves stand at the beginning of an uninterrupted series which leads on to the classical Burgundian basse danse and the more elaborate Italian bassadanza of the 15th century, and then to the pavan of the high Renaissance (fig.5).

Medieval writers occasionally made a distinction between danse and bal (or bau: ‘Danses, baus et caroles veissiez commencier’: Berte; see Godefroy, i, 559). It is tempting to see in this the earliest trace of the characteristic division of the court dances of the 15th century into bassadanzas and balli, the former either purely processional or restrainedly ornamental, the latter predominantly expressive and dramatic, but there is simply not enough evidence from the Middle Ages to prove or to disprove this hypothesis.

The writings of medieval authors are full of references to the musical instruments that provided the accompaniment for dances. Tambourin, drums and bells, pipe and tabor, frestels, lutes, psalterion, gìgen (fiddles), organetto, bagpipes, shawms and trumpets – in short, the entire palette of instrumental colours, either singly or in a variety of combinations, could be and was used to accompany dancing. Estampie and danse royale, stantipes, ductia and nota, saltarello and rotta, well documented in medieval musical practice (GB-Ob Douce 139, F-Pn fr.844, GB-Lbl Add.29987) and theory (Johannes de Grocheo, c1300), have been subjected to much scrutiny and musicological discussion. From all this the forms of the instrumental dances emerge clearly enough: short, repeated sections (puncta) with ouvert and clos endings are the rule; their number can vary from three to seven. There are some pairings of saltarello and rotta which are early examples of the Tanz–Nachtanz idea. On the basis of Johannes de Grocheo’s writings the relative speed for the estampie has been established as fairly sedate (Wagenaar-Nolthenius) while the ductia, ‘cum recta percussione’, seems to have been quite fast, ‘levis et velox’. Occasional attempts have been made (by Sachs, Aubry, Reese) to connect the known repertory of medieval choreographies with the repertory of instrumental dance music, but in the present writer’s opinion all of these attempts have failed. It is simply not known what dance went with what music: a medieval dancer could caroler, danser or baller to a saltarello just as conveniently as to a ductia, a nota, a rotta or an estampie.

While the raucous and joyous dances of the lower classes, like the folkdances of the present, seem to have been quite clearly defined as to their regional provenance and manner of execution (see Böhme, Sachs), the refined style of dancing of the medieval knights and their ladies amounted to a language that was spoken everywhere. One reason for this was that the teaching of dance and the playing of music apparently lay in the same hands. Choreographies, like epic tales and songs, were carried from castle to castle by professional entertainers; jongleurs, Spielleute and Jewish letzim sang and played, tumbled and mimed and, when called on to do so, led the dances which concluded the day’s activities. The annual jongleur ‘schools’ provided welcome opportunities for exchanging ideas on the current trends of fashionable entertainment, and from these centres ideas and materials were carried back to princely residences everywhere. When the specialist in the teaching of dance began to separate himself from the general entertainer is not known; the first known name is Rabbi Hacén ben Salomo, who in 1313 taught a religious dance to members of the congregation of St Bartholomew at Tauste (Spain; see Sachs). No-one else is mentioned during the 14th century, although the writings of Dante and Boccaccio, poems like Les echecs amoureux and Le roman de la rose, epic tales, chronicles and, as always, the critical voices raised by church and civil authorities, frescoes and marginal illustrations give ample proof of the continuous development of the art of dancing in this highly sophisticated historical period.

From time to time great waves of mass hysteria swept the lands in which the fear of death, a subject so central to medieval thought, expressed itself in the eruption of a dance-madness. From the 11th century to the 15th, according to the chronicles (see Sachs, Böhme), people were prone to this affliction which made them dance and leap, turn and twirl in an ever-increasing frenzy that could last for hours and days and was likely to end in complete exhaustion if not in death (fig.6). Depending on the place – often a church or a churchyard (see Gougaud) – or the day of their outbreak, these ecstatic dances were called danse macabre, ‘St John’s dance’ or ‘St Vitus’s dance’; the area along the Rhine was particularly prone to the disease, but there are reports from other parts of central Europe as well. Italy during the same period knew a similar kind of dance-madness: the strenuous motions of the tarantella were said to be the only cure for the deep depression caused by the poisonous bite of the Lycosa tarantula spider; but when the dancing began it irresistibly drew hundreds of spectators into its mad revolutions and thus had the same effect as the chorea major of the north.

Dance, §3: Middle Ages and early Renaissance

(ii) The early Renaissance.

The culmination of the old tradition and the beginning of an entirely new phase of dance history came in the first half of the 15th century. The dance, which previously had not been much more than a loosely organized, companionable and entertaining, orally transmitted choreographic activity, seems to have become an art practically overnight, taught and written about by experts who not only compiled the fashionable repertory and developed methods of notation but also brought to their subject a philosophical attitude and aesthetic insights which went far beyond the merely pragmatic. While the traditional anonymity still dominated in the north (no author’s or compiler’s name is given with either the splendid Brussels basse danse manuscript or the Michel de Toulouse print L’art et instruction de bien dancer), the Italian dancing-master was a respected member of his home court, intimately involved with the private life and the public image of his prince, a man of status, well paid and much sought-after, teacher, performer, choreographer, writer and master of ceremonies all in one.

The line of illustrious names begins with Domenico da Piacenza (c1390–c1470), dancing-master of the Este family, saltatorum princeps and re dell’arte, founder of the first Lombard school of dancing and teacher of Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro (b c1425), and Antonio Cornazano (c1430–84). Lorenzo Lavagnolo, Giuseppe Ebreo, Giovanni Martino, Magistro Filippo and Giorgio were active in the second half of the 15th century; ‘Il Papa’ left a collection of dances from the early 16th century, thereby providing one of a handful of choreographic documents that connect the great 15th-century treatises with those of the late 16th century.

All the instruction manuals of the 15th century, whether anonymous or not, are structured in the same manner: the first half is devoted to the theory of dancing, to a description of steps and movements and their relationship to the accompanying music, and to style, ballroom manners (e.g. the delightful passage dealing with a young lady’s proper behaviour in the Guglielmo treatises), dress and the like; in the second half the choreographies are given, many with their music, many without.

For the Franco-Flemish sources of the north the repertory consists almost exclusively of the basse danse, the stately, quietly gliding processional dance that enjoyed the favour of court and town well into the 16th century. Only five steps are used and these, having been explained in the introduction, are written in tablature: R stands for révérence, b for branle, ss for two single steps, d for a double step, r for reprise (sometimes replaced by c for congé). These steps are combined into mesures of different lengths (the system is full of ambiguities: see Sachs, 1933, Brainard, 1956, Heartz, 1958–63, for three different interpretations), a deceptively simple method of organization which allows for an amazing degree of expressiveness within so limited a repertory of movements. In the two main sources, the Brussels manuscript and the Michel de Toulouse print, each basse danse is given with its own tune, notated in tenor fashion in uniform blackened breves, each of which accommodates one step of the tablature (four melodies at the end of the manuscript are mensurally notated; three of these have concordances in Michel de Toulouse). The rhythmic subdivision of the melodies lay in the hands of the musicians, who would add improvised upper voices to the tenor and create the sonorities that the occasion called for, using les instruments haults for outdoor dancing and particularly splendid festivities, les instruments bas for indoors and intimate gatherings (see Les echecs amoureux: Abert, 1904–5).

Contemporary with the northern basse danse but stylistically much younger was the Italian bassadanza (for details see Brainard, 1970, 70ff). The Italian masters delighted in the invention of new shapes; figures alternate with processional passages, linear choreographies (alla fila) with others for couples or groups of three; an entire, newly developed range of dance-technical possibilities came into play. The result is that many of the bassadanzas of the early Renaissance look and feel exactly like their counterparts, the balli and ballettos by Domenico, Guglielmo and others. One major distinction lies in the use of the accompanying music: while each ballo, when it has music at all, has a tune of its own, carefully constructed to accommodate and underline the various phases of the choreographic plan, the bassadanzas have fully written-out step sequences only. Only Cornazano listed three ‘tenori da bassedance et saltarelli gli megliori et piu usitati di gli altri’ (f.3) of different lengths, the implication being that any tune of the right dimensions could be used to accompany a bassadanza. Whether the pairing of bassadanza and saltarello (Fr. pas de breban; Sp. alta danza), in spite of Cornazano’s statement that ‘detro ad ella se fa sempre lui’ (f.10), was quite as automatic a process as Sachs would claim is hard to say. Although combinations of a slow, stepping dance with a lively, jumping dance are present in the literature and the music from the Middle Ages (tantz-hoppaldei, baixa et alta) to the pavane–tourdion and pavane–gaillarde pairs of the 16th century, the Italian dancing-masters only rarely mentioned this sequence (for three pratica examples see Otto bassedanze nos.2, 5 and 8). On the other hand there are reports of festivities from Italy (e.g. La festa del paradiso) as well as from England, where one basse danse was followed by several others; only at the end of such a group did the dancing become so lively that a princely performer ‘perceiving him selfe to be accombred with his Clothes sodainly cast of his gowne and daunced in his Jackett’ (during the wedding celebrations of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon, 1501; see Orgel, 22–3).

While the princes in private could behave much as they chose and dance whatever they liked, their code of conduct ordained that when dancing ‘inpresentia di molti, e in loco pieno di populo’ a certain dignity had to be observed, ‘temperata però con leggiadra e aerosa dolcezza di movimenti’ (Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, ii, 11); it was not suitable that a gentleman should display too much technical brilliance, ‘prestezze de piedi e duplicati rebattimenti’, which would make him look like a paid entertainer, nor was it advisable that he join in moresche and brandi (branles) unless he were well disguised (Castiglione). These remarks, coming as they do after the turn of the century, contradict to some extent the gist of the teachings of Domenico, Cornazano and Guglielmo Ebreo, whose goal was the training of the ballarino perfetto who could compete with ease and grace with the best of professional dancers at his court, just as the entire repertory of bassadanzas and intricate balli was created for ‘sale signorile’ and for ‘dignissime madonne et non plebeie’ (Cornazano).

Besides the two main types, the private repertory of court dances included the calata, trotto, striana, alvadança (possibly altadanza; see Prudenzani, Saporetto) and roegarze (Castiglione). The chiarentana (chiarenzana) was mentioned by Prudenzani in the context of chamber dances. Guglielmo (f.66v) and Giorgio (p.54) gave a fully choreographed balletto by that name, which is closer to an English longways than any other dance from the 15th century; it was also performed, side by side with torch dances, at princely weddings and other more public gala events (see Moe, 1956, p.62).

Soon after 1500 the first traces of a new repertory began to appear. The branle became visible both in the musical sources (Petrucci, Attaingnant, A. de Lalaing) and in the cheerful dance instruction book Ad suos compagnones studiantes by Antonius de Arena (?1519 and later edns.). It was the characteristic dance of the common people (see Branle, fig.1), gay, uncomplicated, frivolous at times; ‘and all those who take part in the dance acquit themselves as best they can, each according to his age, disposition and agility’ (Arbeau, Orchésographie, 1588, trans. Beaumont, 113). Tordiones, gallarda, l’antigailla gaya and pavana were all mentioned in the university dancing-master’s book, although he did not yet feel altogether secure with these novelties (‘Hic tibi pavanas nolo describere dansas / Rarenter dansat iste paysus eas’, p.79), and preferred to confine himself to the traditional basse danse. Not until 1560, when Lutio Compasso’s Ballo della gagliarda was published in Florence, was the galliard’s prominence asserted in the new dance repertory.

The strands of popular group dancing and professional solo dancing overlap and cross constantly in the moresca (morris, morisque, Maruschka-Tantz). From Portugal to Hungary, from Mallorca and Corsica to northern England, it appears from the Middle Ages to the present in nearly as many shapes and forms as there are documents attesting its popularity. However, during the early Renaissance three basic types predominate: the solo moresca with exotic movements, reminiscent of the sinuous, undulating dances that arrived in Europe via Spain with the invasion of the Moors (most pictorial representations of Salome dancing at King Herod’s banquet are part of this tradition); the formation dance with swords or sticks (also known as ‘Les mattachins’ or ‘Les bouffons’, see Arbeau; for illustration see Matachin) representing the battles between Christians and heathens (see the moresque in the Pas d’arbre d’or, Bruges, 1468, as well as the sword and stick dances of the Basque country and England); and the competitive miming morisca in a circular pattern, in which each of the participants acts out a part and the most convincing obtains the prize from the person in the centre, usually a lady – ‘Mayde Maryan’ of the English morris – bearing a jewel, a rose or an apple (see the Israhel van Meckenem (ii) engraving in Moresca; the illuminations to the Freydal manuscript of Maximilian I (fig.7); E. Grasser’s figurines from the Rathaussaal in Munich). The movement is always strong, either grotesque or funny or exaggeratedly polished (Grasser); the dancers often paint their faces black (hence the Schwartz-Knab tunes in 16th-century German sources) or wear masks (Freydal; Arena, 73); bells are sewn to their clothes which emphasize each step and jump as the dancers gyrate to the accompanying pipe and tabor, bagpipe, tambourine, or, in more modern times, the fiddle and the harmonica. The figure of the fool who interferes with the pattern as well as with performers and spectators continues the tradition of the medieval devil, the prankster of the mystery and miracle plays; the horse evokes ancient fertility rites (see Sachs, 1933; Domokos).

Although the moresca in one form or another was part of the court repertory throughout the 15th century (the references in the Ambrosio treatise and festival reports attest that, as do the mumming pictures of the Freydal manuscript of 1502), the main carriers of the tradition were the well-to-do artisans in the late medieval cities and towns. In Nuremberg, whose coopers, butchers and knifesmiths were famous for their annual guild dances, and where the Schembart had been practised since the 14th century (see Sumberg), particular privileges were granted to have a Morischkotanz performed; an entire Fastnachtsspiel Morischgentanz survives from the early years of the 16th century. Similar events took place in Munich and Augsburg, and it is more than likely that the tradition remained constant until it surfaced again in Arbeau.

Although there are many literary references to national and regional styles of dancing in the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance – ‘der alte tanze … von Dürengen’ (Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival), ‘danzare all’ungaresca’, ‘ballare alla romana’, ‘calate de maritima et campagnia’ (Prudenzani), ‘la baixa moresqua’ (Cervera manuscript), ‘portugalisch tänz’ (Leo von Rozmital) – it is impossible to say how these distinctions, apparently clear to contemporaries, were made in terms of the dance itself. Touches of costume were added to the fashion of each period (Salome and other biblical or exotic figures wear turbans with their 14th- or 15th-century dress); musical instruments, particularly percussion and wind, evoked specific localities (tambourines for Hungarian and Moorish numbers, bells for morisques, bagpipes for peasants or for the nobility in a rustic setting). On the whole, however, the language of dance, though changing through the ages, was essentially an international idiom that was spoken and understood everywhere.

Even the art of theatrical dancing, once it had left the medieval tumbling stage, followed largely the elegant example set by the ballroom, whose style and technique were either overemphasized and made fun of or transported directly on to the stage (see Brown, 1963). The break did not come until the late 18th century when the increasingly demanding art of the ballet dominated the stage while the ballroom cultivated a much simpler type of group dancing. During the entire Renaissance and through the Baroque period, however, theatrical dancing was simply an intensified and enlarged rendering of that which every courtier and patrician practised daily and performed nightly to his own and the observers’ delight.

