Air no. 3 in rondeau

To demonstrate how easily designs for social dance music can be (and almost certainly were) manipulated to create different sequences, here is Bacquoy-Guedon's Air no. 3 [see previous post] reconstructed: (1) to expand the opening section to a 16mm theme, a period whose antecedent is the original 8-bar period and whose consequent alters the ending to form a perfect authentic cadence (PAC); (2) to create the five-part rondeau design, ABACA, that is frequently found in French contredanse publications, especially later in the 18th century. My version differs from those of Clarchies in that section C is in the original key, where a trio-like minor-key strain would be more likely. It does, however, introduce some chromaticism (in F-nat5) and is an unusual length (12 bars rather than 8). With all the repeats included, and assuming one second per bar, this rondeau design yields over two minutes of music.

Other examples of this kind of formal manipulation may be found in chapter 2 of my PDF essay Dance Designs in 18th and Early 19th Century Music: link.     [NOTE: link updated 6-09-16]

Menuet history in Bacquoy-Guedon's treatise

Today's post is a complement to the "gavotte history" of eighteenth-century social dance. Already in the court of Louis XIV, a distinction was made between the solo or couple dance of the menuet and the group dance of the contredanse. The first strongly emphasized individual skills and performance, whereas the second emphasized group figures. Under Louis XV, the menuet started to lose favor, becoming a more or less perfunctory beginning to a ball whose main focus was the contredanse. (Richard Semmens, The bals publics at the Paris Opéra in the Eighteenth Century)

In Bacquoy-Guedon's treatise, the musical examples begin with six "Airs, servant pour exerçer à la mesure du minuet." These are followed by six pieces labeled "menuet," the first four of which have minor-key trios. Together, these 12 pieces chart a history of the dance's music from the seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century. Bacquoy-Guedon's commentary on these examples starts on [p. 29 of the treatise].

The first two menuets use an antiquated 3/2 meter (something one rarely sees even in Lully), and their first strains differ in design: sentence in no. 1 and antecedent-continuation in no. 2. The third and fourth airs have an Italianate motivic density that produces an ambiguous presentation-consequent pair in no. 3 but a straightforward sentence in no. 4.

 The introduction of eighth-note figures in the sixth air makes it stylistically almost indistinguishable from the first menuet. The opening strains of the fifth and sixth airs, menuets 1-4, and their trios, are all cast in the hybrid antecedent-continuation design, strongly suggesting the eighteenth century turn toward a conventionalized design for the menuet.

 Only in the fourth menuet does the sentence re-emerge (or perhaps presentation-consequent, depending on how you interpret bars 5-6). Its trio copies the design, as does menuet no. 5, before the conventional antecedent-continuation design reappears in no. 6.