Menuet series 2-2c: Pointel's Recuiel des Dances (Amsterdam, 1688)

For sake of comparison with the 15 menuets discussed yesterday, here are five other pieces from Antoine Pointel's Recuiel des Dances. These were chosen more or less randomly from several early pages—with somewhat awkward consequences, as we shall see.

The first has an antecedent+continuation design in the first strain, a design I frankly expected to find more often in the menuets, certainly more than 1 out of 15. In this instance the continuation phrase modulates, which is rare enough in the contredanse literature that one suspects the piece is actually "borrowed" from somewhere else. As indeed turns out to be case. Ironically, given the context of this series of posts, "Plaisir" is taken from Lully: the penultimate number in the Prologue to Phaëton (1683), the opening of which is reproduced below Pointel's score (adapted from Nicholas Sceaux's modern notation). The single pick-up note and consistent two-bar groups suggest the bourrée.

"Qu'a L'Envy" turns out to be another borrowing from Lully, this time the chorus in Acis et Galatée, Act II, scene 6 (1686). Clearly a gavotte en rondeau, Pointel's version follows the original closely, deleting only the flute flourishes that punctuate each phrase. In this instance, the first strain—the rondeau theme—is a true 4-bar theme in Lully's opera; there is no repetition, no additional text. In Pointel's version, we assume that the first strain is meant to be repeated, given the sign at the end of the first system.

"Dite Moy Ianeton" is a much simpler tune. At 4+8 it fits the (presumably) older type that has been a focus of discussion in these recent posts: an antecedent-like phrase that would generate a period if one includes its repetition. An assumption of an 8+8 design by musicians and dancers both seems very likely, given that this is obviously a gavotte—in the older notation that begins with beat 1 rather than beat 3. The gavotte was much given to very square designs, and eventually (by 1730, probably earlier) became overwhelmingly the type of the 2/4 contredanse.

Another simple tune, "L'Escossoise" is a jig in three-bar phrases, a rarety that speaks to its age by 1688. Within this constraint, the first strain is a clear antecedent-consequent period.

"L'Argentine" is another jig with a 4+4 period design in the first strain, but with an unusual move to III in the antecedent (see bar 4). The modal touches throughout suggest, again, that this tune is considerably older than its publication by Pointel in 1688.

What did we learn from this survey of random items? Perhaps mainly the fact of the randomness once we leave the confines of the named menuets. That in itself is nothing odd—anthologies from Playford on into the many in the 19th century draw on a wide variety of sources.

We can say that these five additional numbers confirm—indeed, magnify the significance of—the several, not single, options for the first strain: here we have encountered virtually all the possible options, from a true 4-bar theme to the 8-bar period that is barely more than the four bars repeated to a 6-bar period to a "true" 8-bar period with non-tonic close in the antecedent. ("True" here, of course, means the cliché of the period in the later 18th century.)

Menuet series 2-2b: Pointel's Recuiel des Dances (Amsterdam, 1688)

In an earlier post (link), I quoted Rebecca Harris-Warwick's historical generalization about dances in Lully operas: 

Lully [was not] alone in [his] flexible approach to the construction of dances; seventeenth-century dance music in general exhibits a much freer approach to phrase structures than does the dance music of the eighteenth century, one that embraces irregularity and sees square phrasing as only one possibility among many. The notion that stretching a four-bar phrase into six represents a deliberate distortion of an underlying dance pattern may be tenable in regard to a Haydn minuet, but not to one by Lully. (55-56).

Antoine Pointel's anthology (see yesterday's post for more information) was published in 1688 and provides a good, contemporaneous foil to the repertoire that Harris-Warwick examines. I will begin with the fifteen menuets that can be found among the sixty six numbers in the volume.

In the table below, the first column is the page on which the treble voice appears (a and b signify upper and lower parts of a page). The second column is the number of bars in the piece, where the first number is the first strain and subsequent numbers are the second and any later strains. The third column identifies the design of the first strain, and the fourth column adds qualifying notes.