Dance

4. Late Renaissance and Baroque to 1730.

(i) Before 1630.

(ii) 1630–1730.

Dance, §4: Late Renaissance and Baroque to 1730

(i) Before 1630.

From 1550 to about 1630 dance is well documented in choreographic and musical sources, descriptions of court spectacles, plays, memoirs, letters and iconography. These rich resources reflect realistically the great popularity of dance at that time as both a social and a theatrical art. The historian is particularly fortunate in the nature and scope of the four large published manuals on social dance from the second half of the 16th century, a number which would remain unequalled until the 18th century. Less fortunately, there are still lacunae in the documentation of dance as done by professional performers; despite many references, for example, there is no precise choreographic information on ‘antyck’ or grotesque dances, nor on the pantomimic or acrobatic techniques of such travelling entertainers as the commedia dell’arte.

Dance music of this period is not important solely as accompaniment to the dances themselves. The specific rhythmic patterns of the most popular dance types pervaded much vocal and instrumental music that was not necessarily intended for dance but was obviously meant to evoke it: in music ranging from lighthearted villanellas, canzonettas, scherzi musicali and ballettos to English falas and madrigals, and from simple settings for instrumental ensemble to virtuoso sets of solo variations, distinctive galliard, saltarello, canary and corrente rhythms are found; evocative dance rhythms and references appear also in more ambitious works (e.g. Monteverdi’s Zefiro torno, constructed on the licentious ciaccona bass, or Dowland’s pavan Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares). These rhythms found their way also into popular music still familiar today, like the national anthems of Britain and the USA (clearly a galliard). Furthermore, dance appears to have had a strong influence on the development of new forms and styles of the late Renaissance (1550–1600), which in the Baroque (1600–1750) were to prove so significant in all musical media. Central to the development of an instrumental style that was to become independent of vocal models were formal designs such as ostinato variations, binary or ternary forms, or the compound forms of the dance suite and its related genres (ordre, sonata da camera and the orchestral ouverture), while the internal forms of smaller units, such as tunes built of two, three or more strains of eight tactus’ length, often in period form, may have derived from dance. Furthermore, it was primarily the dance music of this time that began to exploit other specific elements of Baroque style, the most obvious of which were clear and regular metric organization with strong recurring accents and repeated rhythmic motifs, and simple basses supporting a chordal and homophonic texture based on functional harmony and standardized chordal schemes. It is most likely that performers would have followed the accepted norms in tempo and affect for clearly recognizable popular dance types, so an awareness of how the dances were actually done is vital to the interpretation of much of the dance-related music from this period, whether vocal or instrumental, sacred or secular.

Dancing skills were cultivated daily by the nobility and their middle-class emulators taught either by ubiquitous dancing-masters or at the Jesuit male ‘colleges’ on the Continent, for it was assumed that joyous flirtation and the exhibition through dance of feminine charms and lusty male prowess were healthy and desirable aspects of social intercourse. All occasions of state, great or small, required celebration and entertainment, often by dance, while personal aggrandisement and physical adornment were natural concomitants of the theatrical ambience of such public events. The regard in which skill in dancing was held throughout this period was reflected in a Neoplatonism that found its way into much of the prose and poetry of the time, as so vividly expressed in Sir John Davies’s Orchestra, a Poem of Dancing (c1594):

Dancing, bright lady, then began to be
When the first seeds whereof the world did spring,
The fire air earth and water did agree
By Love’s persuasion, nature’s mighty king,
To leave their first disorder’d combating
And in a dance such measure to observe
As all the world their motion should preserve.

The social dances performed at aristocratic gatherings included such large group dances as processional pavans, circular branles, or progressive longways dances ‘for as many as will’, but especially in southern Europe it was the individually choreographed ballettos (the direct descendants of the 15th-century Italian balli) which dominated such events. Ballettos were usually solo couple dances, but trios (e.g. Caroso’s Allegrezze d’amore), or groups of two or three couples dancing simultaneously and in formations, were also popular. In such dances the partners either alternated solo and accompanying passages, or outlined on the floor a series of standard geometric and symmetrical figures while dancing simultaneously; such ballettos surely led to the noble danses à deux, à trois, and so on, of the later 17th century and the 18th, which had many of the same figures (for example, all of the figures of the standard minuet, often in the same order, were used regularly in 16th-century ballettos). Miming dances, like the battle between the sexes in Negri’s La battaglia, or dancing embraces like the vaulting voltas, certainly enhanced the playful flavour of a ball, while dances that were essentially kissing-games (such as the popular Cushion Dance), or choreographed chases, as in Negri’s La caccia, made the sport of love even more explicit. Young men dazzled their ladies with glittering galliards which could involve virtuoso ‘tricks’, including fast footwork, competitive hitch-kicks to a tassel raised high above the floor (fig.8), pirouettes or rapid air turns or beats (‘capers’). From simple to complex in pattern, and from easy to difficult, there were dances to suit everyone; obviously, as Arbeau said, the chief purpose of social dance was to find a suitable, attractive and accomplished mate. The general style was international (with recognizable regional differences), light but vigorous, the affect normally bright, joyous, and certainly flirtatious; the emphasis was on leg and footwork, the torso erect and quiet, and the arms relaxed except when involved with a partner. Male and female, when dancing hand in hand, suited their styles to each other, but when dancing separately their styles were strongly differentiated according to their sex, the gentlemen displaying strength, elevation and athletic prowess, the ladies grace and charm.

A gradual change of style took place from the late 15th through the first half of the 16th century, documented by a variety of sources including Antonius de Arena’s Ad suos compagnones (c1527; see also Sparti). From 1560 to 1630, however, there appeared a suprising explosion in print: four large dance manuals with full choreographies and music, instructions for steps and rules of behaviour, and six smaller collections of purely verbal descriptions of galliard, tourdion, canary and passo e mezzo variations; there are known manuscripts as well, but they are few and small (see list below). The chief authors of the large manuals, Fabritio Caroso (1581, 1600), Thoinot Arbeau (1588, 1596) and Cesare Negri (1602, 1604), were old men when their books were published; indeed, some of their dances can be traced by internal evidence back to the 1550s. That Caroso’s and Negri’s manuals were reprinted or copied up to 1630 also suggests their continued validity until well into the 17th century in Italy and Spain, although other publications (by F. De Lauze in 1623 and Mersenne in 1633) reveal that a different fashion, favoured by the French, was taking hold in France and England. That Italy probably dominated the realm of dance in the 16th century as it had in the 15th is however supported by the geographical provenance of nine of the publications, and also by the numerous Italian dancing-masters listed by Negri who were then working in France, Spain, the Netherlands and German-speaking countries. The Italian manuals contain the most elaborate and sophisticated steps, the most complex variations on the basic dance patterns, and four of the six surviving 16th-century choreographies of theatrical dances. Yet Arbeau is undoubtedly important, for he supplies ample evidence of the dance in France, and his manual is the only late 16th-century source for some types of French dance that were popular elsewhere, such as branles, the volta and the theatrical matachin. As for the English, the Spaniards and the Germans, much evidence that they were avid dancers comes from textual references: from Shakespeare, Cervantes and other writers, from letters or political reports, from cryptic aides-mémoires in manuscripts (see, for example, the Inns of Court MSS), or from travellers’ accounts.

The large printed dance manuals just cited provide several hundred specific choreographies and music for social dances, many rules for the performance of the step patterns which constituted a basic vocabulary of movement, and rules of social etiquette often piquantly expressed by the dancing-masters whose function was to train their aristocratic young charges in social graces (Arbeau, for example, advises, ‘Spit and blow your nose sparingly’, while Caroso warns against tilting a chair too far onto its back legs).

On specially grand occasions, mellifluous poetry, brilliant costumes and colourful scenery were combined in the grand European spectacles (Italian intermedio, French ballet de cour and English masque) and related entertainments to produce a perfect delectation of the senses attested by all (fig.9). Also at this time new developments united song, dance and spectacle into yet another significant and enduring genre, opera (e.g. Monteverdi’s Orfeo, 1607, whose second act is almost completely dance-like, and which concludes with a dance as grand finale); even early oratorio included dance (e.g. Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo, 1600). The world of spectacle happily exploited the popular Neoplatonic conceit that in dance the harmonious movements of the parts of the body were comparable to the movements of all human bodies in a well-ordered world, and that these movements on earth mirrored the harmonious movements of the celestial bodies dancing to the music of the spheres; this conceit found full and explicit expression in sumptuous productions (indeed, Cavalieri’s complexly organized finale to the famous Florentine intermedii of 1589, portraying the descent to earth, by order of Zeus, of Rhythm and Harmony, Bacchus and Apollo, the nine Muses and the three Graces, to teach humans to sing and dance so as to lighten their earthly load, is an allegory of this very myth). Geometrically figured dances for large numbers of performers, often of symbolic significance and designed to be viewed from above the dancing space, formed the main dances of the great spectacles cited above – Balthasar de Beaujoyeux’s Balet comique de la Royne (1581), for instance, often misnamed the first ballet, incorporated 67 figures – and persisted throughout the 17th century; numerous charts of such figures (see fig.10 below) have survived, but the only complete source is Cavalieri’s elaborate choreography of 1589 (cited above) to his own music, and with full scenic and costume descriptions.

Such expensive entertainments were intended fundamentally as propaganda to show invited guests and (in the case of grand processions through a city) the general populace that the rulers of an area represented the acme of society in riches, beauty, accomplishment and taste; hence, whether large or small, sacred or secular, many of them exceeded in equivalent cost that of Hollywood musicals in the 20th century. Their political ramifications were many, and more than a few were blamed for impoverishing state coffers; it is certain that they contributed to the economic disaffection that led to the Puritan revolution in England. Not incidentally, of course, the very best professional designers, machinists, painters and performing artists, including dancers, were employed in such displays. Because both titled aristocrats and professionals danced in court spectacles throughout the 17th century, however (the greatest gods often personified by princes of highest degree), the differences between professional dance and social dance appear to have been confined to the degrees of difficulty within a cohesive style.

Most of the extant evidence indicates that theatrical dances (i.e. those performed in special costumes on special occasions, whether or not on a stage proper) essentially used the international movement vocabulary and familiar dance types expounded by the manuals (for example, the dance types recognizable in the music of Monteverdi’s sung and danced ballos, like Tirsi e Clori). Yet Cavalieri, among others, makes clear in the preface to his Rappresentatione that more demanding dance occurred as well: ‘there will be more elegance and novelty if they [dances in an entertainment] can be made to appear different from normal dances; as would be the case of a moresca representing a fight, or a dance originating from sporting games’ (trans. Pirrotta). Apart from Cavalieri’s choreography of 1589, however, concrete evidence of how professional dance might have differed in style or technique from social dance is somewhat lacking. Cavalieri’s unique choreography gives the names of the small group of professionals (e.g. Vittoria Archilei) who took the roles of the gods, singing, dancing and playing simultaneously; furthermore, descriptions of other ballos quite often refer to the same feat. Additional evidence may exist in some of the extremely difficult galliard variations described by Negri, which employ the highly advanced skills of beaten steps, multiple pirouettes and multiple turns in the air that are today standard in the male ballet dancer’s bag of ‘tricks’.

Theatrical dances could, of course, vary widely in scope, extending in their lesser forms from brief excuses for laudatory poetry at state dinners, or welcoming processions for visiting dignitaries, to mock battles (moresche), horse ballets (carrousels; fig.10) or small stage works combining all theatrical forces (balli). There could be solo dances by one or two male dancers (in the third intermedio of 1589, for instance, Apollo dances a duel with a python in different poetic metres, then performs a solo victory dance; see Intermedio, fig.4); small group dances by males or females (as in Monteverdi’s Ballo delle ingrate); or shows of skilled swordsmanship by teams of young gentlemen (matachins; see Negri’s list, p.13, of eight of his ‘scolari’ who danced a ‘combattimento’ with longswords and daggers, yet another with lances, and also mattacinos). The documented balli incorporate running figures, circles, half-moons, hays, squares and wheels, in quick succession; showy galliards alternate with stamped canaries and walking passages, and tuttis with solos; in short, the available sources, though small in number, contain excellent clues to a variegated repertory of dance in Renaissance and Baroque court spectacle

The degree to which traditional dance may have nourished or descended from aristocratic dance is unknown, but that there were cross-influences is clear enough from the circumstantial evidence (as, for example, in the branles of different regions of France, still danced today, that found their way to court; or in comparing the capers and ‘gallery step’ in traditional Morris dance with standard ‘tricks’ of the galliard). Some such cross-influences are well proved, as in the case of the Mexican origins of the sarabande, but most claims of folk origins for dances adopted by the upper classes cannot be so precisely documented. Nevertheless, in this period as in later Western dance history, the cultivated arts of dance and music certainly drew inspiration from the folk and the exotic, whether real or imagined, for fresh ideas, renewed vigour and special ‘character’. In every case that character was gradually remade in the current courtly or theatrical image until fresh inspiration was needed.

It is small wonder that throughout this period dance music found its way into instrumental collections for the educated amateur, but its sheer quantity and the profusion of titles are new and staggering. The collections range from instrumental manuals (Le Roy) to huge eclectic volumes (Besard). They are for solo instrument (Fitzwilliam Virginal Book) or ensembles (Mainerio), and extend from very simple pieces in two or three strains, with or without varied doubles, to huge sets of virtuoso variations on a tune or migrant bass. While it is unlikely that the latter were intended for dancing, it also remains debatable whether the simple danseries (as, for example, in Gervaise) were intended specifically to accompany dances: professional musicians, who worked from memory, would not have depended on these collections for their repertories. Frequent concordances and reprints among the sources may reduce the real repertory somewhat, but attest further its popularity and geographical spread. Among the instrumental publications of importance were those by Abondante, Gardano, Gorzanis and Barbetta in Italy; Gervaise, Le Roy, Morlaye, Du Tertre, d’Estrée and Francisque in France; Gerle, Wechsler, Schmid, Ammerbach, Waissel and Praetorius in Germany; Susato and Phalèse in the Low Countries; Barley, Dowland, Morley and Holborne in England; and Cabezón and Ortiz in Spain.

With regard to instrumental usage, Arbeau listed sackbuts, recorders, pipe and tabor, violins, transverse flutes, spinets, hautboys and ‘toutes sortes d’instruments’, adding that dances might also be sung. Caroso and Negri, however, gave the music only in lute tablature and mensural notation, and there is other evidence that in Italy, whether in social dance or in spectacle, a special tradition of appropriate instrumentation existed. Drums and double-reed instruments, for example, were considered to be grotesque or peasant types and were excluded from noble or Olympian scenes (see Weaver) and, it seems, high society. This tradition seems also to have been followed in the English masques and French ballets de cour. Huge complements of appropriate instruments accompanied dance in large spectacles, and were combined with vocal forces of all types: Cavalieri’s ballo, according to the score and Rossi’s description, called for several vocal choirs, the entire viol family (including contrabass), the entire lute family (including theorboes and chitarroni), the same for guitars, violins, harps, lira, citterns and mandoras, flutes, sackbuts and cornetti, psaltery, regal organs and harpsichords.

