Menuet series 2-4: Named menuets by François Couperin

In the thirteen ordres (suites) of keyboard music by François Couperin—as published in the Brahms-Chrysander edition—there are only four named menuets and one passepied (a very close relative). As the list below shows, there is no obvious preference for formal functions in the first strains of the four menuets.

1. Ordre: sentence
2. Ordre: period
3. Ordre: period
9. Ordre: antecedent + continuation

The first menuet may start with an 8-bar sentence but there's little to connect it with the Italian-influenced sentences of Bach, Haydn, or Beethoven. The basic idea is literally repeated, varied only in its ornaments, and the continuation phrase is really a contrasting phrase with no obvious relation to the presentation at all.

 The menuet in the 2. Ordre is much more to formula, a period with IAC in bar 4 and PAC in bar 8.

The third menuet is also a period and also to formula, except that it ends with a HC and is therefore not entirely self-contained.

The fourth menuet is tucked in at the end of the 9. Ordre, after a long series of fancifully named pieces. It is written in 6/8 meter, highly unlikely for the menuet and even for its cousin the passepied, which is typically written in 3/8 time. Here is the opening, which also places the barline oddly.

I have re-barred the piece in 3/8 meter below. Here the sentence form is more familiar sounding, with the repetition of the basic idea in the left hand in bars 3-4, and the bar-length sixteenth note figures that can be heard as stemming from "x" in the second phrase (and even the second ending).

The variety in formal functions in the first strains is, if anything, stressed even more in the second strains, which do at least share the common trait they are all longer than their respective first strains and all use phrase and theme-like units.

1. Ordre, menuet: 16-bar period; non-tonic opening with HC and PAC
2. Ordre, menuet: Contrasting middle with “period 1” (non-tonic opening), the antecedent of which is repeated then a full reprise of A, making the whole a small ternary form. Number of bars in the second strain is 20
3. Ordre, menuet: antecedent (with non-tonic opening) + continuation, repeated. PAC in both cases
9. Ordre, menuet: 16-bar period with two bars inserted between the segments; non-tonic opening with HC and PAC

Menuet series 2-3: Rebecca Harris-Warwick on dance in the French court

Although it was published thirty years ago, Rebecca Harris-Warwick's article on the variety of dance practices and their contexts in the French court remains a valuable—and highly readable—source of information on the topic. She relies not only on familiar commentary from Pierre Rameau (noting that his accounts tend to be romanticized and nostalgic even as they describe practices from his own time [41]), but also on a variety of other sources from the era. Citation: Rebecca Harris-Warwick, "Ballroom Dancing at the Court of Louis XIV," Early Music 14/1 (1986): 40-49.

Here are a few things I found interesting:

Formal balls were by no means the only social dance events held at court. The opportunities for courtiers to dance were numerous and varied, ranging from informal evenings in the king's apartments to balletic presentations on stage. At one end of the spectrum were the so-called jours d'appartement, approximately three evenings a week during which the king opened his apartment in the chateau to his courtiers. Guests were free to wander from room to room, watching or taking part in the different entertainments each provided: gambling (the most popular), billiards (the king's favourite), music, dancing and lavish refreshments. (42)

Although the author notes that the amount of dancing at the court varied greatly over the years, depending on external events, 

[during one active period, from] 10 September 1684 [to] 3 March 1685, the beginning of Lent, there were at the court alone: 1 grand bal; 9 masked balls; 16 appartements that definitely included dancing; 42 other appartements that almost certainly also offered dancing; and at least 2 evenings of comedy that included dancing between the acts by courtiers. This all adds up to approximately 70 opportunities for dancing during a 175-day period, or one every two to three days. (42)

Beyond all these, other members of the court held dancing events, especially during Carneval.

On the branle, courante, and menuet:

Formal balls were opened, and sometimes also closed, with branles [group dances]. . . . [Then] came a courante danced by the highest ranking couple. . . . Menuets were also done, and there seems to have been quite a long period during which the two dances coexisted at court balls [but] the transition. . . probably occurred during the early years of the 18th century. By 1719, at a ball given for the nine-year-old Louis XV, a menuet opened the ball, and by 1725 Pierre Rameau spoke of the courante as a dying, if not already dead, dance. His book makes it clear that the menuet was the principal social dance of the day and had been for some time. (45)

On the contredanse:

The other type of group social dance, the contredanse, was already very popular at the French court in the 1690s. . . . Their interest lay in the patterns and figures formed by the group of dancers rather than in the steps, which, although more codified than those of the English country dances, were simple and repetitious in comparison with the complex step patterns of the choreographed French dances. The contredanses were often done at appartements and masked balls. . . . During the reign of Louis XV contredanses were a well established part of formal balls. (46)

On the types of dances, divided between (not rigidly maintained) categories of social and theatrical dance:

The most common dances at balls, after the opening branles, were courantes, menuets, passepieds and contredanses. Judging from the choreographies in Feuillet notation that were published as ball dances, bourées, gavottes and rigaudons were also frequently found in the ballroom. Of a primarily theatrical character were the sarabande, gigue, forlana, loure, canarie, chaconne, passacaille and folies d'Espagne, although individual representatives of these dance types did establish themselves in the social dance repertoire as well. (48)

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

Menuet series 2-1: Rebecca Harris-Warwick on irregular phrase groups in Lully

After rather a long while I am picking up the menuet historical survey series again. The last post was nearly a year ago, on 17 June 2016: link.

A few days before that, I wrote, in connection with menuets in Lully operas:

A look at these menuets shows -- by negative example -- how closely Caplin's analysis model and terms fits music of the later 18th and early 19th centuries. When ideas are three bars rather than two and clearly demarcated, there is no problem. Six-bar phrases are common enough in 17th century music, and especially in menuets. The difficulty arises at the next level, as these six-bar phrases consisting of two three-bar ideas are often treated as the first strain in a small binary form. In the analyses here, I have in most instances understood the entire piece as a prolonged theme. Since the distinction is based on length, however, that is not entirely satisfactory as a method. (link to post)

Rebecca Harris-Warwick has explored the issue of varying and irregular phrase lengths and groups more thoroughly in a chapter for the volume Lully Studies (citation at the end of this post). She "demonstrates that only a small proportion of Jean-Baptiste Lully's dance music—roughly a quarter of his binary pieces—is based on consistent four- or eight-bar phrases, a point that remains valid even for generic dances such as the minuet, gigue, or gavotte" (from the RILM abstract).

For example, in the category she refers to as "celebratory dances" (marked as and performed as dances), "the affect may be predictable, but the phrase structure of the dances is not." In several examples she cites, "the reigning affect is joy, and nothing suggests that Lully automatically assigns five-bar phrases to shepherds or nine- and eleven-bar phrases to river gods. On the contrary, the same set of characters may perform back-to-back dances with completely different metrical structures" (49). Even in some of the most formal dance types, such as the theatrical entrée, highly flexible phrase designs reign. Two surviving choreographies of this type, "both . . . for a man and a woman[,] draw upon [a characteristically] intricate and technically demanding step vocabulary. Both demonstrate not only that irregular and varied metrical structures pose no impediment to choreography, but also that such structures are perfectly compatible with dances in the noble style. Lully [composed them] as representatives of the art of dance. The art they exhibit is subtle, and varied, not restricted to predictable, square phrases" (54).

In still another example, Harris-Warwick notes that the music for a dance may appear irregular if heard on its own, but it may well gain a strong sense of symmetry when combined with the dance (as in the mirroring patterns commonly found in menuets) (56). The implications for research are obvious: "dance music operates in conjunction with the visual and the kinetic. A study of the phrase structures of Lully's dances needs to take these intersecting systems into account." 

And the historical generalization she derives from all this is as follows: "Lully [was not] alone in this 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).

All this seems consistent with my own assertions in blog posts about Lully menuets (link to the first of three), for example, "Form descriptions of Lully menuets from the operas show the fluidity (and uncertainty) of design analysis based on Caplin's model and terminology. We saw in the vocal and instrumental menuets from Atys and Proserpine that the design can appear to be simultaneously a small form and a prolonged theme, and that in the latter case an initial phrase is followed by two continuation phrases" (link). 

Reference:
Rebecca Harris-Warwick, "The Phrase Structures of Lully's Dance Music." In John Hajdu Heyer, ed., Lully Studies, pp. 32-56. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Michael Pamer, Neue brillante Ländler

I have published the first of two posts on Michael Pamer's Neue brillante Ländler (12 volumes, 1827): link. Pamer is widely regarded as the skilled musician who brought the style of the "Linzer Geiger" into dance halls and house balls, though it was his protegés, Lanner and Johann Strauss, sr., who became famous for it.