Page	bars	first strain	Notes
4	8 + 8	Period	IAC
6a	8+8	Period	IAC; almost 4 bar theme repeated
6b	8+8	Period	IAC; almost 4 bar theme repeated
8a	8+10	Period	IAC; almost 4 bar theme repeated
8b	6+12	Period	IAC
10a	8+8	Period	PAC
10b	8+8	Ant-cont	Close on V
12a	8+8+8	Period	Almost 4 bar theme repeated; final 8 is a reprise (dal segno)
12b	6+6+6+6+6	Period	PAC; overall 5-part rondo design
14a	8+12	Period	HC; almost 4 bar theme repeated
42	8+4+8	Period	Transposed opening for consequent; final 8 is a reprise (dal segno)
62	8+4+8	Period	Almost 4 bar theme repeated; antecedent closes on ^1
66	8+16	Period	Ends with HC
68	8+12	Period	Ends with HC
70	8+8	Period	Ends with IAC

Clearly, common social dance practices relied heavily on clear-cut and simple designs, even in menuets. It is hardly a surprise; we see much the same thing in Playford's English Dancing Master, which was first published in 1651 and had reached its seventh edition by 1686. Only two of Pointel's fifteen menuets use the alternative six-bar (3+3) pattern in the first strain, and those two follow through on it consistently in the second and later strains. 

Playford's collection is dominated by what I call the "4-bar theme," where the first strain consists of a single phrase and we presume to get the effect of a period theme with the repetition. We saw several of these in my earlier Lully menuet posts. The result, as I noted there, is confusion between levels of the design. Here is an example, a dance that first appeared in Playford's 7th edition:

The notation is from Frank Kidson's Old English Country Dances (1890). He calls this "an exceedingly fine and marked air of Charles the Second's time." It reveals nicely the problem of the 4-bar theme, here a clear antecedent phrase except that it ends with a PAC (the after-beat elaborations in bar 4 do help a bit to blunt the effect). 

In Pointel's Recuiel, the first strains are written out as periods, but, as the examples below show, the amount of variation between antecedent and consequent is so minimal that the kinship with the 4-bar theme is obvious.

As I have written multiple times already in blog posts and in essays published on Texas Scholar Works, the published versions of these dances were only starting points for performance and dance—I have compared them to lead sheets. A period effect would be increased if the piece is texted -- as did happen with "The 29th of May," for example, but with a good many other tunes in Playford, as well.

Menuet series 2-2a: Pointel's Recuiel des Dances (Amsterdam, 1688)

Antoine Pointel fled France for the Calvinist Netherlands in 1685. In Amsterdam he quickly established himself as a successful printer. The Deusiesme recuiel des dances et contre-dances was published in 1688. A translation of its complete title is "Second Anthology of Dances and Contradances appropriate for performance by all manner of instruments. By various authors." Pointel gives his first name as "Antony" on the title page.

Its sixty six numbers (table of contents at the end of this post) place a treble melody on the left-hand page with a bass on the right-hand page. The bass has scant figures and is marked "continuo."

Here is an example -- I have positioned the two parts vertically for readibility.

For reasons unknown, the table of contents as given on its IMSLP page (link) is almost entirely wrong. I have assembled a contents list from the file itself; that is given below. In tomorrow's post, I will begin discussion of the fifteen named menuets scattered throughout the volume.

1. Courante
2. Courante

3. Bouree d'Orange

4. Bouree

5.-12. 8 Menuets

13. Menuet de Galatee
14. Menuet
15. Galliarde “La Patetique”
16. Passepied
17. Passepied de France
18. Passepied nouveaux
19. Plaisir venez sans crainte
20. Qu'a l'envy chacun se presse

21. Rigodon
22. Bouree, Deuxieme Air du Rigodon
23. Carillon La Vigne

24. Dite moy Ianeton

25. Le Trembleurs
26. L’Escossoise
27. L’Argentine
28. La Marche Angloise
29. La Marche des Dragons
30. Les Macabees
31. L’Isabel
32. La Vigne
33. L’Opera
34. La Valentine
35. Les Caprices d’Amour

36. La Vienne
37. Le Jardin de Cupidon
38. La Gigue du Roy
39. Preno Do
40. La Manche Verte
41. Menuet

42. Sawnay
43. La Sophie
44. La Richemont
45. La Cloris
46. La Gaillard Simon
47. La Belle Helleine
48. Rigodon Nouveaux
49. La belle Marie
50. Gigue
51. Gigue nouvelle
52. Chaconne
53. Bouree
54. Passepied
55. Les Dames de Londre

56. Ayr Escossoys
57. Menuet
58. Courante
59. Tricotes
60. Menuet
61. Passepied
62. Entree
63. Menuet
64. Entree nouvelle
65. Menuet
66. Suiet Italien