There are many musical concordances for the dances in the manuals based on well-known migrant tunes or basses, whether originally sacred or secular, vocal or instrumental; for example, Gastoldi’s balletto L’innamorato was choreographed by Stefano, an associate of Negri’s, as Alta mendozza, but the tune appeared in England as Sing we and chaunt it and in Germany as the chorale In dir ist Freude. Furthermore, the same dance music might appear in duple or triple metre in different sources (e.g. Arbeau’s and Negri’s canaries). Phrasings were usually regular but could occasionally be irregular, and changing metres or hemiola provided charm and interest. National differences in style emerged in dance music as elsewhere: the English, for instance, were in general more tuneful than the Italians, who tended to emphasize the basses and chordal schemes (romanesca, folia, passo e mezzo). Nonetheless, most of the music is rather commonplace; obviously the physical delights suggested by dance music and the social status dance enjoyed were more responsible for its great vogue than the quality of the music itself. Gems are to be found, however, in (for example) Monteverdi’s Scherzi musicali, while the famous sets of variations on dance themes by such composers as Sweelinck, Byrd and Cabezón exemplify the opportunities and challenges that dance music could suggest. Among the stage works it is Monteverdi, once again, whose ballos and Orfeo are masterpieces pervaded by dance; appreciation of these is increased by recognition of the dancing they evoke.

Apart from variation suites themselves, the variation principle obviously pervaded dances and music alike. Each of the individual dances consists of a series of variations (mutanze, or figures), one to each repetition of the music, which was also undoubtedly varied in performance even though in print the music for an entire suite is shown in one simple version. Further, the facts that there are no purely ‘low’ or ‘high’ dances, that almost all step patterns, including the seemingly immutable galliard, are adaptable to either duple or triple metre, that there are galliard variations and dance phrases of irregular five-, six- or seven-bar lengths, and that one dance can consist of many extremely brief sections in different metres (e.g. Negri’s Brando detta Alta regina, in 11 sections of different metres and dance types), suggest a greater sophistication and flexibility in the dances of this period than has sometimes been imagined. Finally, the evidence that in the galliard, the tordiglione, the canary or the passo e mezzo the dancer as well as the musician could invent his own variations ad libitum, provided only that he matched the danced cadence (i.e. metre) to the musical cadence, again makes clear that improvisation and variation went hand in hand in dance as they did in music.

One last point remains to be made about the significance of dance music to late-Renaissance and later musical form: one of the givens at this time was that in any dance the symmetry of the body was paramount: whatever was danced beginning with the left foot (whether short step patterns or long choreographic combinations of step patterns) must be repeated beginning with the right. This mandate, of course, required repeated (or virtually repeated) music of exactly the same length, and it had to be clearly audible to the dancers (that is, musically related to the left-footed passage) served by the musicians. Whether in tiny internal repetitions, two-bar units, four-bar phrases or larger combinations, the choreographies in the Italian manuals particularly adhered to this ‘True Rule’ of symmetry, and the music reinforced it (see Caroso). As Caroso explained it, the perfect piece of music for dance was made up of multiples of two; indeed, it was a semibreve made up of two minims – a binary time value – that was now the ‘perfect beat’, rather than the ternary value of heretofore. While such aesthetic symmetry to meet the demands of dance was not entirely new (some 15th-century balli required it at times), the rigour of its application now may well have led to a new regularity of musical construction. Indeed, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the almost iron-clad Vierhebigkeit of 19th-century music may have derived essentially from the needs of 16th-century dance.

Dance, §4: Late Renaissance and Baroque to 1730

(ii) 1630–1730.

In the 17th century dance continued to be seen as a fundamental social grace and as a means of training the body for polite society, but its status as an art increased. Under the patronage of the French monarchy, dance achieved official recognition through the establishment in 1661 of the Académie Royale de Danse (eight years before a similar academy was founded to support opera), whose charter acknowledged the art of dance as ‘l'un des plus honnêtes et des plus nécessaires à former le corps et à lui donner les premières et les plus naturelles dispositions à toutes sortes d'exercices’. During this period dance technique advanced rapidly, and the vocabulary it engendered – much of it still in use in ballet today – radiated along with French dances out to the rest of Europe. At the same time French dancing absorbed influences from other countries, especially Italy, Spain and, later in the century, England. Across Europe dance was not only a necessary practice for those wishing to demonstrate (or to achieve) social standing, but also a fundamental element in such politically charged spectacles as court balls and ballets. The rhythms of the dance even penetrated such genres as sacred music.

The enormous amount of dance music composed during this period falls into two broad and overlapping categories: dance music composed to set dancers in motion and dance music intended for listening. Although it is not always possible to separate the two functions from each other (theatrical music was not infrequently arranged for chamber performance), differences can be observed in both instrumentation and repertory. In France, the primary instrument for accompanying dancing was the violin (Mersenne, de Pure); in fact, so close was the relationship that dancing-masters were often violinists who composed their own music and accompanied their own classes. (Outside France dance was sometimes accompanied by plucked string instruments – the lute in Italy and the guitar in Spain.) Functional dance music was generally performed by consorts – primarily members of the violin family, but also double reeds – or, as the century progressed, by the emerging orchestra. On the other hand, the dance music found in suites for solo lute or harpsichord, and later for viol, flute or other melody instrument with continuo, was composed for listening. As a consequence of this distinction, the repertory for such ensembles as the 24 Violons du Roi (also known as the grands violons), which played for balls and ballets, differs in content from the solo suites of composers such as Gaultier and Chambonnières in France or Froberger in Germany. Although such dance types as the courante and sarabande appear in both repertories, the various types of branle are much more numerous in the functional dance literature, whereas the allemande (rarely danced after the beginning of the 17th century) became one of the building-blocks of the Baroque solo suite.

Within the realm of functional dance music, there are also two overlapping categories: theatrical and social. (For the history of theatrical dance from its institutionalization see Ballet). Many of the courts in Europe cultivated some form of danced entertainment, called variously ballet, masque, ballo or intermedio, that involved both professional dancers and courtiers. Depending on the nature of the occasion and the means available, such spectacles could be extremely elaborate, with huge numbers of performers, elaborate sets and costumes, and even specially designed stage machinery. The content was often allegorical, with gods and heroes of ancient mythology standing in for members of the court, but at the same time a work might also contain comic or even burlesque elements. In the English Masque this dichotomy was formalized in the use of the antimasque that acted as a foil to the more serious portions of the masque as a whole, whereas in France certain grotesque ballets stood as independent works (e.g. Le ballet royal du grand bal de la douairière de Billebahaut of 1626, for which a large number of illustrations survive: see Christout, 1987). Indeed, during the reign of Louis XIII (1610–43) the burlesque ballet was particularly cultivated. However, even the most formal ballets performed for the highest state occasions could contain lighthearted elements, in keeping with Menestrier's precept that ‘ballet requires that one mix the pleasant with the serious …’ (Des ballets anciens et modernes, 1682): for example, in the ballet Lully interleaved between the acts of Cavalli's opera Ercole amante, performed in 1662 in honour of Louis XIV's wedding to Maria Theresa of Spain, an entrée for Jupiter and four kings of antiquity is preceded by an entrée for Mercury and a group of 16 thieves.

As this example suggests, mid-century French court ballets were constructed as a series of entrées or scenes, each performed by a single group of characters; these could contain from one to several dance pieces and might sometimes include a song or chorus. The sequence of entrées was held together by a loose story line or an overarching theme. Many ballets involved both men and women (although women participated in smaller numbers and in fewer works), and professional male dancers frequently performed alongside their aristocratic patrons in the same entrées; in France the tiny number of female professionals, such as Mlle Verpré, generally performed as soloists. Like his father, Louis XIV (reigned 1643–1715) was an enthusiastic dancer and performed in numerous ballets, by no means only as a god such as Apollo (fig.11): in the Ballet d'Alcidiane (1658), for example, he danced as Hatred, Aeolus, a demon and a Moor. Although he stopped performing on stage in 1670, he continued to dance at balls for another ten years.

Court spectacles were ephemeral, performed once and not revived. In France, thanks to the efforts of André Danican Philidor, the king's music librarian, music from roughly 130 ballets from the period c1575–1651 still survives, although often incomplete. Whereas these ballets contain some familiar dance types (e.g. pavane, courante, gavotte, canarie, gaillarde, bourrée, sarabande and various branles), most of the music is simply labelled with the names of the characters (e.g. ‘3e entrée, Les fous de la fête’). In other words, the ballet composers did not tend to move social dances on to the stage, but rather aimed to write music appropriate for the characters in each scene. (Michel de Pure, 1668, was but one among many theorists who insisted that ballet music must suit its dramatic context.) Similar character entrées form the basis of Jean-Baptiste Lully's ballets of the 1650s and 60s or of the ballets of Wolfgang Ebner and Johann Heinrich Schmelzer for the imperial court in Vienna. As the century progressed, the number of stage works involving court performers declined. In England, the Puritan era did not completely end the performance of masques, which mostly found their way into schools. In France, the emphasis at court shifted from ballet to opera (Lully acquired the privilege for the Académie Royale de Musique in 1672) or to smaller works such as mascarades. Although court ballets did not die out immediately, they became less frequent and, with a few noteworthy exceptions such as Lully's Triomphe de l'Amour of 1681, less elaborate. The last gasp of the French court ballet occurred in 1720, when the 10-year-old Louis XV danced in Lalande's L'Inconnu and Les Folies de Cardenio; by then theatrical dancing had become the domain of professionals.

As with ballet, French ballroom dancing became a model emulated by most of the rest of Europe. The formal court ball followed a strict protocol, and was more of a spectacle than a participatory event. It opened with a series of branles, involving the restricted number of guests who had been chosen in advance to dance at the ball. After the final branle à mener, a progressive dance in which the leading couple worked its way down the line before returning to the top, came a series of danses à deux, in which only one couple danced at a time, generally in order of rank, while everyone else watched. For most of the 17th century the courante dominated the social dances; during the last quarter of the century it was gradually replaced by the minuet. Both of these dances were built on repeating step units subjected to a limited amount of variation, and could be performed to any suitable piece of music, which would then be repeated as many times as necessary to complete the floor pattern. (Courantes tended to have an odd number of bars – often five or seven – in each strain; 17th-century minuets also sometimes had irregular phrase lengths, although the four-bar phrases characteristic of the 18th-century dance may also be found.) Other couple dances performed at balls consisted of elaborate, through-composed choreographies by such dancing-masters as Louis Guillaume Pécour that were set to specific pieces of music; these dances had to be memorized by the dancers in advance of the event. At the turn of the century, from which time a number of choreographies have survived, the most frequently performed couple dances were the courante, minuet, passepied, bourrée and gavotte. In masked balls, where greater freedom was permitted, dances of a more theatrical character were also admitted, for example the sarabande, gigue, loure, canarie, rigaudon or even the chaconne. Dancers at court balls were held to a very high standard; the memoirs of Saint-Simon recount the unfortunate incident of a young manw who was laughed off the dance floor at two successive balls in 1692.

The extent to which folk dances may have influenced courtly styles is difficult to measure. Many dance types were ascribed a regional or national origin (the passepied from Brittany, the bourrée from Auvergne, the forlana from Friuli, the sarabande from Spain), but even 17th-century writers provided conflicting and often fanciful stories about a dance's past. Moreover, even for the upper levels of society there is very little information about actual dance practices from the middle decades of the 17th century. The verbal instructions found in F. de Lauze's Apologies de la danse (1623), Mersenne's Harmonie universelle (1636–7) and Juan de Esquivel Navarro's Discursos sobra el arte del dançado (1642), which apply primarily to a limited range of social dances, are incomplete and ambiguous and lack music. The fullest instructions from the middle of the century come from The English Dancing Master, a series of publications begun in London in 1651 by John Playford (and continued through 18 editions until 1728), each volume of which contains the tune and floor patterns for a large number of country dances. Although the name of the genre suggests that the dances are traditional, Playford clearly aimed his collections at an urban, educated audience; moreover, both the dances and the music show signs of artistic tinkering or, in some cases, new composition. All involve at least four dancers; many are ‘longways for as many as will’, that is, danced in two columns with the men on one side, the women on the other. The steps are extremely simple; the interest lies in the figures through which the dancers move. In 1684 English country dances were introduced at the French court for the first time. They quickly became popular, but not without first undergoing adaptation to French taste, primarily through the addition of refined footwork drawing on the step vocabulary of French court dance. Renamed the ‘contredanse’, the Frenchified version spread to the rest of Europe.

At around the same time that André Danican Philidor, in his role of music librarian to Louis XIV, began his effort to preserve much of the music by Lully and his predecessors, the king took an interest in having the dances from his reign preserved as well. During the 1680s at least three different systems of choreographic notation were developed in France: one, for the notation of contredanses, by André Lorin; the second, a schematic staff notation by Jean Favier, which preserves the only completely choreographed theatrical work from the period, Le Mariage de la Grosse Cathos (1688), a mascarade set to music by Philidor; and a third system invented by Pierre Beauchamp, choreographer at the court and the Paris Opéra, but exploited commercially by Raoul-Auger Feuillet. Whereas the first two systems remained in manuscript, Feuillet's book Chorégraphie, published in 1700 along with two books of notated dances by Louis Guillaume Pécour, Beauchamp's successor at the Opéra, reached a wide audience throughout Europe. Not only did the choreographies published over the next 25 years by Feuillet and his successor Dezais help disseminate the French style of dance internationally, the system was used by other dancing-masters and notators to preserve their own works; to date over 330 choreographies in Feuillet notation have been located, the vast majority of them for one or two dancers (see Little and Marsh, 1992). In addition, Feuillet developed a simplified version of the system for notating contredanses; the hundreds of contredanses preserved in this way have not yet been inventoried.

The 80 pages of positions and step tables included in Chorégraphie reveal a richly developed and demanding technique within a clear conceptual framework, signs that the basic dance style had been in place for some time. Since Feuillet included only minimal indications on how to perform the steps, his book must be consulted in conjunction with technical descriptions found in dance manuals such as Pierre Rameau's Le maître à danser (1725). These reveal that the underlying technique and basic step vocabulary were the same for both the social and theatrical dances of the period. Both rely on the five basic positions of the feet (codified, according to Rameau, by Pierre Beauchamps), turned out to an angle of approximately 90°, with preparatory pliés followed by élevés on to the ball of the foot. Even the simplest ballroom choreographies demand an acute sense of balance and draw on an extensive movement vocabulary in which basic step units such as the pas de bourrée, contretemps de gavotte, temps de courante and coupé are subjected to variation (including changes to the rhythm) and combined in myriad ways. Each dance is through-choreographed: every strain of music, repeated or not, receives its own sequence of steps. The only dance types that rely on a repeating step unit, and may thus be performed to any suitable tune, are the courante, minuet and passepied, and even these are subject to variations. All other dances match a specific tune with a specially choreographed set of movements; hence there is no such thing as a ‘standard’ sarabande, gavotte or gigue. Movements of the arms are rarely notated, but follow a set of conventions based on coordination with the steps. The ballroom dances allow for modest leaps or hops, whereas the theatrical style calls for larger gestures and a more extensive step vocabulary, including virtuoso steps such as cabrioles and entrechats. Both styles demand precision, control, grace and an excellent memory. Feuillet notation has the virtue of revealing the floor pattern that the dancers trace, which generally follows principles of mirror-image symmetry. The dances are always orientated along an imaginary vertical axis that bisects the dancing space, and that leads from ‘upstage’ where the dance begins towards the real or imagined figure of the king, who always sat at ‘downstage’ centre (for illustrations see Ballet, fig. 2, and Feuillet, Raoul-Auger). This very frontal presentation, characteristic of both the social and theatrical choreographies, marks a significant shift from the orientation of many of the Italian dances from the beginning of the 17th century, in which the dancers are often turned inwards towards each other. This change in the use of space may be related to the growing use of the proscenium theatre as the century progressed.

Most dance pieces of this period have a binary structure, with both sections repeated. Dance notations, however, show flexibility in regard to the handling of repeats. Some choreographies require more than one repetition of the music (AABBAABB), others involve a petite reprise, a repetition of the last few bars of the strain, that either replaces or supplements the repeat of the B section (the schemes AABp or AABBp are both found in choreographies). In 17th-century dances the opening of the B section does not necessarily make use of melodic material presented at the start of the piece; rhythmic consistency is a more common means of unifying the two sections, although there is sometimes a change of metre at the start of the B section, particularly in pieces composed for the stage. The French also favoured rondeau structures (usually ABACA), which could apply either to untitled dances or to generic types (e.g. the gavotte en rondeau in the Prologue of Lully's opera Atys). A third structural category is made up of the chaconne and passacaille, which were built on continuous variations over a harmonic pattern, usually of eight-bar phrases divided 4+4. These are by far the longest dances in the repertory: the chaconne in Act 5 of Lully's Amadis has 862 bars. With the exception of the structurally regular chaconne and passacaille, dance music from this period is often quite irregular; phrases containing an odd number of bars are not uncommon, nor is it rare for phrases of different lengths to succeed one another even in such dance types as the gavotte or sarabande. Given the wide variety of both phrase structures and rhythmic patterns in dances for which choreographies survive, it is clear that dance steps did not impose structures on the music.

The development of dance notation accelerated the spread of French dancing and its music throughout Europe, a trend apparent since the beginning of the century. When Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, he established an ensemble on the model of the French king's 24 Violons. Although his efforts to import French musical practices were met with some resistance, such composers as Henry Purcell were not immune to the Lullian model; moreover, French dancers frequently crossed the Channel to perform for English audiences. The extent of French penetration can be measured by the publication in 1706 of two independent English translations of Feuillet's Chorégraphie, one by John Weaver, the other by Paul Siris; moreover, between 1706 and 1744 a large number of notated choreographies were published in England, a number second only to those originating in France. Several of these dances originated in royal celebrations, for example ‘The Britannia, a new dance composed by Mr. Isaac performed at court on Her Majesty's birthday’ (London, 1708); others reflect the longstanding English practice of providing dancing between the acts of plays in the public theatres, for example L'Abbé's New Collection of Dances (London, c1725). In Germany a number of substantial treatises on dancing in the French manner were published in the early 18th century, including Johann Pasch's Beschreibung wahrer Tanz-Kunst (Frankfurt, 1707), Samuel Rudoph Behr's Wohlgegründete Tantz-Kunst (Leipzig, 1709), Louis Bonin's Die neuste Art zur galanten und theatralischen Tantz-Kunst (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1711) and Gottfried Taubert's Rechtschaffener Tantzmeister (Leipzig, 1717), the last of which – over 1000 pages long – is particularly informative. Moreover, many German courts had French dancing-masters in their employ, even those where Italian opera held sway. The accession of the Duke of Anjou, Louis XIV's grandson, to the Spanish throne in 1702 opened Spain to French musical practices, and whereas the Spanish embraced French dance styles less fully than did other countries, numerous arrangements of dance tunes by Lully and other French composers appear in Spanish and Latin American collections of guitar music; the mid-18th-century dance publications of Pablo Minguet y Yrol contain instructions and some choreographies for both French and Spanish dances. The most popular piece for arranging, known simply as Amable, was ‘Aimable vainqueur’ from Campra's opera Hésione (1700), whose choreography by Pécour as a ballroom dance was published many times between 1701 and 1765, two of them in Spain. French dances began to appear in Venetian ballrooms around 1690 (before that time French visitors to Venice considered Italian social dances as little more than walking), and in 1728 Giambatista Dufort's Trattato del ballo nobile discussed French dances, with emphasis on the minuet and contredanse, for an Italian audience.

This enormous dance activity in the 17th and early 18th centuries has left behind several kinds of musical objects. Dance music written for the stage was rarely published and, as a result, much of it has been lost, although some exists in incomplete or defective manuscript copies (as is the case with Lully's court ballets) or is only partly preserved in abridged arrangements, printed or manuscript. The most notable exception to the pattern of incomplete preservation occurred in France, where, starting in 1678 with Lully's Isis, most of the operas performed in Paris – including the dance pieces – were published in full score. Nonetheless, even in France the tendency in the 18th century to publish short scores means that for many operatic dances, including some by Rameau, the inner parts have not survived. This situation is, however, far better than in Italy and Germany, where a good deal of the dance music performed between the acts of operas has entirely disappeared. Although some of the ballet music still extant has been published in modern editions, much remains in manuscript. There are a few surviving anthologies of music for the 17th-century French ballroom, most of them manuscript. The Kassel manuscript (ed. Ecorcheville, 1906) includes repertory, in full score, of the 24 Violons by such mid-17th-century composers as Dumanoir and Mazuel; the dances represented in the largest number are the courante, sarabande and branles of various types (including the gavotte), although the collection also includes a few bourrées and gaillardes, and one each of the gigue, passepied and minuet. Late in the century André Danican Philidor began collecting the melodies of a large number of ballroom dances into a manuscript anthology he entitled Suite de danses pour les violons et hautbois qui se jouent ordinairement aux bals chez le roi (F-Pn Vm⁷ 3555; see also the related F-Po 2359), of which he published a selection in 1699 under the same title. The print contains mainly branles, courantes, menuets, passepieds and contredanses, but the manuscript represents the full range of social dances, including the tunes to many notated choreographies; the title of the collection notwithstanding, the dances are arranged by type, not into suites. From the first half of the 18th century, when ballroom practices were shifting increasingly towards the minuet and contredanse, there are numerous anthologies of tunes for these two dance types.

By the end of the 17th century dance music composed for listening had its own conventions and was preserved in quite different types of sources. Whereas there was some overlap between the two repertories in that dances composed for the stage were frequently recycled for listening – the arrangements of Lully's theatrical music into trio suites arranged by key being a case in point – the only known instances of a dance composed for a solo or chamber suite later appearing on stage or in the ballroom occurred when a composer borrowed from himself. Rameau, for example, reused ‘Les sauvages’ from his Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin of 1728 in his opéra-ballet Les Indes galantes of 1735, but pieces by composers who wrote for the salon, such as François Couperin, do not appear in collections of practical dance music. The chamber suite thus followed its own line of development, although both its nomenclature and its content varied considerably across time and space (see Suite). In France the earliest examples are for the lute, followed around 1660 for the harpsichord, and towards the end of the century, pièces en trio (two treble instruments and continuo) or suites for solo viol and continuo. (Despite the dominance of the violin in actual dance music, no solo suites for violin were composed in France during the 17th century.) French composers treated the order and choice of movements within a chamber suite much more freely than did their German counterparts, but as in Germany the allemande became a densely textured, contrapuntal piece, far removed from the simple processional dance it had been at the start of the century or from the rustic German character-dances that occasionally appeared on the stage. And whereas the opera scores published under Lully's direction support Le Cerf de la Viéville's contention that Lully's ornamental practices were quite restrained, French suites of the same period, particularly those for solo harpsichord, overflow with agréments: Jean-Henri d'Anglebert's ornament table in his Pièces de clavecin (1689) contains no fewer than 29 examples. It was perhaps the difference in ornamental practices between orchestral and solo dance music that provoked the theorist Saint-Lambert's comment that minuets for dancing were to be performed faster than harpsichord minuets (Les principes du clavecin, 1702).

In Italy dance pieces appeared both in collections such as Giovanni Maria Bononcini's Sinfonia, allemande, correnti, e sarabande op.5 (1671) or in sonate da camera, such as the same composer's op.2 trios (1667), whose title Delle sonate da camera e da ballo suggests that some of the pieces may have been put to use in the ballroom. Bononcini, whose residence in Modena put him within a French sphere of influence, was at ease in both the French and Italian styles, and Arcangelo Corelli's sonatas and concertos – especially, but not exclusively, those classified as da camera – also show signs of French influence, particularly in regard to the rhythmic play within some of the correntes. Composers in German areas, such as the violinist Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, incorporated dance movements in both Italian and French styles into their sonatas. Although there are notable distinctions between such related dances as the Italian giga, the French gigue and the English jig, the language of the title of a dance does not necessarily indicate the national origin of its style. Sonate da chiesa and concerti grossi by Corelli and other composers across Europe also contain dance-based movements, although they may bear only a tempo marking such as ‘Allegro’ (see Sonata and Concerto). In fact, the giga, whether so marked or not, came to be the typical last movement of the Baroque sonata. When the Italian violin style reached France in the early years of the 18th century, both Italian dances and French dances that had acquired an Italian accent were incorporated into suites by such composers as Jacques Hotteterre and François Couperin, the latter's deliberate blending of the two national styles in Les goûts réunis (1724) being of particular interest.

The orchestral suite, because of its origins in arrangements of theatrical dance pieces for listening (e.g. Michel-Richard de Lalande's Symphonies pour les soupers du roi, MS copied 1703), had more varied contents than the chamber suite. In Germany, where orchestral suites were composed in great numbers following their introduction in the late 17th century by composers such as Georg Muffat and Johann Sigismund Kusser, both of whom had studied in Paris, they were generally called ‘Ouvertüren’ after their usual first movement, an overture in the French manner. In addition to dance movements familiar from the keyboard suite (sarabande, gavotte etc.), they often included ballroom dances such as branles or more theatrical types such as canaries or chaconnes, as well as pieces simply marked ‘air’ or ‘rondeau’, as was common for dances in operatic scores. Some ouverture-suites even allude to theatrical characters, either in individual movements (‘Les combattants’ in an Ouvertüre by Georg Philip Telemann) or throughout, as in Telemann's Ouverture burlesque, which attributes dances to characters from the commedia dell'arte (‘Scaramouches’, ‘Mezzetin en Turc’ etc.). Although orchestral suites were probably not composed as functional dance music, they nonetheless stay closer to the actual practice of dancing, particularly the theatrical, than do the chamber and solo suites.

Although most dance music of the Baroque period was instrumental, there are references in France to dancing done ‘aux chansons’. Moreover, many songs of the period clearly bear the imprint of the dance, both in the popular repertory such as vaudevilles and in art music by composers such as Michel L'Affilard, whose dance-songs, appended as examples to his Principes très-facile pour bien apprendre la musique (see in particular the fifth edition, 1705), indicate the type of dance on which they are based. In the operas of Lully and his successors, many of the instrumental dances in the divertissements are paired with songs or choruses in the same metre and with similar rhythmic and melodic profiles. But dance rhythms appear in vocal airs, both in France and elsewhere, even without dance in the vicinity and even within an italianate framework, as in some of Handel's operatic arias. Moreover, dance rhythms worked their way into sacred vocal music: there are numerous examples of dance-based movements within the motet repertory in France (Montagnier, 1996), and J.S. Bach's cantata Himmelskönig, sei willkommen bwv182 welcomes Jesus to the rhythms of a gavotte and ushers the believers into heaven to the strains of a passepied.

Dance

5. 1730–1800.

The gradual disappearance of the suite did not lead to a decline in the composition of dance music: not only did dance remain an important component of theatrical entertainments throughout the 18th century, but dance-based movements infiltrated almost every genre of instrumental music, from the Italian opera overture to the solo sonata to the Viennese Classical symphony, although their presence was often masked by the simple tempo markings used to designate movements. Several Baroque dance types, such as the courante, almost ceased to exist, whereas others, such as the gavotte, held on for considerably longer, while new dance types emerged, particularly from central Europe. On a technical level the division between social and theatrical dance practices grew wider, but there remained some overlap in repertory, and the dance types found in instrumental genres were borrowed from both the stage and the ballroom. In the emerging ‘absolute’ instrumental music, composers began to treat dance as a topos which could draw on both a web of cultural associations and muscle memory.

Dancing remained an essential social grace in polite society, and, while balls continued to take place in courts and private homes, public venues also opened: many opera houses began to host masked balls as a means of increasing their revenues and other types of public dance halls began to appear as the century progressed. The publication of dances in Feuillet notation, however, almost ceased after 1730. Dezais' continuation of Feuillet's annual collections of ballroom dances had ended in 1725, and although the English dancing-master Kellom Tomlinson did not publish his Art of Dancing until 1735, he claimed on the title-page that the book had been written in 1724. Moreover, the emphasis on the minuet (to which a third of Tomlinson's book is devoted) was to become even more pronounced in later dance manuals. Although the republication of a few of Pécour's danses à deux as late as 1780 shows that they had achieved the status of classics, such dances were performed only at the most ceremonial of balls or else studied in dancing lessons for their pedagogic value; by mid-century social dancing was dominated by the minuet and the contredanse.

In the ballroom the minuet carried the weight of tradition and remained a vehicle for demonstrating proper deportment and the disciplined use of the body that was seen as essential for anyone aspiring to social standing. Although it was occasionally danced by two couples, it remained primarily a dance for a single couple, while everyone else in attendance watched. The minuet outlasted the French Revolution; it appears in English and German dance manuals into the early 19th century (see Aldrich, 1984). Collections of minuet music were published in large numbers; Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, among others, composed orchestral minuets for the ballroom. Moreover, the minuet remained in the theatrical repertory and can be found in operas and ballets throughout the century. But it gained still more currency through its absorption into virtually all the instrumental genres of the 18th century – solo, chamber and orchestral (see Minuet). Most prominently, it became the third movement of the Viennese Classical symphony and string quartet, where it was not infrequently subjected to the compositional manipulations of the high style (e.g. Mozart's Minuetto in canone in the Quintet in C minor k406, 1787). Outside France the Italianized version of the name (minuetto or tempo di minuetto) tended to appear as the heading for a movement, but the minuet is not always identified as such every time it appears; a movement headed ‘Rondo’, for example, might be based on minuet rhythms. Whereas, according to evidence from both theoretical sources and pendulum markings, the minuet had a lively tempo at the start of the century, by its end the expansion in the minuet's uses not surprisingly resulted in a broader range of possible tempos (Harris-Warrick, 1993; Malloch, 1993).

One of the attractions of the contredanse was that it allowed several couples to dance at one time. The contredanse itself had various subcategories. The contredanse anglaise, often known simply as the ‘anglaise’, used a traditional English longways formation. The contredanse française, which came to be called the ‘cotillon’, involved two or, more often, four couples in a square formation. Both types generated huge amounts of material from all over Europe, both printed and manuscript: dance notations with and without music, verbal descriptions of figures, and collections of music (for a partial list, primarily of French sources, see Guilcher, 1969; for illustration see Contredanse). Even though contredanses of both types involved a limited range of steps compared with the court dances, the sequence of figures could be quite complex. In his Trattato theorico-prattico di ballo (Naples, 1779) the Italian dancer Gennaro Magri praised the French practice of allowing at a ball only dancers who had memorized the steps and figures in advance; in fact, he stated, the contredanse should not be done at all if there was any doubt that its performance would not meet a high standard. Magri's own contredanses sometimes use large groups of dancers; one, composed for a mascarade, calls for 32 people. Following 1760 the contredanse allemande (sometimes, confusingly, called simply the ‘allemande’) swept Paris; according to La Cuisse (Répertoire des bals, 1765) it derived from the exposure the French army had to German dancing during the Seven Years’ War. This variation on the contredanse française added complex hand holds and passes under the arm to the figures of the dance. A group performing a contredanse allemande may be seen in the engraving Le bal paré (1774), by Duclos after Saint Aubin. (Behind-the-back hand holds and hands on the hips may be seen as markers of a German character in French dance as early as 1701.) In the last decade of the century yet another regional variant, the écossaise, began to appear in ballrooms.

The music for contredanses is generally in a major key and in duple metre, either simple or compound, with simple melodies and regular, four-bar phrasing. Many of the earlier dances have the rhythmic profile of the gavotte, with an upbeat of two crotchets within a time signature of or 2. Later contredanses tend to be in 2/4 or 6/8; the French tunes often start on the half-bar. A number of contredanse allemande tunes have a turning figure decorating the arrival on the tonic in bar 4; in Germany these also tended to have an upbeat. Some contredanse tunes were newly composed, whereas others were borrowed from a wide variety of sources, including popular songs and operatic music. There seems to be considerable overlap between contredanse tunes and the vaudeville repertory used in opéras comiques; presumably the borrowings went in both directions. Contredanses were often performed on stage, within divertissements, but especially as part of the vaudeville finale used to conclude many plays, ballets and opéras comiques. They were also seen on the stage of august theatres such as the Paris Opéra, when the nature of the divertissement within a ballet or opera allowed for a lighthearted dance of this type. Rameau's acte de ballet Pygmalion (1748), for example, concludes with a contredanse (see Ballet, §1(iii)).

Because of its pervasiveness, the influence of the contredanse is hard to overstate. Not only did such composers as Mozart and Beethoven write contredanses for ballroom use (e.g. Beethoven, 12 Contredanses for orchestra, 1802), they also incorporated tunes with the profile of a contredanse into many instrumental works, particularly in rondo finales. Two examples among many include the Presto from Haydn's Symphony no.85 (‘La reine’) and Mozart's Rondo for piano and orchestra in D k382; Mozart even borrowed a tune from a subcategory of the contredanse allemande repertory known as ‘Strassburger’ for an episode in the last movement of his G major Violin Concerto k216 (see Reichart, 1984, and Dahms, 1997).

In the middle of the 18th century a group of triple-metre dances from southern Germany and Austria began to enter European ballrooms. Known collectively as ‘Deutscher’ (‘Teutscher’) or German dances, individual dances had names such as the Dreher, Schleifer, Ländler or (starting in the 1780s) Walzer. The most radical differences between these and the French court dances were that the dancers faced each other in a closed position and whirled rapidly around each other, qualities that to many eyes made them morally suspect and medically risky. Nevertheless they became extremely popular, especially in German-speaking countries; Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert all wrote sets of Deutscher for balls in Vienna. In France in the 1760s such dances tended to be assimilated into figures within the contredanse allemande, but by the 1790s the waltz had become an independent dance there as well, its music generally notated in 3/8 rather than 3/4. It seems to have appeared in London at about the same time as in Paris. This dance, too, was sometimes called the ‘allemande’, and the French appellation, as well as the Italian ‘ballo tedesco’, even appears in German music anthologies. (Carl Maria von Weber chose to identify the 12 dances in his op.4, 1801, for piano by three apparently equivalent designations: allemandes, Walzer and deutsche Tänze.)

Because of their triple metre, German dances lent themselves to interplay with the minuet. Sometimes composers wrote a dance of this type for the trio in the third movement of a symphony or string quartet, as Mozart did in his Symphony no.39 in E k543 and Haydn in his Symphony no.97 in C. But composers also alluded to the rhythms of the Deutscher in non-dance movements, as in the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in G (op.79), which is in 3/4 time and marked ‘Presto alla tedesca’, or in the many rondo finales with themes in a swinging triple metre. It has even been suggested that Beethoven paraphrased a Deutscher tune in the triadic opening theme of the ‘Eroica’ Symphony (Reichart, 1984), thus providing a certain symmetry with the contredanse tune of his own composition that he used as the basis for the finale. An extraordinary interplay between dance types occurs in the first-act finale of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni (1787), in which three separate stage orchestras simultaneously play a minuet, a contredanse and a ‘teich’ (Deutscher), while the various characters dance to the music appropriate to their social stations.

Other kinds of regional dances also made their way on to the stage and into instrumental works. The polonaise, in a moderate triple metre and danced in Poland as a processional, seems (despite its frenchified name) to have been particularly cultivated in German-speaking areas. J.S. Bach and Telemann both included polonaises in some of their suites, and in the second half of the 18th century there are polonaises by W.F. Bach, Kirnberger, Mozart and Beethoven (e.g. the latter's Allegretto alla polacca in the Serenade in D op.8). The polonaise was also used for local colour in operatic divertissements, as in François-André Danican Philidor's tragédie lyrique Ernelinde (1767). Another Polish dance, the mazurka, had considerably less currency during this period than it was to have later. Hungarian dances, such as the Gypsy-inflected verbunkos, began having a musical impact in Vienna in the last third of the century. From Spain, which had produced the passacalle, chacona and zarabanda in the 17th century, now came the seguidilla and the fandango; the latter appears in Boccherini's String Quintet op.40 no.2 (g341), and Mozart composed a fandango for the wedding scene in Act 3 of Le nozze di Figaro. Turkish music and dance, which had been imitated on stage as far back as Lully's comédie-ballet, Le bourgeois gentilhomme (1670), featured in numerous works in the 18th century including Rameau's opéra-ballet, Les Indes galantes (1735, Paris), Starzer and Hilverding's pantomime ballet Le Turc généreux (1758, Vienna), Favart's opéra comique, Soliman Second, ou Les trois sultanes (1761, Paris), Gluck's opéra comique, Le cadi dupéoc (1761, Vienna), and Salieri's Tarare (1787, Paris). Just as composers developed musical markers for the Turkish style while remaining within the parameters of European art music, so dancers probably put a veneer of gestures characterized as ‘Turkish’ on top of the basic ballet step vocabulary. The single extant choreography called a ‘Turkish dance’, set to music from ‘La Turquie’ in Campra's opéra-ballet, L'Europe galante and published by the English choreographer Anthony L'Abbé in 1725, uses certain character steps such as planting the foot flat on the floor and hopping backwards to mark the dance as exotic.

Although the paucity of dance notations after 1730 makes it much harder to discern precise features of the theatrical style than is possible for the start of the century, opera and ballet scores show that audiences saw and heard a much wider range of dance types than they themselves performed in the ballroom. Theatrical conventions governed the choice of dance types within a flexible, evolving framework that composers both within and outside the theatre could draw upon; the pastoral realm, for example, could be evoked by the sounds of a passepied, musette or gavotte. Such associations could be drawn upon in many musical contexts: Allanbrook has demonstrated the expressive and dramatic uses to which Mozart put dance ‘topics’ in his operas Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni; she has also pointed out that a number of Viennese symphonies juxtapose the two leading social dances of the era, the minuet and contredanse, in their third and fourth movements (Allanbrook, 1983). Surely one of the responses audiences of the period would have had to such works would have been muscular. As investigations continue into the musical conventions of late 18th-century dance music, both theatrical and social, it will undoubtedly become possible to give nuance to our understanding of many genres, including those often viewed as ‘absolute’.

Dance

6. 19th century.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, a period of extensive industrialization and development of leisure interests, dancing became a recognized pastime of the public at large; regular dance orchestras were no longer the prerogative of royal courts or the aristocracy but were able to maintain an independent existence, and directing dance bands and composing and arranging for them became a full-time activity very much in the public eye, its leading exponents enjoying international fame. In addition dance music increasingly came to be listened to as well as danced to.

The centre of 19th-century dance music was Vienna, and the upsurge of interest in dancing was prompted by the popularity of the waltz. During the 18th century the waltz had developed from various country dances in triple time (such as the German dance and the ländler) to make its way during the early years of the 19th century from the taverns in the suburbs of Vienna to the large dance halls that were being built in the city (fig.13). The significance of the waltz was to rival that of its predecessor, the minuet, and its period of survival as a ballroom dance was to exceed that of any other. It was the waltz that, in spreading through Europe, persuaded a wider public to take an interest not only in the dance itself but in the music.

In the early 19th century the waltz’s chief rivals for ballroom popularity were the quadrille and the galop. The quadrille, a formal square-dance, had developed from the country dance or contredanse as a ‘quadrille de contredanses’, and survived for most of the century as a more relaxed dance beside the other livelier dances. The quadrille had a complicated set of steps, by contrast with the galop which was one of the simplest dances ever invented. A lively dance, and a suitable way to bring an evening to an end, the galop’s popularity finally faded during the second half of the century. Perhaps second only to the waltz in popularity was the polka, a hopping dance which came from Bohemia in the 1830s; it was the rage in Vienna and Paris by 1840 and in Britain and the USA during the following years, remaining popular until around the turn of the century. The polka was not only popular in the social dance arena but could also be witnessed on the professional stage. The choreographer Jean Coralli produced a version for the Paris Opéra in 1844, and Carlotta Grisi and her husband, Jules Perrot, performed their version at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. The polka also exerted an influence on music for the concert hall, though to a much lesser extent than the waltz. The first composer to develop it to any degree was Smetana, who not only composed polkas for dance orchestras but also incorporated the rhythm into weightier compositions like The Bartered Bride (1866).

There were, of course, many other dances that achieved lesser significance: the polonaise, a processional dance, served as a suitable way to start an evening; the cotillon reappeared in various forms as a novelty dance; and the mazurka achieved popularity either independently or in compound form as the polka-mazurka. There were indeed many variants of the main dances. The valse à deux temps was a quicker form of waltz with elements of the galop, while the redowa was another dance related to the waltz. The schottische achieved popularity around the mid-century and was closely related to the polka, while the polka itself was danced in German countries during the second half of the century either as the slower ‘polka française’ or as the quicker ‘polka schnell’. The ‘quadrille des lanciers’, a variant of the quadrille which appeared in Britain about 1817 and reappeared throughout Europe in the 1850s, finally achieved popularity in Britain as ‘the lancers’.

Of the chief dances the quadrille in particular was restricted in its format and in the scope its regular eight-bar phrases gave for musical development. Other dance formats allowed greater development and more scope for musical creativity, and the waltz in particular, by including an extended introduction anticipating the main themes, by allowing the melodies to expand, and by rounding off the whole with a recapitulatory coda, was able to achieve the status of a miniature tone poem. Indeed the importance of the 19th-century dance was by no means confined to the ballroom; quite apart from the extensive influence the waltz in particular had on serious music, as the minuet had before it, the main dance bands supplemented their playing at balls by giving concerts in parks and entertainment centres. The dance repertory was supplemented by operatic selections, instrumental showpieces and songs, but such dances as the waltz and polka became as much the main attractions of these concerts as of balls. Entertainment centres such as the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen were opened towards the middle of the century with such concerts as prime attractions, and many of the dance-band leaders of the time were at least as celebrated for their concerts as for their performances at balls.

Among the most celebrated dance-band leaders of the century were Lanner, the Strausses and Ziehrer in Vienna, Labitzky in Carlsbad, Gungl in Berlin, Musard, Isaac Strauss and Waldteufel in Paris and H.C. Lumbye in Copenhagen. The composition of the main bands developed from the orchestra for which Mozart composed his dances for the Vienna Redoutensaal: double woodwind, a small body of strings without violas, and percussion; yet the maintenance of a regular orchestra and the requirements of novelty items for popular concerts encouraged elements of showmanship and displays of instrumental technique that make these bands recognizable forerunners of the show bands of the 20th century. Certainly the spread of the waltzes of Johann Strauss (i) abroad during the 1830s in no way prepared audiences for the impression made by his orchestra on its international tours. In the Journal des débats in 1837 Berlioz enthused over the rhythmic precision of the band, the remarkable effect of the short, staccato themes being passed from one wind instrument to another and the thrilling effect of their fortissimo, and the enthusiasm was repeated wherever the orchestra went in Britain in 1838. Perhaps the greatest of the showmen was Jullien, whose orchestra produced all manner of eccentric sounds. By the 1860s, however, when the waltz had become somewhat institutionalized and when the most famous examples (such as The Blue Danube and Tales from the Vienna Woods) were written, the main dance-orientated orchestras had become similar to small symphony orchestras, the style more lyrical and the instrumentation more conventional.

Dance

7. 20th century.

Whereas during the 19th century the popularity of the leading dances spread from Europe to America, during the 20th century the traffic was reversed. Examples of American influence had been felt during the 19th century, for example the barn dance (or military schottische) which began a long popularity in British ballrooms during the 1880s. Of wider significance was the boston or ‘valse boston’; though known in Europe during the 1870s, it was in the years immediately before World War I that it enjoyed considerable popularity in European ballrooms as danced to the waltzes of Archibald Joyce, Sydney Baynes and others. Although the boston itself in time fell out of favour, it was probably primarily responsible for breaking the hold that the fast, rotary Viennese waltz had on the public in favour of the more sedate 20th-century style of waltz. Even more of a sensation in the years preceding World War I was the tango, which was rhythmically related to the habanera and exported from Argentina to Paris where it was adapted to the ballroom. At a time when the afternoon thé dansant session was popular at fashionable hotels, ‘tango teas’ were very much the fashion at the height of the dance’s popularity in 1912–14. A companion dance, the maxixe, which arrived at much the same time from Brazil, was less successful.

It was, however, the ragtime dances, of which the two-step and cakewalk had been direct precursors, that brought about a radical change in dance styles. Around 1910 the one-step, a dance based on a simple walking step, became popular in the USA, providing an entrée to the dance floor for commercial ragtime numbers such as Alexander’s Ragtime Band. Variants of the one-step included the bunny hug and turkey trot, and there were other ragtime dances such as the horse trot and fish walk. But it was the foxtrot, developed in the USA around 1912 and promoted by the dancing team of Vernon and Irene Castle, that really established a new era in dancing; it reached Britain in 1914 and in due course spread through Europe. After ragtime, the actual steps or the movement of the dances were no longer a central concern. Rather, the impetus for the new dance styles came from the rhythm. There was also a dramatic shift away from the uniformity that had dominated dancing in the past, towards an increasing emphasis on individuality and freedom.

After World War I interest in the new dance styles rapidly increased. New dances enjoyed periods of success, such as the shimmy, which reached Europe from the USA in 1921 and was characterized by a turning in of the knees and toes followed by a shake of the bottom. Another was the charleston, which featured vigorous side-kicks and which, like so many earlier dances, met with a good deal of opposition on moral and medical grounds before its brief period of acceptance in the mid-1920s. The waltz survived to lend rhythmic variety in the midst of the prevalence of common time, but its tempo was by then considerably slower than that of the 19th-century waltz. Like so many dances, it was subject to continual changes in steps and tempo; and the foxtrot came to be danced either as the ‘slow foxtrot’ or the ‘quick foxtrot’ which in due course came to be known simply as the ‘quickstep’.

The rise of new styles coincided with mounting public interest in ragtime and jazz, and the syncopation and instrumental characteristics of such ensembles were taken over by the dance bands of the time. However, in seeking to satisfy the public the typical dance band eschewed the more revolutionary or suspect aspects of jazz, such as improvisation. Yet there was no firm dividing-line between jazz and dance bands, and the dance bands were probably as near as the general public came to jazz. Paul Whiteman, perhaps the most widely known bandleader of the 1920s, was popularly dubbed ‘King of Jazz’, yet his publicity proclaimed that he ‘confined his repertory to pieces that were scored and forbade his players to depart from the script’. He was a violinist by training and in the early 1920s led his band on the violin as in the 19th-century dance band; soon, however, the violin was generally dropped as lead instrument and the standard dance-band instrumentation became two or more brass instruments, two or more saxophones (usually doubling other reed instruments) and a rhythm section consisting of piano, banjo and drums, sometimes with a brass bass or tuba. Later still the guitar replaced the banjo.

Whereas the fame of 19th-century band-leaders and their music had owed a good deal to sheet music and the bandstand, those of the 1920s and 1930s owed much to the gramophone and radio. It was especially through the growth of radio during the 1920s that the new dance-band sounds gained wide popularity and radio stations soon came to realize their commercial value. Notably in Britain, where dancing had during the 19th century been accepted as a pastime less than elsewhere in Europe, people learnt the new dance styles, and dance halls were introduced in many large towns. Hotels too realized the value of providing a large ballroom with its own band, which supplemented and eventually replaced the older ‘Palm Court’ ensemble.

A new feature of the 1930s was an interest in Latin American dancing to the accompaniment of a band whose rhythm section included maracas, claves and Cuban drums. The interest was sparked off by the arrival of the rumba in New York in 1931 and continued with the samba, a newer version of the maxixe. A later feature of the 1930s, and a more direct development from the earlier dance and show bands, was the advent of the swing bands of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and others. The associated dances, such as boogiewoogie and jitterbug, were free and improvised, and marked a notable move away from traditional formal dancing in close embrace.

The formalized dance steps and the dance bands which were so popular in the inter-war years began to lose their attraction after World War II. Two distinctive features in 1950s social dancing stand out: the continuing interest and development in Latin dancing, and the advent of rock and roll. The rumba and samba continued to be popular in the 1950s, as did Latin American dance bands like those of Edmundo Ros and Roberto Inglis. But Cuban music in the 1950s also began to be influenced by American jazz and swing, and this fusion gave rise to a different kind of rhythm which, in turn, demanded a new kind of Latin dance, the mambo, ‘a dance with one beat in every bar in which no step is taken’. As mambo music developed so did the mambo style of dancing, and the triple mambo came to form the basis of the cha cha cha.

Although interest in Latin American dancing continued into the early 1960s, it did not have the mass appeal of rock and roll. Formal dancing, in effect, was dealt a decisive blow in 1955 with the release and popularity of the film The Blackboard Jungle, featuring the song Rock around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets. When the film Rock around the Clock was released in Britain the follwoing year large numbers of teenagers danced wildly in the cinema aisles as the film was showing. This gave rise to ‘moral panic’ in the press, where concerns were raised regarding the potential bad effects of rock and roll dacing on the behaviour of young people. Black American music had a strong influence on the development of popular music and social dance in the 20th century. The roots of rock and roll are to be found in the jitterbug, the lindy hop and swing. Rock and roll dancing became more simplified and less acrobatic as it continued into the 1960s and it remained largely a partner dance.

The establishment of rock and roll signalled the arrival of youth culture as a hedonistic and powerful force in the expanding world of leisure and consumerism. The introduction of cheap and virtually unbreakable LP and 45 r.p.m. records in particular ensured the swift circulation of commercial pop music, via individuals, the jukebox and the radio stations.

The history of social dancing since the 1960s has been largely bound up with specific youth subcultures and their identification with certain popular music groups or individual vocalists. With the advent of the twist craze, popularized through the records of Chubby Checker in the early 1960s, partner dancing in the dance halls appeared to be dead, except for the final slow ‘smooch’ dance. Solo dancing became the norm for teenagers and was later accepted by other age groups. One teenage dance craze followed another, and organized dancing gave way to the cult of self-expression. In the early sixties the centre of popular musical culture and the dance styles it engendered shifted from the USA to Britain. Traditional dance bands were replaced by groups using electric guitars, electric organs and rhythm instruments. The new sounds, the Mersey sound, rhythm and blues and blue beat demanded new dances. By 1965 the twist was outdated and was supplanted by more dances of self-expression such as the blue beat and the shake and the numerous other dances that followed in their wake. The shake was closely associated with a distinct youth subculture called the mods, and the movement in its initial stages was linked to the rise to fame of pop groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Another youth culture, the rockers, did not embrace the new sounds or dances and instead favoured rock or the twist, if they danced at all. Afro-Caribbean music, particularly from Jamaica, had a significant impact on the popular music and dance scene, in the United Kingdom, from the mid-sixties through to the early eighties. Between 1969–72, for example, there were seventeen Jamaican based records in the top twenty of the popular music charts. The sounds of the blue beat, which the mods came to favour over the Mersey sound, ska, rock steady, and reggae with Bob Marley as its icon, came to be popular with various sectors of white youth culture as well as black Britons of Afro-Caribbean descent.

Dancing in the 1960s revealed a gulf between the generations. The older generation danced ballroom and Latin, jive and the twist, whereas the younger generation (aged 16–25) focussed on solo beat dances to express their individuality. The era witnessed the demise of the traditional dance halls (replaced by the discothèque) and the rise of club culture and the disc jockey who played the records for the clubbers to dance to.

The lack of formalism in social dancing in youth culture continued for most of the 1970s. The dance crazes of youth groups were closely associated with the musical style of their pop heroes. The smoothed-out rock and roll of the 1960s was recycled into glitter rock or glam rock, perhaps best exemplified in the music and style of David Bowie. The early punk rock movement, in a reaction to glam rock, found expression through earlier rock music and reggae before it took on the ‘non-music music’ style of groups like the Sex Pistols. The dance associated with the punks was called the pogo, and it consisted of jumping up and down and ‘slamming’ into dancers. In the late 1970s, however, disco music became the pre-eminent dance music. A new, more defined style of set disco dancing began to emerge, symbolized in the film Saturday Night Fever.

Dancing was more important in some youth cultures than others, and the 1980s witnessed the emergence of some significant social dance forms. Beginning in the black ghettos of New York and spread by disc jockeys like Afrika Bambaataa, break dancing and hip hop placed stress on individual skills, innovation and set moves. Exhibitionist and acrobatic in form, breakers or hip hop dancers were soon to be seen performing to rap music in the streets or the shopping malls of large western cities. Dancing is also central to rave culture, a phenomenon that burst on to the urban scene in the late 1980s, which, like disco, has its roots in urban black and gay club scenes in the USA. Ravers have no set or formal moves and tend to dance alone on the spot using sinuous body movements. The main aim is to dance continuously for long periods at a time to ‘house’ music mixed and synthesized by the disc jockey to the count of 120 to 130 beats a minute.

The late 1980s also witnessed the renewed popularity of Latin rhythms and partner dancing. First there was the snake-like sensuousness of movement characteristic of the lambada, then the tango and more recently the salsa. It seems that some 30 years after the explosion of the twist and the advent of solo self-expressive dancing, there is a resurgence of interest in learning the skills necessary for dancing with a partner.

Dance

BIBLIOGRAPHY

e: middle ages and early renaissance

f: late renaissance and early baroque, 1550–1630

g: mid- to late baroque, 1630–1730

h: 1730–1800

Dance: Bibliography

a: general

ES (‘Danza’; G. Tani and others)

A. Czerwinski: Geschichte der Tanzkunst (Leipzig, 1862/R)

F.M. Böhme: Geschichte des Tanzes in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1886/R)

G. Desrat: Dictionnaire de la danse, historique, théorique, pratique et bibliographique (Paris, 1895/R)

G. Vuillier: La danse (Paris, 1898; Eng. trans., 1898/R, as A History of Dancing)

E. Scott: Dancing in All Ages (London, 1899)

O. Bie: Der Tanz (Berlin, 1906, 3/1923)

C.J. Sharp and A.P. Oppé: The Dance: an Historical Survey of Dancing in Europe (London and New York, 1924/R)

M. von Boehn: Der Tanz (Berlin, 1925)

J. Schikowski: Geschichte des Tanzes (Berlin, 1926)

C.W. Beaumont: A Bibliography of Dancing (London, 1929/R)

V. Junk: Handbuch des Tanzes (Stuttgart, 1930/R)

R. Sonner: Musik und Tanz: vom Kulttanz zum Jazz (Leipzig, 1930)

C. Sachs: Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes (Berlin, 1933; Eng. trans., 1937/R)

P.D. Magriel: A Bibliography of Dancing (New York, 1936/R)

Dance Index [New York] (1942–8/R1970 with introduction by B. Karpel)

P. Nettl: The Story of Dance Music (New York, 1947/R)

A. Chujoy, ed.: The Dance Encyclopedia (New York, 1949, 2/1967)

M. Wood: Some Historical Dances (Twelfth to Nineteenth Century): their Manner of Performance and their Place in the Social Life of the Time (London, 1952)

M. Wood: More Historical Dances (London, 1956)

H. Kindermann: Theatergeschichte Europas (Salzburg, 1957–74, 2/1996–)

M.K. Whaples: Exoticism in Dramatic Music, 1600–1800 (diss., Indiana U., 1958)

H. Günther and H. Schäfer: Vom Schamanentanz zur Rumba (Stuttgart, 1959)

Dance Perspectives (New York, 1959–76; continued as Dance Chronicle, 1977–)

K. Petermann: Tanzbibliographie (Leipzig, 1965–81) [in 33 pts]; also pubd in 4 vols. (1971–81); index (1987) [only material in Ger. covered]

A. Machabey: La musique de danse (Paris, 1966)

F. Rust: Dance in Society (London, 1969)

Dictionary Catalog of the Dance Collection … of the Performing Arts Research Center of the New York Public Library (Boston, 1974; annual suppls., Bibliographic Guide to Dance, 1975–; CD-ROM cumulation, 1994, as Dance on Disc)

F. Otterbach: Die Geschichte der europäischen Tanzmusik (Wilhelmshaven, 1980)

G. Tani: Storia della danza dalle origini ai nostri giorni (Florence, 1983)

G. Calendoli: Storia universale della danza (Milan, 1985)

Dance: Bibliography

b: western antiquity

M. Emmanuel: Essai sur l’orchestique grecque (Paris, 1895/R; also pubd as La danse grecque antique d’après les monuments figurés, 1896/R; Eng. trans., 1916, as The Antique Greek Dance)

K. Latte: De saltationibus graecorum capita quinque (Giessen, 1913)

L. Séchan: La danse grecque antique (Paris, 1930)

E. Roos: Die tragische Orchestik im Zerrbild der altattischen Komödie (Lund, 1951)

A. Pickard-Cambridge: ‘The Chorus’, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (Oxford, 1953, rev. 2/1968 by J. Gould and D.M. Lewis, repr. 1988 with suppl. and corrections)

H. Koller: Die Mimesis in der Antike (Berne, 1954)

L.B. Lawler: The Dance in Ancient Greece (London, 1964)

G. Prudhommeau: La danse grecque antique (Paris, 1965)

G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967) [with extensive bibliography]

J.-C. Poursat: ‘Les représentations de danse armée dans la céramique attique’, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, xcii (1968), 550–615

T.B.L. Webster: The Greek Chorus (London, 1970)

J.W. Fitton: ‘Greek Dance’, Classical Quarterly, new ser., xxiii (1973), 254–74

C. Calame: Les choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque (Rome, 1977; Eng. trans., of vol.i, rev., 1997)

S.H. Lonsdale: Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion (Baltimore, 1993)

Dance: Bibliography

c: 19th century

T. Wilson: Analysis of the London Ball-Room (London, 1825)

C. Blasis: The Code of Terpsichore (London, 1828; Fr. trans., rev., 1830 by P. Gardel as Manuel complet de la danse, rev. 1866 by Lemaître as Nouveau manuel complet de la danse, 2/1884; Fr. orig., Paris, 1830, as Code complet de la danse)

G. Yates: The Ball, or A Glance at Almack’s (London, 1829)

H. Cellarius: La danse des salons (Paris, 1847, 2/1849; Eng. trans., 1847)

T. Wilson: The Art of Dancing (London, 1852)

F.M. Böhme: Geschichte des Tanzes in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1886/R)

F.A. Zorn: Grammatik der Tanzkunst (Leipzig, 1887; Eng. trans., 1905/R)

E. Scott: Dancing as an Art and Pastime (London, 1892)

L. Grove: Dancing (London, 1895)

M. Carner: The Waltz (London, 1948)

P.J.S. Richardson: The Social Dances of the Nineteenth Century in England (London, 1960)

A.H. Franks: Social Dance: a Short History (London, 1963)

F. Rust: Dance in Society (London, 1969)

See also general bibliography for §I above.

Dance: Bibliography

d: 20th century

V. and I. Castle: Modern Dancing (New York, 1914/R)

A. Lange: Arranging for a Modern Dance Orchestra (New York, 1926)

L. Stone: Harmony and Orchestration for the Modern Dance Band (London, 1935)

A. Moore: Ballroom Dancing (London, 1936, 9/1986)

V. Silvester: Modern Ballroom Dancing (London, 1927, many later edns)

V. Silvester and P.J.S. Richardson: The Art of the Ballroom (London, 1936)

P.J.S. Richardson: A History of English Ballroom Dancing, 1910–45 (London, 1946)

J.E. Marks: America Learns to Dance (New York, 1957/R)

A.H. Franks: Social Dance: a Short History (London, 1963)

L. Walker: The Wonderful Era of the Great Dance Bands (Berkeley, 1964/R)

F. Rust: Dance in Society (London, 1969)

A. McCarthy: The Dance Band Era (London, 1971)

B. Rust: The Dance Bands (London, 1972)

S. Frith: The Sociology of Rock (London, 1978)

D. Hebdidge: Subculture: the Meaning of Style (London, 1979)

M. Brake: Comparative Youth Culture (London, 1985)

P. Gilroy: There ain't no Black in the Union Jack (London, 1987)

E. Aldrich: From the Ballroom to Hell (Evanston, IL, 1991)

H.C. Ospina: ¡Salsa! (London, 1995)

M.E. Savigliano: Tango and the Political Economy of Passion (Boulder, CO, 1995)

S. Thornton: Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital (Cambridge, 1995)

G. Gore: ‘The Beat Goes On: Dance and Tribalism in Rave Culture’, Dance in the City, ed. H. Thomas (Basingstoke, 1997), 50–67

H. Thomas and N. Miller: ‘Ballroom Blitz’, ibid., 89–110

Dance: Bibliography

e: middle ages and early renaissance

(i) sources: France

Le ballet de la royne de Cessile (MS, Nancy, 1445, F-Pn fr.5699; 7 choreographies on flyleaf of G. Cousinot: Geste des noblese francoyse); ed. A. Vallet de Viriville, Chronique de la pucelle (Paris, 1859), 99

Le manuscrit dit des basses danses de la Bibliothèque de Bourgogne (MS, B-Br 9085, suggested datings 1470–1501); ed. E. Closson (Brussels, 1912/R)

Michel de Toulouse: S'ensuit l'art et instruction de bien dancer (Paris, c1488–96); facs., with bibliographical note by V. Scholderer (London, 1936/R)

Stribaldi: MS, 26 Dec 1517, Archivi Biscaretti, Turin, Mazzo 4, no.14; ed. P. Meyer, Romania, xxiii (1894), 156

A. de Arena: Ad suos compagnones studiantes (?Lyons, ?1528 and later edns); ed. and trans. J. Guthrie and M. Zorzi, Dance Research, iv/aut. (1986), 3–53

J. Moderne: S'ensuyvent plusieurs basses dances tant communes que incommunes (Lyons, c1529); see F. Lesure: ‘Danses et chansons à danser au début du XVIe siècle’, Recueil de travaux offert à M. Clovis Brunel (Paris, 1955), 176–84

T. Arbeau: Orchésographie (Langres, 1588, 2/1589/R; Eng. trans., 1948, 2/1967)

(ii) sources: England

26 choreographies in MS on flyleaf of copy in GB-SB of Johannes de Janua [G. Balb?? Catholicon (Venice, 1495); facs. and edn in Heartz (1958–63)

R. Coplande: Here Foloweth the Maner of Dauncynge of Bace Daunces after the Use of Fraunce (London, 1521); repr. as The Manner to Dance Bace Dances (Bognor Regis, 1937) facs. ed. J. Guthrie and J. Freeman (London, 1937)

(iii) sources: Spain

Cervera (Lérida), Arxiu Historic, Fonds notarial, MS 3, 3 (c1496); partly ed. F. Carreras y Candi, Folklore y costumbres de España (Barcelona, 1931–3), i, p.vii; ii, 303; see also A. Michel, Dance Observer, iv (1937), 111

(iv) sources: Italy

Domenico da Piacenza: De arte saltandi e choreas ducendii (MS, c1420, F-Pn it.972); Eng. trans. in Smith (1995)

A. Cornazano: Libro dell'arte del danzare (MS, 1455 [inc.], 1465, I-Rvat Capponiano 203); Eng. trans. by M. Inglehearn and P. Forsyth (London, 1981); Eng. trans. in Smith (1995)

Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro: Trattato della danza composto da Maestro Guglielmo, ed in parte cavato dell'opere di Maestro Domenico, Cavaliere Piacentino (MS, I-Sc Com.Cod.L.V.29); ed. C. Mazzi, La bibliofilia, xvi (1914–15), 185

Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro: De pratica seu arte tripudii vulgare opusculum (MS, Milan, 1463, F-Pn it.973; I-Fn Magl.XIX.9.88); ed. and trans. B. Sparti (Oxford, 1993) Eng. trans. also ?? in Smith (1995)

Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro: Della virtute et arte del danzare (MS, I-MOe VII.a.82); ed. G. Messori Roncaglia (Modena, 1885)

Rinaldo Rigoni: Il ballarino perfetto (Milan, ?1468), lost; see Scholderer (under Michel de Toulouse, above), p.1

Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro and Domenico da Ferrara: Otto basse danze (MS, Foligno, Seminario vescovile, B.V.14); ed. M. Faloci Pulignani (Foligno, 1887)

Giorgio: Ghuglielmj ebrej pisauriensis depraticha seuarte trjpudii vulghare opuschulum (MS, US-NYp Cia Fornaroli Collection); ed. A. Francalanci, Basler Jb für historische Musik praxis, xiv (1990), 87–179

Giovanni Ambrosio [? Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro]: De pratica seu arte tripudii vulgare opusculum (MS, F-Pn it.476)

Libro de bali Ghuglielmus ebreis pisaurensis (MS, I-Fl f.Antinori 13)

‘Il Papa’: Manoscritto di balletti composti da Giovannino, Il Lanzino e Il Papa (MS, early 16th century, US-NYp Cia Fornaroli Collection); transcr. E.A. Cain, ed. J. Casazza: The ‘Il Papa Manuscript’ (1997) 〈www.nypl.org/research/lpa/dan/ilpapa.htm〉

L. Compasso: Libro della gagliarda (Florence, 1560); ed. B. Sparti (Freiburg, 1995)

(v) sources: Germany

Die wellschen tenntz (MS, 1517, D-Ngm 8842)

(vi) other studies

ReeseMMA

P. Lacroix: La danse macabre: histoire fantastique du 15e siècle (Paris, 1832)

J.A. Schmeller, ed.: Des böhmischen Herrn Leo's von Rožmital … Reise durch die Abendlande 1465–1467 (Stuttgart, 1844; Eng. trans., 1957)

K. Bartsch, ed.: Romances et pastourelles françaises des XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Leipzig, 1870/R)

P. Lacroix: Moeurs, usages et costumes au Moyen Age et à l’époque de la Renaissance (Paris, 1871, 5/1877; Eng. trans. 1874)

Q. von Leitner: Freydal: des Kaisers Maximilian I Turniere und Mummereien (Vienna, 1880–82)

F. Godefroy: Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française (Paris, 1880–1902/R)

F.M. Böhme: Geschichte des Tanzes in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1886/R)

A. Luzio: I precettori d'Isabella d'Este (Ancona, 1887)

E. Motta: ‘Musici alla corte degli Sforza’, Archivio storico lombardo, xiv (1887), 29–64, 278–340, 514–61; pubd separately (Milan, 1887/R)

A. Schultz: Deutsches Leben im XIV. und XV. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 1892)

G. Ungarelli: Le vecchie danze italiane (Rome, 1894/R)

E. Solmi: ‘La festa del paradiso di Leonardo da Vinci et Bernardo Bellincioni’, Archivio storico lombardo, xxxi (1904), 75–89

H. Abert: ‘Die Musikästhetik der Echecs amoureux’, SIMG, vi (1904–5), 346–55; see also Romanische Forschungen, xv (1905), 884–925

J. Bédier: ‘Les plus anciennes danses françaises’, Revue des deux mondes, 5th period, xxxi (1906), 398–424

E. Male: ‘L'idée de la mort et la danse macabre’, Revue des deux mondes, 5th period, xxxii (1906), 647–79

H. Quittard: ‘Deux fêtes musicales au XVe et XVIe siècles’, ZIMG, viii (1906–7), 464–71

P. Aubry: Estampies et danses royales (Paris, 1907/R)

E. Cotarelo y Mori: Colección de entremeses, loas, bailes, jácaras y mojigangas desde fines del siglo XVI a mediados del XVII (Madrid, 1911)

S. Debenedetti, ed.: ‘Il “Sollazzo” e il “Saporetto” con altre rime di Simone Prudenzani di Orvieto’, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, suppl.xv (1913)

L. Gougaud: ‘La danse dans les églises’, Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, xv (1914), 5–22, 229–45

J. Wolf: ‘Die Tänze des Mittelalters’, AMw, i (1918–19), 10–42

H.J. Moser: ‘Stantipes und Ductia’, ZMw, ii (1919–20), 194–206

P. Nettl: ‘Die Bergamask’, ZMw, v (1922–3), 291–5

A. Pirro: ‘Deux danses anciennes’, RdM, v (1924), 7–16

F. Aeppli: Die wichtigsten Ausdrücke für das Tanzen in den romanischen Sprachen (Halle, 1925)

G. Cohen: Le livre de conduite du régisseur … pour le Mystère de la Passion, joué à Mons en 1501 (Paris and Strasbourg, 1925)

W. Merian: Der Tanz in den deutschen Tabulaturbüchern (Leipzig, 1927/R)

O. Kinkeldey: ‘A Jewish Dancing Master of the Renaissance (Guglielmo Ebreo)’, Studies in Jewish Bibliography … in Memory of Abraham Solomon Freidus (New York, 1929), 329–72; repr. separately (Brooklyn, NY, 1966)

J. Handschin: ‘Über Estampie und Sequenz’, ZMw, xii (1929–30), 1–20; xiii (1930–31), 113–32

T. Gérold: ‘Les airs de danse’, EMDC, II/v (1930), 3082–120

P. Verrier: Le vers français (Paris, 1931–2)

C. Sachs: Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes (Berlin, 1933; Eng. trans., 1937/R)

O. Gombosi: ‘The Cultural and Folkloristic Background of the Folía’, PAMS 1940, 88–95

O. Gombosi: ‘About Dance and Dance Music in the Late Middle Ages’, MQ, xxvii (1941), 289–305

S. Sumberg: The Nuremberg Schembart Carnival (New York, 1941)

E.L. Backman: Den religiösa dansen inom kristen kyrke och folkmedizin (Stockholm, 1945; Eng. trans., 1952/R)

A. Michel: ‘The Earliest Dance-Manuals’, Medievalia et humanistica, iii (1945), 117–31

J. Chailley: ‘Un document nouveau sur la danse ecclésiastique’, AcM, xxi (1949), 18–24

M.F. Bukofzer: ‘A Polyphonic Basse Dance of the Renaissance’, Studies in Medieval & Renaissance Music (New York, 1950), 190–216

J.M. Clark: The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Glasgow, 1950) [with full bibliography]; repr. in Death and the Visual Arts (New York, 1977)

R. Torniai: La danza sacra (Rome, 1951)

G. Reaney: ‘Concerning the Origins of the Rondeau, Virelai and Ballade Forms’, MD, vi (1952), 155–66

N. Sapegno, ed.: Poeti minori del Trecento (Milan, 1952)

W. Wiora and W. Salmen: ‘Die Tanzmusik im deutschen Mittelalter’, Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, l (1953), 164–87

Les fêtes de la Renaissance [I]: Royaumont 1955

P. Nettl: ‘Die Tänze Jean d'Estrées’, Mf, viii (1955), 437–45

I. Brainard: Die Choreographie der Hoftänze in Burgund, Frankreich und Italien im 15. Jahrhundert (diss., U. of Göttingen, 1956)

F. Gennrich: ‘Die Repertoire-Theorie’, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur, lxvi (1956), 81–108

L.H. Moe: Dance Music in Printed Italian Lute Tablatures from 1507 to 1611 (diss., Harvard U., 1956)

Fêtes et cérémonies au temps de Charles Quint: Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent and Liège 1957

O. Kinkeldey: ‘Dance Tunes of the Fifteenth Century’, Instrumental Music: Cambridge, MA, 1957, 3–30, 89–152

P. Nettl: ‘Die Moresca’, AMw, xiv (1957), 165–74

N.C. Carpenter: Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities (Norman, OK, 1958/R)

D. Heartz: ‘The Basse Dance: its Evolution circa 1450 to 1550’, AnnM, vi (1958–63), 287–340

H.M. Brown: Music in the French Secular Theater, 1400–1550 (Cambridge, MA, 1963)

J.L. Jackman, ed.: Fifteenth Century Basse Dances, WE, vi (1964)

F. Crane: ‘The Derivation of Some Fifteenth-Century Basse-Danse Tunes’, AcM, xxxvii (1965), 179–88

S. Orgel: The Jonsonian Masque (Cambridge, MA, 1965)

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), 359–75

D. Heartz: ‘Hoftanz and Basse Dance: Towards a Reconstruction of 15th-Century Dance Music’, JAMS, xix (1966), 13–36

J. ten Bokum: De dansen van het trecento: critische uitgave van de instrumentale dansen uit hs. London BM add.29987 (Utrecht, 1967, 2/1976)

F. Crane: Materials for the Study of the Fifteenth Century Basse Danse (New York, 1968)

P.P. Domokos: ‘Der Moriskentanz in Europa und in der ungarischen Tradition’, SMH, x (1968), 229–311

P. Dronke: The Medieval Lyric (London, 1968, 3/1996)

R. Meylan: L’énigme de la musique des basses danses du quinzième siècle (Berne, 1968)

F. Ghisi: ‘Danza e strumenti musicali nella pittura senese del Trecento’, L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento: Convegno II: Certaldo and Florence 1969 [L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento, iii (Certaldo, 1970)], 83–104

H. Wagenaar-Nolthenius: ‘Estampie/Stantipes/Stampita’, ibid., 399–410

B. Rudolph: ‘The Medieval Tanzhaus: a Checklist of Writings’, Theatre Documentation, ii/1–2 (1969–70), 121–3

I. Brainard: ‘Bassedanse, Bassadanza and Ballo in the 15th Century’, Dance History Research: Perspectives from Related Arts and Disciplines, ed. J.W. Kealiinohomoku (New York, 1970), 64–79

A. Harding: An Investigation into the Use and Meaning of Medieval German Dancing Terms (Göppingen, 1973)

B. Pescerelli: ‘Una sconosciuta redazione del trattato di danza di Guglielmo Ebreo’, RIM, ix (1974), 48–55

J.M. Ward: ‘The Maner of Dauncynge’, EMc, iv (1976), 127–42

I. Brainard: The Art of Courtly Dancing in the Early Renaissance, ii: The Practice of Courtly Dancing (West Newton, MA, 1981)

W.T. Marrocco: Inventory of 15th Century Bassedanze, Balli & Balletti in Italian Dance Manuals (New York, 1981)

F. Garavini: ‘Le traité de danse d'un étudiant provençal autour de 1520: Antonius Arena’, Recherche en danse, no.3 (1984), 5–14

I. Brainard: ‘L'arte del danzare in transizione: un documento tedesco sconosciuto sulla danza di corte’, Danza italiana, iii (1985), 77–89

M. Padovan: ‘Da Dante a Leonardo: la danza italiana attraverso le fonti storiche’, Danza italiana, iii (1985), 5–37

J. Rimmer: ‘Dance Elements in Trouvère Repertory’, Dance Research, iii/2 (1985), 23–34

B. Sparti: ‘The 15th-Century Balli Tunes: a New Look’, EMc, xiv (1986), 346–57

J. Ward: ‘The English Measure’, ibid., 15–21

A. Pontremoli and P. La Rocca: Il ballare lombardo: teoria e prassi coreutica nella festa di corte del XV secolo (Milan, 1987)

T.J. McGee: ‘Medieval Dances: Matching the Repertory with Grocheio's Descriptions’, JM, vii (1989), 498–517

J. Rimmer: ‘Carole, Rondeau and Branle in Ireland, 1300–1800, Part I: The Walling of New Ross and Dance Texts in the Red Book of Ossory’, Dance Research, vii/1 (1989), 20–46

K. Varti: ‘Villon's Three Ballades du temps jadis, and the Danse Macabre’, Littera et sensus: Essays on Form and Meaning in Medieval French Literature Presented to John Fox, ed. D.A. Trotter (Exeter, 1989), 73–93

M. Padovan, ed.: Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro e la danza nelle corti italiane del XV secolo: Pesaro 1987 (Pisa, 1990)

J.-C. Schmitt: ‘The Rationale of Gestures in the West: Third to Thirteenth Centuries’, A Cultural History of Gesture, ed. J. Bremmer and H. Roodenburg (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 59–70

E. Stanley: ‘Dance, Dancers and Dancing in Anglo-Saxon England’, Dance Research, ix/2 (1991), 18–31

D.R. Wilson: The Steps Used in Court Dancing in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge, 1992, enlarged 2/1998)

A. Arcangeli: ‘Dance under Trial: the Moral Debate, 1200–1600’, Dance Research, xii/2 (1994), 127–55

I. Brainard: ‘Even Jove Sometimes Nods’, Dance Chronicle, xviii (1995), 163–9

A.W. Smith: Fifteenth-Century Dance and Music: Twelve Transcribed Italian Treatises and Collections in the Tradition of Domenico da Piacenza (Stuyvesant, NY, 1995)

B. Sparti: ‘Rôti bouilli Take Two: “El gioioso fiorito”’, Studi musicali, xxiv (1995), 231–61

B. Sparti: ‘Would you Like to Dance this Frottola? Choreographic Concordances in Two Early Sixteenth-Century Tuscan Sources’, MD, 1 (1996), 135–65

I. Brainard: ‘Italian Dance Documents of the Fifteenth Century’, Dance Chronicle, xxi (1998), 285–97

Dance: Bibliography

f: late renaissance and early baroque, 1550–1630

BrownI

SolertiMBD

E.W. Naylor: Shakespeare and Music (London, 1896, 2/1931/R)

P. Reyher: Les masques anglais: étude sur les ballets et la vie de cour en Angleterre 1512–1640 (Paris, 1909/R)

M.S. Steele: Plays and Masques at Court during the Reigns of Elizabeth, James I and Charles I, 1558–1642 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1926/R)

W. Merian: Der Tanz in der deutschen Tabulaturbüchern (Leipzig, 1927/R)

J. Dieckmann: Die in deutscher Lautentabulatur überlieferten Tänze des 16. Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 1931)

F. Ghisi: Feste musicali della Firenze medicea (1480–1589) (Florence, 1939/R)

M. Dolmetsch: Dances of England and France from 1450 to 1600 (London, 1949/R)

La musique instrumentale de la Renaissance: Paris 1954

N.C. Carpenter: Rabelais and Music (Chapel Hill, NC, 1954)

J.P. Cutts: ‘Jacobean Masque and Stage Music’, ML, xxxv (1954), 185–200

M. Dolmetsch: Dances of Spain and Italy from 1400 to 1600 (London, 1954/R)

Les fêtes de la Renaissance [I]: Royaumont 1955

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)

Fêtes et cérémonies au temps de Charles Quint: Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent and Liège 1957

D. Heartz: Sources and Forms of the French Instrumental Dance in the Sixteenth Century (diss., Harvard U., 1957)

A. Nicoll: The Elizabethans (Cambridge, 1957)

J.P. Cutts: La musique de scène de la troupe de Shakespeare (Paris, 1959, 2/1971)

R.L. Weaver: ‘Sixteenth-Century Instrumentation’, MQ, xlvii (1961), 363–78

S. Orgel: The Jonsonian Masque (Cambridge, MA, 1965)

W. Apel: ‘Solo Instrumental Music’, The Age of Humanism, 1540–1630, NOHM, iv (1968), 602–708

E.H. Meyer: ‘Concerted Instrumental Music’, ibid., 550–601

D. Kämper: Studien zur instrumentalen Ensemblemusik des 16. Jahrhunderts in Italien, AnMc, no.10 (1970)

J. Sutton: ‘Reconstruction of 16th-Century Dance’, Dance History Research: Perspectives from Related Arts and Disciplines, ed. J.W. Kealiinohomoku (New York, 1970), 56–63

H.M. Brown: Sixteenth-Century Instrumentation: the Music for the Florentine Intermedii, MSD, xxx (1973)

J. Ward: ‘Newly Devis'd Measures for Jacobean Masques’, AcM, lx (1988), 111–42

P. Walls: Music in the English Courtly Masque, 1604–1640 (Oxford, 1996)

J. Nevile: ‘Dance in Early Tudor England: an Italian Connection?’, EMc, xxvi (1998), 230–44

Dance: Bibliography

g: mid- to late baroque, 1630–1730

for primary sources see Schwartz and Schlundt (1987), Little and Marsh (1992) and Lancelot (1996)

AnthonyFB

SartoriB

W. Chappell: Popular Music of the Olden Time (London, 1855–9/R as The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time, rev. 2/1893/R by H.E. Wooldridge as Old English Popular Music)

J. Ecorcheville: Vingt suites d'orchestre du XVIIe siècle français (Paris, 1906/R)

P. Reyher: Les masques anglais: étude sur les ballets et la vie de cour en Angleterre 1512–1640 (Paris, 1909/R)

H. Prunières: Le ballet de cour en France avant Benserade et Lully (Paris, 1914/R)

L. de La Laurencie: Les créateurs de l'opéra français (Paris, 1921, 2/1930/R)

P. Nettl: ‘Die Wiener Tanzkomposition in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, SMw, viii (1921), 45–175

P. Nettl: ‘Beitrag zur Geschichte der Tanzmusik im 17. Jahrhundert’, ZMw, iv (1921–2), 257–65

J. Tiersot: La musique dans la comédie de Molière (Paris, 1922)

A. Levinson: ‘Notes sur le ballet au XVIIe siècle: les danseurs de Lully’, ReM, vi/5 (1924–5), 44–55

M.S. Steele: Plays and Masques at Court during the Reigns of Elizabeth, James I and Charles I, 1558–1642 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1926/R)

W. Storz: Der Aufbau der Tänze in den Opern und Balletts Lully's vom musikalischen Standpunkte aus betrachtet (Göttingen, 1928)

F. Böttger: Die ‘comédie-ballet’ von Molière-Lully (Berlin, 1931)

P. Nettl: ‘Equestrian Ballets of the Baroque Period’, MQ, xix (1933), 74–83

P. Mélèse: Le théâtre et le public à Paris sous Louis XIV, 1659–1715 (Paris, 1934)

P.A. Scholes: The Puritans and Music in England and New England (London, 1934/R)

G. Pietzsch: ‘Dresdener Hoffeste vom 16.–18. Jahrhundert’, Musik und Bild: Festschrift Max Seiffert, ed. H. Besseler (Kassel, 1938), 83–6

C.I. Silin: Benserade and his Ballets de cour (Baltimore, 1940/R)

M. Dean-Smith and E.J. Nicol: ‘“The Dancing Master”: 1651–1728’, JEFDSS, iv (1940–5), 131–45, 167–79, 211–31

O. Gombosi: ‘Some Musical Aspects of the English Court Masque’, JAMS, i/3 (1948), 3–19

J.S. Manifold: The Music in English Drama, from Shakespeare to Purcell (London, 1956)

M.J. Dean-Smith, ed.: Playford's English Dancing Master 1651 (London, 1957) [facs. with introduction, bibliography and notes]

F. Feldmann: ‘Historische Tänze der musikalischen und choreographischen Weltliteratur, i: Von der Basse danse bis zur Allemande, ii: Von der Courante bis zum Menuett’, Volkstanz im Tanzarchiv, iv (1960), 65; v (1961), 1

J.P. Cunningham: ‘The Country Dance: Early References’, JEFDSS, ix (1960–64), 148–54

A. Nicoll: The World of the Harlequin (Cambridge, 1963/R)

M.-F. Christout: The Court Ballet in France, 1615–1641, Dance Perspectives, no.20 (1964)

J.P. Cunningham: Dancing in the Inns of Court (London, 1965)

P. Aldrich: Rhythm in Seventeenth-Century Italian Monody (New York, 1966)

C.M. Simpson: The British Broadside Ballad and its Music (New Brunswick, NJ, 1966)

K.H. Taubert: Höfische Tänze: ihre Geschichte und Choreographie (Mainz, 1968)

M. Ellis: ‘Inventory of the Dances of Jean-Baptiste Lully’, RMFC, ix (1969), 21–55

J. Sasportes: Feasts and Folias: the Dance in Portugal, Dance Perspectives, no.42 (1970)

J.J.S. Mráček: ‘An Unjustly Neglected Source for the Study and Performance of Seventeenth-Century Instrumental Dance Music’, IMSCR XI: Copenhagen 1972, 563–75

M.E. Little: ‘French Court Dance in Germany at the Time of Johann Sebastian Bach: La Bourgogne in Paris and Leipzig’, IMSCR XII: Berkeley 1977, 730–34

R. Kunzle: ‘In Search of l'Académie Royale de Danse’, York Dance Review, vii (1978), 3–15

W. Hilton: Dance of Court and Theater: the French Noble Style, 1690–1725, ed. C. Gaynor (Princeton, NJ, 1981/R1997 in Dance and Music of Court and Theater)

‘Introduction à la danse ancienne’, Goûts réunis (1982) [special issue]

A.L. Witherell: Louis Pécour's 1700 ‘Recueil de danses’ (Ann Arbor, 1983)

R. McBride: ‘Ballet: a Neglected Key to Molière's Theatre’, Dance Research, ii/1 (1984), 3–18

R. Harris-Warrick: ‘Ballroom Dancing at the Court of Louis XIV’, EMc, xiv (1986), 41–9

R. Harris-Warrick: ‘Contexts for Choreographies: Notated Dances Set to the Music of Jean-Baptiste Lully’, Jean-Baptiste Lully: Saint Germain-en-Laye and Heidelberg 1987, 433–55

M.E. Little: ‘Problems of Repetition and Continuity in the Dance Music of Lully's “Ballet des arts”’, ibid., 423–32

J.L. Schwartz and C.L. Schlundt: French Court Dance and Dance Music: a Guide to Primary Source Writings, 1643–1789 (Stuyvesant, NY, 1987)

R. Harris-Warrick: ‘La mariée: the History of a French Court Dance’, Jean-Baptiste Lully and the Music of the French Baroque (Cambridge, 1989), 239–58

The Marriage of Music and Dance: London 1991

E. Kougioumtzoglou-Roucher: Aux origines de la danse classique: le vocabulaire de la ‘belle danse’ (diss., U. of Paris XIII, 1991)

C.H. Russell: ‘Lully and French Dance in Imperial Spain: the Long Road from Versailles to Veracruz’, Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars (Miami, 1991), 145–61

M.E. Little and C.G. Marsh: La danse noble: an Inventory of Dances and Sources (Williamstown, MA, 1992)

M. Franko: Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body (Cambridge, 1993)

R. Harris-Warrick: ‘Interpreting Pendulum Markings for French Baroque Dances’, Historical Performance, vi (1993), 9–22

R. Harris-Warrick and C.G. Marsh: Musical Theatre at the Court of Louis XIV: ‘Le mariage de la Grosse Cathos’ (Cambridge, 1994)

M. Laizé: ‘Une application de l’étude du pendule: la mesure du tempo dans les airs de mouvement français’, Le mouvement en musique à l’époque baroque, ed. H. Lacombe (Metz, 1996), 35

F. Lancelot: La belle dance: catalogue raisonné (Paris, 1996)

J.-P. Montagnier: ‘Modèles chorégraphiques dans les grands et petits motets français’, Le mouvmeent en musique à l’époque baroque, ed. H. Lacombe (Metz, 1996), 141

B. Sparti: ‘La “danza barocca” è soltanto francese?’, Studi musicali, xxv (1996), 283–302

R. Ralph, ed.: Dance to Honour Kings: London 1996 [Dance Research, xv/2 (1997)]

B. Coeyman: ‘Social Dance in the 1668 Feste de Versailles: Architecture and Performance Context’, EMc, xxvi (1998), 264–85

R. Harris-Warrick: ‘The Phrase Structure of Lully's Dance Music’, Lully Studies (Cambridge, forthcoming)

Dance: Bibliography

h: 1730–1800

for primary sources see Schwartz and Schlundt (1987), Little and Marsh (1992) and Lancelot (1996)

AnthonyFB

MGG2 (‘Country Dance, Contredanse’; S. Dahms)

K. Tomlinson: The Art of Dancing (London, 1735)

G. Bickham: An Easy Introduction to Dancing (London, 1738)

J. Mattheson: Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739/R); Eng. trans. of chap.13 as ‘Categories and Characteristics of Melodies’, Bach, ii/4 (1971), 38

C.G. Hänsel: Allerneueste Anweisung zur äusserlichen Moral (Leipzig, 1755)

J.M. de Chavanne: Principes du menuet (Luxembourg, 1767)

B. Guillaume: Almanach dansant, ou positions et attitudes de l'allemande (Paris, 1770)

G. Gallini: A Treatise on the Art of Dancing (London, 1762/R)

C. von Zangen: Etwas über das Walzen (Wetzlar, 1782)

Dubois: Principes de l'allemande (Paris, 1791)

A. Simon: Polnische Elemente in der deutschen Musik bis zur Zeit der Wiener Klassike (Zürich, 1916)

P. Nettl: Musik und Tanz bei Casanova (Prague, 1924)

H. Dorabialska: Polonez przed Chopinem [The polonaise before Chopin] (Warsaw, 1938)

E. Reeser: De geschiedenis van de wals (Amsterdam, 1949; Eng. trans., 1947)

H. Besseler: ‘Einflüsse der Contratanzmusik auf Joseph Haydn’, Konferenz zum Andenken Joseph Haydns: Budapest 1959, 25

P. Nettl: Mozart und der Tanz (Zürich, 1960)

P. Nettl: The Dance in Classical Music (New York, 1963)

S.S. Ritcheson: Feuillet's Choréographie, and its Implications in the Society of France and England, 1700 (diss., Ohio State U., 1965)

K.H. Taubert: Höfische Tänze: ihre Geschichte und Choreographie (Mainz, 1968)

S. Spackman Wynne: The Charms of Complaisance: the Dance in England in the Early Eighteenth Century (diss., Ohio State U., 1968)

J.-M. Guilcher: La contredanse et les renouvellements de la danse française (Paris, 1969)

W. Steinbeck: Das Menuett in der Instrumentalmusik Joseph Haydns (Munich, 1973)

M. Mullins: ‘Dance and Society in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century’, MMA, viii (1975), 118–41

W.J. Allanbrook: Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: ‘Le nozze di Figaro’ and ‘Don Giovanni’ (Chicago, 1983)

E. Aldrich: ‘The Menuet Alive and Well in 1800: Four German Dance Manuals’, Society of Dance History Scholars VII; Towson, MD, 1984, ed. C.L. Schlundt (n.p., 1984), 53–62

S.B. Reichart: The Influence of Eighteenth-Century Social Dance on the Viennese Classical Style (diss., CUNY, 1984)

C.G. Marsh: French Court Dance in England, 1706–1740: a Study of the Sources (diss., CUNY, 1985)

P.M. Ranum: ‘Les “caractères” des danses françaises’, RMFC, xxiii (1985), 45–70

J. Sutton: ‘The Minuet: an Elegant Phoenix’, Dance Chronicle, viii (1985), 119–52

I. Brainard: ‘New Dances for the Ball: the Annual Collections of France and England in the 18th Century’, EMc, xiv (1986), 164–73

R.M. Isherwood: Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New York, 1986)

J. Rimmer: ‘Dance and Dance Music in the Netherlands in the 18th Century’, EMc, xiv (1986), 209–19

J.L. Schwartz and C.L. Schlundt: French Court Dance and Dance Music: a Guide to Primary Source Writings, 1643–1789 (Stuyvesant, NY, 1987)

S. Dahms, ed.: Tanzkultur der Mozartzeit, Institut für Musikwissenschaft, U. of Salzburg, 4 Feb – 1 March 1991 (Salzburg, 1991) [exhibition catalogue]

M.E. Little and N. Jenne: Dance and the Music of J.S. Bach (Bloomington, IN, 1991)

M.E. Little and C.G. Marsh: La danse noble: an Inventory of Dances and Sources (Williamstown, MA, 1992)

W. Malloch: ‘The Minuets of Haydn and Mozart: Goblins or Elephants?’, EMc, xxi (1993), 437–44

M. Goff: ‘Dancing-Masters in Early Eighteenth-Century London’, Historical Dance, iii/3 (1994), 17–23

J. Thorp and K. Pierce: ‘Taste and Ingenuity: Three English Chaconnes of the Early Eighteenth Century’, ibid., 3–16

I. Alm: ‘Operatic Ballroom Scenes and the Arrival of French Social Dance in Venice’, Studi musicali, xxv (1996), 345

F. Lancelot: La belle dance: catalogue raisonné (Paris, 1996)

S. Dahms: ‘Nochmals Mozarts Konzert mit dem “Strassburger”’, Mozart Studien, vii (1997), 171–82